How long would this 4e combat last?

Asmor

First Post

• Sep 29, 2008

• #1

I'm having issues with the length of combat, and I'm trying to determine if it's the group, or if it's just the way combat is in this system.

Players: A fighter/cleric, warlord, wizard, rogue and ranger. Rogue and fighter are level 11, others are level 10. All players play competently, though perhaps not perfectly.

Enemies: An umber hulk (12 elite brute) and a mind flayer infiltrator (14 lurker).

Terrain: Red Dragon's Lair (the map that came with the Gargantuan Red Dragon-- basically a large, mostly open cave with a couple random spots of lava, but I actually ruled the lava as water).

Please answer the poll before clicking the spoiler tag, don't want my experience to influence the results.

[sblock=Answer poll first!]
Not sure of the exact time it took us, but we started the game shortly after 6 and the combat ended around 9:00, so I'd say about two and a half hours.
[/sblock]

 

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Altamont Ravenard

Explorer

• Sep 29, 2008

• #2

How many rounds did the combat last? Did you or the players search for rules much? What happened that the combat lasted the time that it did?

I haven't played high-level 4E games, but combat shouldn't last more than 1 hour (IMHO) when there are so few enemies.

AR

 

TerraDave

5ever, or until 2024

• Sep 29, 2008

• #3

Ya, the few enemies part of this is getting me to.

Say more!

 

Jack99

Adventurer

• Sep 29, 2008

• #4

I play in a 13th level campaign, and combats against few ennemies rarely last an hour, sometimes only 30 minutes. We are only 3 characters in the party though but as a counter, our DM is dm'ing again after about 18 years break, so he is quite rusty still.

Especially when we get down to the last monster, it gets sawwed in half (brutal scoundrel ftw) and rarely lasts more than a few minutes.

 

Asmor

First Post

• Sep 29, 2008

• #5

There's really not much else to say. I use a program (Turn Watcher) to keep track of HP and initiative, so those processes are actually sped up faster than average.

I don't know how many rounds the combat lasted, but if I had to estimate I'd say 5-10 (I know, broad range. Like I said, I don't know how long it took!).

There might have been one or two instances where we had to look up a power in the book, but they've all got their powers written down on cards. The books weren't opened very much as a rule-- I had the stats for the Umber Hulk written down on a separate page, and I had the MM turned to the Mind Flayer.

So it looks like I've got to work with my group to get turn times down... if it was 7 rounds, that would mean an average of about 3 minutes per turn, which is definitely way too high.

 

M

MrMyth

First Post

• Sep 29, 2008

• #6

Here is what I think is the most important question: How long have the players been playing these characters? Have they been playing them from levels 1-10/11? Or did they start using them more recently?

The slowest combats I've seen have often been due to players unfamiliar with their characters, and thus having a slower process deciding what to do, figuring out how powers work, etc.

If it wasn't something like that, then I'm just not sure - especially for an encounter with only two enemies, even with the amount of dazing going on, it sounds like it took much, much longer than I would have expected.

 

Starfox

Hero

• Sep 29, 2008

• #7

Few, high-level enemies lead to lots of misses, frustration, and general angst. It also leads to slow combats. It is generally more fast and furious to fight many, low-level opponents. Especially if you ad minions to the mix.

Just my 2 cp

 

Obryn

Hero

• Sep 29, 2008

• #8

I can't really see it taking much more than 60-90 minutes... Less, probably, unless I'm missing something. By that level, the characters should have some really outstanding Encounter/Daily abilities...

-O

 

D

DeusExMachina

First Post

• Sep 29, 2008

• #9

Starfox said:

Few, high-level enemies lead to lots of misses, frustration, and general angst. It also leads to slow combats. It is generally more fast and furious to fight many, low-level opponents. Especially if you ad minions to the mix.

Just my 2 cp

Click to expand...

I hear you. I wish our DM would understand that just a little better. He keeps throwing high level single opponents against us and though we beat them with the use of pretty much all of our resources, it just isn't fun to see 90% of your attacks miss...

 

Iron Sky

Procedurally Generated

• Sep 29, 2008

• #10

Those are between level+2 and level+4, so I wouldn't think hitting would be too much of an issue, unless the characters are way sub-optimal. Going against something higher (like our level 4 characters going against a level 11 elite devourer - effectively about level +7-8) can result in a miss-fest, but I'd think they'd do fine, as long as their tactics were decent - flanking, using ally hit-boosing powers, monster debuffs, etc.

To echo what MrMyth said: How long have they been playing these characters?

Unless you guys play a couple times a week, started before the books came out, or started above level 1 I don't know how you'd be up to Paragon by now as our group that started at level 1 three weeks or so after the books came out and have played every weekend are just scraping level 7. By now, 3/4 of our players are familiar enough with our characters that our turns take an average of two minutes to resolve and the DM can usually do a monster's turn a minute or so, a bit more for an elite or solo.

If I scaled that encounter to our group's level, I'd estimate it would take 30 minutes, an hour tops if people were rolling poorly.