D&D Combat Time - Edition comparisons

[ProfessorCirno]

In my experience, 4e has far more rounds then 3e does - 3e combat can be as short as three rounds - but 3e rounds last forever, and thus the two vaguely even out. 3e is faster at earlier levels and god awful at higher levels, but the average is roughly the same.

2e games follow 4e to a degree - more rounds, but the rounds are more concise. However, I've found at least in my experience that there are fewer rounds then in 4e - somewhat in the middle then, but closer to 4e then to 3e. It really depends on what dice are coming up - combat can be hilariously brutal and short, far more then the other two editions, and that goes for either the PCs or the NPCs.

Unless you're in the 2e game I'm in, at which point my Wild Mage throws out a wild surge (or two) and nobody can be sure of anything anymore.

 

[Dungeoneer]

I haven't gotten to play an pre-3.x D&D, unfortunately, so I can't comment directly on comparable combat length. But one trend that may be related is the decline of the wandering monster encounter.

I don't use random monsters in 4e not because I don't like the idea, but because when you only have time for 3 encounters per session having one eaten up by a wandering monster really hurts. 4e combat is a pretty serious investment both in terms of prep time and play time, so as the DM I don't take rolling initiative lightly.

Yet wandering monsters were a standard feature of 1e by all accounts. Therefore I assume that things were different then.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

Fights lasted longer in 1E. Rounds lasted 1 minute, not 6 seconds. What?

 

[NewJeffCT]

From fall of 2007 to early 2010, I ran a 3.5E campaign set in The Kingdoms of Kalamar. As an homage to my terrific old DM from the late 90s and early 00s, I had an early climactic combat with the players defending the grove of a dryad against slavers and allies of the slavers, as he had a similar scenario in 2E days from a fantastic Kalamar campaign that started in the same location in game.

The good guys in my 3.5E campaign were 7 PCs that were level FOUR, plus half a dozen allied humans that were level 3 or 4, as well as the dryad (a level 7 cleric) and her unicorn mount, and a wizard the party had rescued, also level 7. The bad guys were four groups of orcs, about a dozen orcs in each group (so about 50 total); some half dozen goblin wolf-riders with them; plus, a group of human warriors protecting the evil priest leading the slavers (a dozen warriors, plus the level 7 priest and two lower level priests); a group of non-combatant slaves to carry the evil priest on his palanquin; some drow warriors, led by a drow duskblade; and, a nasty hill giant.

That 3.5E combat took three entire sessions to play out, and ended up with two PCs dead, one almost dead, and a major NPC squashed by a mega-crit from the hill giant.

In late 1998, we had a similar scenario in the same grove in Kalamar. However, this time, there were 10 PCs at level four instead of seven. And, maybe a dozen allied warriors instead of six. There was the dryad on her unicorn, but she was not a cleric, just a straight 2E dryad. The party also had a pseudodragon, three groups of pixies and two brownies on their side. I think the dryad had called a treant to fight for the party as well.

The bad guys were also greater in number, including about a dozen goblin wolf-riders, 80-100 orcs & goblins; with a dozen drow and several slavers in the lead. Oh, and there were three hill giants instead of one.

The 2E encounter ran the entire length of one session - a very focused five plus hours. I think we had one PC dead, two that were near-death and most of the allied humans were dead.

While my 3.5E group was not as focused as the old 2E group, it was a shock to me that while the combat scale was smaller, the combat took three times longer, even at lower levels. (the combat times even went up as the group went up in level in 3.5E as well)

Also, in case you were curious, the homage ended after that combat, as my group went in a completely different direction than the old 2E group.

I also think part of the reason was that by 1998/99, 1E and 2E had been out for a good 20 years, so everybody in the group knew the system backwards & forwards. 3.5E was only a few years old in '07/'08, so nobody had a 20 year history of growing up with the rules.

So far, I've found 4E combats to be speedier than 3.5E, but my group is only up to level five now.

 

[NewJeffCT]

But 3e combat at levels 17-20? There's stuff to look up, there could be dozens of foes on the battlefield, players might take a significant amount of time just understanding what all of their options are, making a decision, and then figuring out how to do whatever it is they are going to do.

From what I remember about AD&D and know about older D&D, combat was much more deadly/penalizing (e.g. undead). Because of the issues of death and level drain, maybe players did not reach the more cumbersome and complicated higher levels, or if they did, not as often?

Agreed on high level 3.5E play - a single round can take a long time.

And, AD&D/1E/2E also did not go up in level nearly as high. I think pre 3E, a campaign typically ended around level 9 or 10. 3E was designed to take that same campaign up to level 20, while 4E takes it to level 30.

 

[Stoat]

[MENTION=10784]NewJeffCT[/MENTION]

Did you use minis in your epic 1998 battle?

One of the big reasons that my group's combats take long in 3.X and 4E than they did in 2E is that we always use a battlemat in the newer editions and we almost never did before.

 

[NewJeffCT]

[MENTION=10784]NewJeffCT[/MENTION]

Did you use minis in your epic 1998 battle?

One of the big reasons that my group's combats take long in 3.X and 4E than they did in 2E is that we always use a battlemat in the newer editions and we almost never did before.

Yes, we did use miniatures for that epic combat in 1998. The DM of that group had an extensive collection of miniatures and used them religiously.

Believe it or not, once 3E came out, he sometimes used miniatures less... between that Kalamar campaign and early 3E days, he had acquired a huge amount of dwarven forge terrain, and he just bagged using minis sometimes in 3E because the dwarven forge terrain took a lot of work to set up & use. They still used it a majority of the time, but not every time.

Starting in 2001, I got a job that required crazy hours, so had to take a hiatus from gaming until early 3.5E days...so, I'm going by what they told me on using minis. And, by those early 3.5E days, my old DM's physical condition got worse and he was unable to game on a regular basis.

 

[the Jester]

In my experience, going from fastest to slowest, this is how the editions rank on combat speed:

BECMI
1e
2e
4e
3e

 

[Saeviomagy]

The earlier editions also had this interesting thing where everyone rolled their hitpoints, even monsters. Combined with that was the fact that everyone's hitpoints were so much lower.

That meant that a significant proportion of monsters were effectively minions, but cost full encounter budget (not that there was such a thing). Just think how often the wizard pulled out fireball and an encounter was either outright ended or reduced to 1 or 2 monsters who took a single hit to dispatch.

I think it would be possible to play 4e in a 1-2e style, simply by swapping out 2/3rds of monsters for minions and then not making it up in the encounter budget (but still award the correct minion xp - to simulate that slow levelling curve). You would also not tell the players which creatures were minions in this case.

I would probably also implement some sort of "much bigger crits for monsters" rule, say 2d8 per tier? Again trying to simulate that "sure this encounter is a pushover, but someone might still die if we're unlucky" factor that old editions had.

 

[MerricB]

It's a hard comparison to make. I can make comparisons between 3E and 4E easily, but it's been a long time since I last ran AD&D on a regular basis.

In 3E, low level combats are pretty quick, normally taking me in the range of 10-30 minutes. By the time the higher levels are attained (13th+), the game slows down appreciably, and 2-3 hours is not particularly uncommon... even for battles that are only 2 or 3 rounds.

Truly, adding up all the dice and resolving all the attacks high level characters make can take a very long time.

In my 4E campaigns, combat time is a lot more constant, and is generally in the range of 40-60 minutes per combat. It creeps upwards somewhat at higher levels, but even our 21st level game is not having combats taking longer than 90 minutes, which is a huge advantage over 3E (and they're lasting 6-8 rounds as well).

AD&D, as I recall would have combats that typically lasted in the 10-30 minute range, with certain "set piece" combats taking far longer. If considering only fighter vs monster type combats, then combat length tends to take longer as the levels get higher, as fighter damage is mostly constant (# attacks at higher levels increase it slightly, as do magic weapons), whilst monster hit points scale upwards linearly or faster. Four fighter 1s vs one ogre is a lot faster than four fighter 4s vs four ogres!

Magic can speed this up, of course, but you need to be fairly high level or have good magic items for it to be an appreciable change.

Cheers!