Combat Rounds: How Long Should They Be?

[Oni]

Something that has bothered me about the more recent iterations of D&D is the length of combat rounds. The six second combat round has a couple of ramifications that I would not mind seeing vanish.

1) 6 seconds is very small amount of time to move about and perform interesting and useful actions. It hardly seems enough time to light a torch, especially when people are trying to kill you, or dig anything out of a pack, much less use it as well. It implies magic is all an instantaneous snap your fingers sort of affair, it doesn't leave a lot of time for mumbo jumbo. I feel like it discourages people from doing things other than simply attacking on combat, because there is a sense that doing other stuff will simply to have too high an opportunity cost, as it would realistically take so long as to chew up quite a number of actions.

2) 6 second combat rounds mean that spells given durations in rounds for balance reasons in combat, end up have ridiculously short durations outside of combat. For instance summoning monsters for mere seconds seems kind of odd to me. And more to the point it tends to put the focus on combat and discourage thinking outside the box since the durations are so short that they are really only useful in combat.

With those two points in mind I would very much like to see the return of one minute rounds.

What say you?

 

[Hassassin]

Something like 1-2 min. per round assuming 4-5 players seems alright. 5 round combats in 5-10 minutes.

Wait, you mean ingame? 6s is good.

Make most spells full round casting time (resolves on your next turn), so that they can be interrupted. More powerful spells that take three rounds or so would be great.

Make most spells last minutes rather than rounds so you don't need to track them in combat. Offensive spells save ends, with saves usually every round, but maybe once per minute or day for powerful compulsions.

 

[kitsune9]

I like 6 or 10 second combat rounds, but I can play with 1 minute rounds too.

 

[CM]

Minute-long combat rounds are something I was happy to see go. They brought into play all sorts of complaints about number of arrows fired per round, movement rate per round, and so on. It seems equally silly to me that you could spend a full minute lighting a torch or drinking a potion and the enemy only has one chance to hurt you.

The issue of tracking spell durations is easily solved by just declaring that they last the duration of the encounter (or 5 minutes) which is what 4e did (or 1 hour or 24 hours or whatever is deemed necessary). Alternately you could require concentration to sustain them, which both 3e and 4e did, which lets you keep the spell going as long as you like, but limiting you to one or two such spells active at at the same time.

 

[Oni]

More powerful spells that take three rounds or so would be great.

Please, no. The idea of sitting for three rounds twiddling my thumbs while everyone else is doing stuff, only to have the action interrupted at the last moment or the situation change so much that casting would be a waste, or possibly even detrimental sounds distinctly horrible. The spells would have to be so powerful as to completely trivialize the encounter to make such a high risk action worthwhile, which puts you in the everyone babysit the wizard while he takes care business situation, ultimately leading to a place where the wizard the most important person in the combat, or utterly useless if his actions are spoiled or combat is largely resolved before he can finally act.

 

[Hassassin]

Please, no. The idea of sitting for three rounds twiddling my thumbs while everyone else is doing stuff, only to have the action interrupted at the last moment or the situation change so much that casting would be a waste, or possibly even detrimental sounds distinctly horrible.

*Shrug*, then don't select those spells. Simple as that.

 

[Gort]

From what I've read, I think the idea is for wizards to have at-will powers they cast every round, so you're not "twiddling your thumbs", but then on say round 3 your fireball goes off and destroys all the weaker monsters in the room.

From here on in is presumption, but I presume that you choose the spell you're going to cast after you've built enough power to use it, so you can start building your power on round 1 with the intention of casting fireball but change your mind to lightning bolt when the spell is actually cast in round 3.

Meanwhile you'll be pelting the enemy with magic missile and javelin of fire though.

PS: I think you jumped in with both feet and added a pair of ridiculous assumptions to the original premise, just so you could be outraged. Good job.

 

[Number48]

Eh. A round is a round in-game no matter how much time it is supposed to be. Things last a number of rounds. Not much functional difference. However, you would be surprised how long 6 seconds is when you're fighting for your life. If somebody is choking you, not as in practice but seriously choking you, you'd be shocked to learn afterwards that it was only for 6 seconds. We may be carefully, tactically plotting every nuance of our turn, but in the game characters are scrambling like hell!

 

[MatthewJHanson]

I always preferred more abstract round time lengths. It lasts however long it needs to for you to do one round's worth of actions. (I think in the old Marvel superheroes, it lasted one comic book frame).

 

[Oni]

*Shrug*, then don't select those spells. Simple as that.

That's all well and good until it's your turn the play the fighter and your buddy across the table decides he does want to try those spell, and then you're back to the babysitter/useless wizard dichotomy, just from the opposite side.