Keeping track of combat length (for posterity)

[Jdvn1]

I'd wager that's a significant difference. Our Druid is a secondary striker, and our Wizard is being played as a damage dealer (not ideal, I'm going to recommend a different class for him if he wants to do that). So, I'd say we have .5 strikers.

MPR (minutes per round)

Me:
11 2/3 mpr
5 5/8 mpr
8 3/4 mpr
9 mpr

Avg:
8.76

You:
7 1/2
7 1/2
12 1/2
40
17 1/7
15
5
16 2/3

Avg:
15.16

(take out the 40... assuming it was a weird session)
Avg:
11.62

I'm going to guess that my first encounter had a higher mpr because it was their first encounter ever. They were learning how things worked and such, and talking a lot of tactics out. After that, they probably started to get the hang of it, and the tactics because a little more natural--and so the encounters mpr started to scale with the difficulty.

 

[blargney the second]

I'm glad you calculated out the minutes/round! I had thought of doing it but lazied out.

My initial thought is that my party's increased minutes per round is a result of being higher level (all my data is for level 11 or 12).

By this point in our PCs' career, we've made a pretty good effort to make sure we have powers that use up most of our actions in a given round. Almost all of us use our standard, move, minor, and immediate actions in the first couple of rounds, and each one of those actions takes at least a few seconds to resolve. When you start adding in opportunity, free, and no action abilities, it pads out the round even more.

 

[Jdvn1]

Heh, I find this sort of thing interesting

[u]	MPR	XPM	Minutes	XP ea	Tot XP  Crits	Daily	AP	Rnds	P Size P Lvl Monster size
[/u]1	7.50	12.44	45	560	2800	0	1	3	6	5	11	5
2	7.50	16.67	30	500	2500	4	0	1	4	5	11	3
3	12.50	28.00	5	140	700	0	0	0	0.4	5	11	1
4	40.00	29.00	40	1160	5800	3	1	3	1	5	11	5
5	17.14	10.00	120	1200	6000	3	3	3	7	5	11	13
6	15.00	13.33	45	600	3000	2	5	1	3	5	11	1
7	5.00	12.50	10	125	625	1	0	0	2	5	12	7
[u]8	16.67	16.00	50	800	4000	0	0	0	3	5	12	11
AVG	15.16	17.24	43.125			1.625	1.25	1.375	3.3			
[/u]1	11.67	1.19	105	125	500	2	0	0	9	4	1	5
2	5.63	3.06	45	137.5	550	1	0	0	8	4	1	4
3	8.75	2.41	70	168.75	675	2	1	2	8	4	1	9
[u]4	9.00	2.36	90	212.5	850	0	3	4	10	4	1	7
AVG	8.76	2.25	77.5			1.25	1	1.5	8.75			
[/u]

Note: I omitted averages on xp because it should be trivial--if it takes you 10 encounters to level, then it should take you on average (n level xp - n+1 level xp)/10 xp per encounter. Also, I omitted monster size average because, well, I think it's pretty meaningless. One solo or 2 brutes and 3 skirmishers? Whatever. XP is a better gauge of difficulty.

 

[Jdvn1]

I'm glad you calculated out the minutes/round! I had thought of doing it but lazied out.

My initial thought is that my party's increased minutes per round is a result of being higher level (all my data is for level 11 or 12).

Yeah, I expected that. Counting that one round forty minute encounter, a level 12 round is almost twice as long as level 1.

Also, it looks like XP per minute per level slows, too.

I'm sure we'd be running much faster than we are, too, if we had laptops, markers for effects, and experienced players.

As far as raw time per encounter: I'm thinking the absence of a striker makes a pretty big difference. The added number of rounds means that we use more resources (we may end up using more healing surges, for example).

 

[the Jester]

As far as raw time per encounter: I'm thinking the absence of a striker makes a pretty big difference.

I cannot emphasize this enough. I have run enough 4e with one striker in a party of eight vs. four strikers in a party of seven to say that the presence or absence of strikers is HUGE in terms of the time they whittle off each encounter. I'd never seen a non-minion drop in one round in 4e until the striker-heavy party.

 

[Jdvn1]

No? blargney the second's party of five took down five guys in one round (one 40 minute round, but still). 2 strikers, 2 defenders, 1 leader. I suppose that's a good percentage of strikers, though.

I'm trying to convince one of my controllers (a Wizard who likes to deal damage anyways) to try a striker class (Sorcerer is... kind of a similar flavor?)

 

[blargney the second]

Now that we're discussing minutes per round, I'm starting to wonder how much time we spend doing setup for each encounter. Drawing the map, setting up minis, rolling for initiative, DM describing the room and the creatures, etc - all that stuff that happens before the first person takes their first action. Offhand I'd guesstimate it at 5-10 minutes, but I wonder if it's noting that initial overhead info as well.

Edit: screw it... it's starting to sound like too much work!

 

[Jdvn1]

I was wondering how many healing surges are used each encounter and how much damage is done per round.

 

[blargney the second]

That's a good idea. I'll start adding surges used for sure. If I can do it easily, I'll try to track total monster hp as well.

(For what it's worth, I believe in that 40-minute 1-round fight we dealt ~700 damage. It was utterly gonzo.)

 

[Jdvn1]

Maybe damage/round can be assumed to be (total monster hp) / (# rounds) ?

I'm just curious as to the effect of a striker (or, for each added striker) on damage/round, total rounds, and resources used (dailies used, APs used, surges used, etc).

(And, I can imagine that it took 40 minutes to figure out what everyone was doing to accomplish 700 damage in a round and to add everything up)