D&D 4E How long are your 4e combats taking, real time?

[Nail]

I give speed damage to players who act quickly ~ 25% extra.

That's interesting.


FWIW: The DM is actually the guy (or gal!) that's rolling the most dice, moving the most tokens, and taking the most time. It's just a question of numbers: the DM has more peices to keep track of than players do. When I timed how long a recent battle took, the DM was effectively using almost half the time (depending on how you measure things).

What the DM does is more significant, on a per-person basis, than what a player does.

 

[Ourph]

Now that everyone has gotten familiar with their character's abilities and the rules (including me), our usual range is 30-80 minutes per combat. Last weekend, I ran a mega-encouter (XP budget was n+4 with about 3 enemies per PC, including 3 elites and a solo). This was by-far the largest scale combat I've run as a DM and it took just under 2 hours.

Having players who really focus on teamwork like providing bonuses to each other when they are using their encounter/daily powers or moving enemies into position to maximize the Wizard's area effect spells has really sped up combats for us. When the players were just getting used to 4e and were more focused on individual tactics rather than cooperation, combats dragged out a lot more.

 

[Rel]

Just an update since we had another session last night.

Session total ran for 4.5 hours and there was an exploration skill challenge a fair bit of RP and 3 combat encounters. I just ran them through the Encounter Builder and they each clocked in at Hard with all being 725 or 750 XP for a 4 PC level-1 party. I'd say they took, on average, about 1 hour 15 minutes.

 

[gnfnrf]

I play in a low-heroic game (started at 1st, now at 4th) with 4 PCs, and in a 5 to 6 hour session we typically clock 4 encounters of mixed difficulty (leaning to harder), plus a skill challenge or two, some exploration, and some story/RP stuff.

This is approximately half again as fast as nearly the same group was playing from 6th to 13th level in 3.5E. Some of this could be because the 3.5 game was higher level, and some could be because we had an extra PC in that game, but 4E feels inherently faster to me.

--
gnfnrf

 

[Fundin Strongarm]

My group is playing Scepter Tower. Last week we did a fair amount of RP and got through 2 encounters in about 4.5 hours (and left it just at the beginning of a 3rd encounter).

This week we went through 4 encounters, the last of which was basically a double encounter where the party was exhausted of resources by the end of it.

I timed the encounters with this thread in mind and most came in around 45-60 minutes. The last one took a little longer (but not much). We played about 4.75 hours in total.

It really boggles my mind that a fight could take 2+ hours unless it is level+4 or something. (I suspect taking a long time to work out the most precise way to maximize damage potential is at the heart of the time issue.)

 

[Nail]

It really boggles my mind that a fight could take 2+ hours ....

...and yet I continue to see that in our games. Bizarre.

I'd love to be a fly-on-the-wall in some of these "45 minute" combats that purport to be above the PC's level...

 

[Fundin Strongarm]

How does a typical player's turn go?

Is it move (or not), pick a power, roll, damage (if a hit), done, next?

Or is it, "hmmm....what do you guys think I should do?" and a 4-minute discussion occurs with a couple people piping in saying "do this and then I'll be able to do that", and "no, move there instead so you won't be in the blast when I do such and such"?

I don't know.....there's got to be a reason for the discrepancy somehow.

Not all my players use cards (though I do encourage it). I use little poker chips to put under the minis for marking/quarry/curses and I now have the players put the bloodied chips under the monsters (and themselves) instead of me doing it to help speed things along. Most of my players roll damage at the same time as the d20.

Now, I will say my party is only second level (5 players - fighter, swordmage, 2 rangers, warlock) so their choices are limited on what they can do. Perhaps at higher levels things will take longer.

 

[Caliban]

I think certain factors have a huge impact on the length of combat:

1) The DM - the DM generally has more to do than all the PC's (keeping track of each monster, selecting their powers, rolling dice for each monster, etc.). If the DM is slow, the combat is going to be slow no matter what the players do. (Sometimes you can't help it - if some of the players are more tactically gifted than you, then you need to spend extra time choosing your monsters actions to challenge them.)

2) The Players - some people are just slower to decide their actions than others. Not much you can do about that. Some people are ineffecient when resolving their turn even when they know what they want to do. There are various tricks to speed up the players turns that have already been discussed.

3) The Characters - some classes and powers are much simpler to play than others. A warlock that blasts a single target is faster than a wizard who Fire Shrouds and has to roll attacks against 7 different opponents.

4) The Build - some powers and feat combo's are simply better than others, and if a player builds a character to take advantage of this, then they tend to do so much damage (or help other people do so much damage) that combats tend to finish within a 2-3 rounds. (A lvl 6 tempest fighter built to optimize Rain of Blows can have a +17 attack bonus with CA, and be doing up to 4d8+44 damage to a single target, or 2d8+22 to two different targets for example - elites and brutes tend to die quickly, especially when action points, crits, and buffs from other characters are factored in.)

5) Teamwork - if the players know how to make their characters work together, they hit more often and do more damage when they hit (especially if warlords and battle clerics are involved0).

If you have a party of 5 players who don't waste time, have damage optimized characters, use the most effective powers and feats, and know how to build characters that synergize with each other, combined with a DM who knows the rules and doesn't spend to much time deciding each monters actions, the combats will be an order of magnitude faster than a group that has less optimized builds and discusses every potential action for a couple of minutes on each characters turn.

I'm not saying one way is better than the other, just that one will result in shorter combats than the other. The point of the game is to have fun, and if you spend 2 hours on a combat but enjoyed it because you were all talking, joking, and roleplaying for 5 minutes on each characters turn then you did it right.

 

[Stalker0]

4) The Build - some powers and feat combo's are simply better than others, and if a player builds a character to take advantage of this, then they tend to do so much damage (or help other people do so much damage) that combats tend to finish within a 2-3 rounds. (A lvl 6 tempest fighter built to optimize Rain of Blows can have a +17 attack bonus with CA, and be doing up to 4d8+44 damage to a single target, or 2d8+22 to two different targets for example - elites and brutes tend to die quickly, especially when action points, crits, and buffs from other characters are factored in.)

I think part of this is how your strikers do in the game. Strikers do the big damage, so having more of them really cuts down on battle time I think.

Sure having a cleric is good to heal, but if you sub him out for another striker things die quicker, cutting down the number of rounds.

 

[jorrit]

I play KotS with my kids. I'm the DM but I also play with them as a cleric to help support them with healing and such. So together we're a team of three players. In general we need about an hour to finish an encounter. I do all the management and keeping track of things. I even keep track of their HP. Maybe that helps speeding things up. Not sure.

So speed is not a problem for us.

Greetings,