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Message: <blockquote data-quote="demoss" data-source="post: 6256046" data-attributes="member: 6690191">I really suspect my group is an outlier (combats being longer than typical), because my impression is that people going through 2-4 combats per sessions is common, with plenty of time left over for other stuff....but because I'm the one who said that I'm not really quite happy with the combat duration, let me break our last combat down.Opponents came in three waves. (Or rather: characters penetrated across two defended positions and a boss appeared.) There are 5 players, and there were 14 opponents in total, though 9 of them were mooks in the first wave.The encounter was technically a bit over double-strength one, but the opponents didn't have any defensive powers of note, nor ridiculous HP pools. Their AC *was* a bit high for the PCs, though -- and sadly the front-line PC's AC was a bit high for the mooks.Everyone was present at 18:30. I'm not sure how long it took before we got down to gaming, but let's say we started really at 19:00-19:30. The combat was finished maybe around 21:30. So call it 2 - 2.5 hours.It *very* definitely wasn't "roll, announce hit, roll damage". It was: describe what the character does, discover if it needs a roll or if I let it pass, laugh, roll, check rules for the spell being used because this is the first time that spell has been used, make a joke, roll damage, clarify fictional positioning, applaud at the characters being awesome, laugh hysterically at the enemy fumbles (I swear my dice have perfect comedic timing), make more tea, remind the next player about their turn, etc...Definitely not optimized for efficiency.I'm not a complete novice in running d20 combats: I ran a weekly OSR game two years ago for three months (ACKS) and our combats were 10 - 30min once we got the rules down. (The last time before that is probably in the 1990s.) They weren't cut and dry and boring either, but they weren't *quite* as engaged in the fiction as our 13th Age combats have been so far.I would hazard the guess that the ACKS combat with a similar level of engagement would have taken maybe twice as long -- but it's been two years, so it's hard to be sure.It is clear to me some of the longness of the combats comes from not having all the rules quite down yet, but it's much harder to say how much. A fixed 30 min tax per combat? A 50% slowdown? No idea really.The second major inefficiency is there being occasional "Whoops, whose turn is it now?" -moments. Ie. when the combat isn't progressing because someone (me) forgot to call the turn while laughing. I had this trouble in first few ACKS sessions as well, before I got it under control, at which point our combats became notably faster -- but again, it's been two years so I won't hazard a guess if we're talking about an hour of lost time or 10 minutes.I would hazard the guess that with rules down and making sure the combat is progressing all the time it would have been an 60-90 minutes without cutting down on the description and fun.You could be describing our group here. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />We're playing again this week, and I sincerely hope that we can manage to get a normal-size combat down to under an hour without having to stress about it.I'm keeping an eye on this, and if the combats don't get clearly faster over the next few sessions I'm considering drastic measures (reducing HP, increasing damage, etc.)Can't really comment on this -- particularly since "flavorful" is a pretty personal call IMO.I will say that just before last session was the first time I cracked that part of the book to check the numbers on that encounter, because I was afraid it was going to be a TPK (and it might have been!), and trimmed it down a bit. Checking and tweaking numbers for for different opponent types took me maybe an hour or two, including reading that part of the book properly.Let's say virtually no art. There are these "monster icon" things.It's the first supplement, so it's interesting to see how it turns out. Some new classes there, including the Druid, the Monk, and the Battle Captain, which I think some people are looking forward to.I would personally be happy running the game with just the core book -- but I will probably spring for 13 True Ways, and I've already preordered the Bestiary because *that* has gorgeous art and the previews were actually fascinating. (It's on the Pelgrane site, go take a look.)There's spell memorization, but spells you memorize are at-will / per battle / or daily. Check the SRD for known spells.There are classes that are more simple and classes that are more complex. Ie. classes where you have more or less mechanical options to use during combat, etc. Some people seem to think the simple classes are dull, but others seem to like them just that way....read the SRD. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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