D&D General How often do your sessions end mid-combat?

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Never as a DM or as a player, but then, maybe I have just always been lucky to be in groups where we don't lose track of the time and get stuck like that.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Also count me as a "failure as a DM."

I used to just keep going until the battle was over. The first time I ran an hour past the scheduled end time on a two-hour gaming slot was what cured me of that (thanks Arauthator!). People have lives and if we need to end in the middle of combat, so be it. These days I prefer to respect my players' time.

One thing I heard on the Appendix N Book Club podcast is that if you're going to end in the middle of combat, always end right before the monsters' turn, to ratchet up the tension. I dig it.

 

[ad_hoc]

The game is designed assuming 3 rounds per combat.

Are you regularly having 12 round combats?

Why do you think this is? Would you rather have shorter combats? Have you considered that you could?

 

[Shiroiken]

Heh. I wasn't meaning that people were failures as DMs, simply that it was a momentary failure of a DM skill. Everyone screws up, especially me!

Players have agency, they can start combats unanticipated by the DM almost whenever they like (or delay by a couple of real-life hours the start of combats that the DM had planned for, with the same effect).

The former is a failure of anticipation, but depending on your group it might be common. The days of players deciding to start a meaningless brawl are long past for me, but I remember them well. Even when an unexpected combat does happen it's seldom something that a lot of time would be spent on, as likely the foes are much weaker than the party (or occasionally much more powerful). I usually just narrate the results, giving the players options throughout, and setting up the consequences. Interestingly enough, my players are just as time conscious as I am, and will point out before initiative is rolled if time might run out.

Time management is about knowing when the optimal stopping places might be, and while you work towards them, you should also know good and acceptable spots as well. I never have a stopping point in mind before a session starts, since I don't know how long the players are going to spend on various things. I just bear in mind how much time is left, and try to steer things to end on a good spot within my margin of error. Obviously this doesn't always work, forcing us to stop in unpleasant moments (such as combat), but I try to learn from my mistakes whenever I make them.

 

[el-remmen]

The game is designed assuming 3 rounds per combat.

Is it?

Are you regularly having 12 round combats?

I'd say 6 to 12 rounds is a good guess.

Why do you think this is? Would you rather have shorter combats?

Probably because I tend run very dynamic combats where the environment of the fight is very important and opponents to do their best to make use of it (as do PCs) and many combats have some other thing at stake aside from who can kill the other side quickest.

A three round fight either sounds like one side is overwhelmingly more powerful than the other or people are just lining up to fight. The former certainly happens some times and the latter does not seem as fun.

Have you considered that you could?

I mean, the combats are fun as is, so no.

 

[el-remmen]

Heh. I wasn't meaning that people were failures as DMs, simply that it was a momentary failure of a DM skill. Everyone screws up, especially me!

I was being glib. No harm or foul!

Obviously this doesn't always work, forcing us to stop in unpleasant moments (such as combat), but I try to learn from my mistakes whenever I make them.

I guess I just stopped thinking of it as a mistake at some point.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

One thing I heard on the Appendix N Book Club podcast is that if you're going to end in the middle of combat, always end right before the monsters' turn, to ratchet up the tension. I dig it.

I love that podcast.

 

[el-remmen]

This thread is giving me some "Do you write in or modify your game books?" vibes.

 

[Hex08]

Rarely, never if I had a choice.

My current campaign has been with the same group more or less for decades and when I moved about 10 years ago I didn't want it to end our Sunday gaming so we have been playing using Fantasy Grounds & Skype. If it's getting late and I think the combat will take longer than we have we try and quit before but sometimes combat goes badly and people have poor rolls so it takes longer to finish the fight than anticipated. Since my group all have jobs to go to in the morning and possibly upset spouses if the game goes to long it can cause problems. In those instances we have quit in the middle of combat. Luckily, in the past 10 years or so it has only happened less than a half dozen times.

 

[Lanefan]

So how about you? How often do sessions end mid-combat? Do you care? Do you try to speed up and finish before ending? Do you call the session early if a combat is about to start but the end of the scheduled play time is approaching? Other thoughts?

Ending in mid-combat can be a right pain if I need the board for anything else during the week and thus have to clear off all the minis etc., and thus I try to avoid it. It's also sometimes a bear for recordkeeping as a lot of the time I'm using memory to tell me which mini on the boardequates to which set of stats on my page.

That said, ending mid-combat still happens somewhere between "rarely" and "regularly" on your poll options - maybe one session out of 20, or 2-3 times a year.

If it's getting late and it looks like a big combat's about to start we'll sometimes stop a bit early. More often we'll just keep going till whatever combat we're in is done even if means we run overtime. The ones that end in mid-flight are most often combats where there's more than meets the eye e.g. many more foes than it seemed, or a second or third wave arriving later, stuff like that.

The one thing I won't do unless I'm absolutely forced to is end a session mid-round.