1 Minute Duration Spells

[F700]

It's not "too much". It's one more thing to track, when we are already tracking HP, positioning, initiative, actions, advantage/disadvantage, and any number of situational modifiers. Every additional thing you need to track increases the odds that you will somehow screw up something else.

Worse, it is very hard to justify the value of tracking this. Are most 1-minute spells so powerful that adding an extra round or two to the duration, once in every dozen combats, will be completely unbalancing? Is the game so simplistic that adding one more countdown is the only way to make it interesting? Do one minute durations add verisimilitude because it's impossible to accept magic that doesn't jive with modern timekeeping techniques?

Then have the caster track it. There's no reason a player can't declare number of rounds remaining on his or her spell/potion/item effect.

The value of that extra round or two depends on what's occuring in that extra round or two. Would you accept "But it's the last round of the fight - ignore the 10 damage that put me under zero hp!"

That extra round or two has the potential to drastically change the outcome of an encounter, an entire adventure, conceivably an entire campaign depending on what occurs. I'm not playing D&D to handwave the players to inevitable success.

The devil is in the details, and spell durations are one of those details.

 

[Falling Icicle]

Then have the caster track it. There's no reason a player can't declare number of rounds remaining on his or her spell/potion/item effect.

There's a reason I don't want to. There are already enough things to keep track of, as a player or a DM, that I don't want to keep track of the duration of several spells each battle. I play DnD for the same reason I play any other game - to have fun. To me, tracking such things adds little strategic value to the game but alot of tedium. Whatever tactical or strategic element it may occasionally add is, in my experience, not worth the significant annoyance that comes with it.

The value of that extra round or two depends on what's occuring in that extra round or two. Would you accept "But it's the last round of the fight - ignore the 10 damage that put me under zero hp!"

This is a strawman argument.

I'm not playing D&D to handwave the players to inevitable success.

So those of us who happen to dislike the tedium and annoyance of tracking spell durations mid combat are playing "to handwave the players to inevitable success?" That is an awfully elitist assertion.

I don't know about you, but as someone who is often both a player and a DM, I'd rather spend my time and brainpower on real challenges, not frivolous exercises in bookkeeping.

 

[Oni]

1 minute durations are nice, you can easily track them on a d10 in combat, and they simply won't last long once you stop keeping track of rounds to matter.

 

[DDogwood]

Then have the caster track it. There's no reason a player can't declare number of rounds remaining on his or her spell/potion/item effect.

I didn't say that it was more work for the DM. I said that it's one more thing to track, with very little benefit for doing so, which increases the likelihood for other mistakes. But I also said that it's not a problem for groups who don't mind tracking this stuff - it's just that it would be a good optional rule or even a house rule to state that 1-minute durations are simply "encounter" durations.

The value of that extra round or two depends on what's occuring in that extra round or two. Would you accept "But it's the last round of the fight - ignore the 10 damage that put me under zero hp!"

That's hardly the same thing (although characters going unconscious in the last round of a fight is rarely important). The real question should be "are the events of those last couple of rounds, when they happen at all, significant enough to warrant tracking the spell duration during all the combats when those rounds never happen?" The answer, of course, is "your mileage may vary", and therefore the best rule is one that is easily modified to suit your group's preferences.

That extra round or two has the potential to drastically change the outcome of an encounter, an entire adventure, conceivably an entire campaign depending on what occurs.

The likelihood that tracking the duration of a 1-minute spell will make the difference between a TPK and a glorious victory is remote, at best. In fact, I would venture to say that it is less likely to impact your campaign than a PC's hair and eye color choices. In other words, it is hardly significant enough to insist that saying "1 minute = 1 encounter" would ruin or even significantly damage the game experience, ESPECIALLY as an optional rule.

I'm not playing D&D to handwave the players to inevitable success.

I'm not playing D&D to give my players practice counting to 10, either. If encounter duration spells equal inevitable success, but one minute duration spells create a challenging game, then I'm pretty sure you're doing something horribly wrong when you're designing encounters.

 

[DEFCON 1]

As a 4E player, my first reaction to seeing the 1-minute spell duration was "Ugh! What?!?"... but then my second reaction was definitely "Oh, okay, I see what they did there. That's probably a good compromise, actually."

As has been said... most encounters probably won't last 10 rounds, so "1-minute" will pretty much become synonymous with "encounter". And those of us who don't have problems with "encounter powers" or who don't want to waste our time tracking individual spell duration will probably just hand-wave it if/when a fight ever surpasses 10 rounds. But for those who can't stand the idea of "encounter-length durations" can actually track the spells round-by-round.

The one thing I DIDN'T want to see, and thank goodness right now we don't seem to see... is 1-minute PER LEVEL durations. Because once you start doing that... and spell effects being to potentially bleed into succeeding fights... you now are STUCK actually tracking durations and the speed with which the party gets from one fight to another. Especially up into the 15-20 level range, where even with a 10-minute Short Rest... a spell lasts for an encounter, the rest, and then another 2 to 8 minutes in which time the party might get into another scrape. THAT'S the kind of tracking of time I never want to go back to.

 

[Perspicacity]

Whut?

No.

No no no.

Not at all.

4E combats tend to resolve in 4-6 rounds.

I think what he meant to say was that in 4e, combat felt like it lasted 50 rounds.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

As a 4E player, my first reaction to seeing the 1-minute spell duration was "Ugh! What?!?"... but then my second reaction was definitely "Oh, okay, I see what they did there. That's probably a good compromise, actually."

[...]

The one thing I DIDN'T want to see, and thank goodness right now we don't seem to see... is 1-minute PER LEVEL durations. Because once you start doing that... and spell effects being to potentially bleed into succeeding fights... you now are STUCK actually tracking durations and the speed with which the party gets from one fight to another.

Defcon, you're an alright kinda guy.

[Or, in other words, this is pretty much exactly what I was thinking.]

 

[Viking Bastard]

As a 4E player, my first reaction to seeing the 1-minute spell duration was "Ugh! What?!?"... but then my second reaction was definitely "Oh, okay, I see what they did there. That's probably a good compromise, actually."

Yup, I had the exact same reaction. At first I shook my head in frustration, but then I noticed that most of the spells had standardized durations.

So, if they keep them standardized, I'm happy.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Yup, I had the exact same reaction. At first I shook my head in frustration, but then I noticed that most of the spells had standardized durations.

So, if they keep them standardized, I'm happy.

Yup. In D&DN for many of us... "1-minute" will be a synonym for "encounter". And if not using the word "encounter" makes a part of the player-base happy, then I'm fine with doing that word-swapping in my own head. Same way I'm fine with WotC removing the words "Defender role" from their lexicon, while simultaneously having a Guardian theme with the Defender feat, or replacing the term "Healing Surge" with "Hit Die". The actual useful results doesn't go away... we just stop using the terms that piss some people off.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

The one thing I DIDN'T want to see, and thank goodness right now we don't seem to see... is 1-minute PER LEVEL durations. Because once you start doing that... and spell effects being to potentially bleed into succeeding fights... you now are STUCK actually tracking durations and the speed with which the party gets from one fight to another. Especially up into the 15-20 level range, where even with a 10-minute Short Rest... a spell lasts for an encounter, the rest, and then another 2 to 8 minutes in which time the party might get into another scrape. THAT'S the kind of tracking of time I never want to go back to.

Absolutely. I don't really care if this kind of spells have a flat 1 minute, 5 minutes, or even 2 or 3 minutes. Just standardize on something in the ballpark of that and move on to the next thing. It's that 1 round per level (and 1 minute per level and 1 hour per level) that adds nothing but broken scaling to a thing that doesn't need to scale. That's especially annoying when something right next to it needs to scale and doesn't, but I digress ...