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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Keldryn" data-source="post: 3848399" data-attributes="member: 11999">I usually just apply a bit of common sense and say that any combat encounter takes at least five minutes of in-game time (unless for some reason tracking time down to the second is important).  The actual combat rounds played out may only account for 30 seconds of elapsed in-game time, but there's a number of assumed activities that will occur after the combat that will take some time -- binding wounds, cleaning the blood off your weapons, adjusting any armor that has come loose or unfastened, gathering up backpacks or any equipment dropped during or before the fight, retrieving any usable arrows, checking your weapons for any damage they may have sustained, taking a moment to check and see if the noise attracted anyone/anything, just pausing to catch their breath, etc.  Unless the characters are in pursuit or being pursued, they are likely to be doing most of or all of these things after a battle, and nobody is interested in having players state that they are doing this stuff.I think that I actually preferred the longer combat rounds of previous editions; it didn't really change how combats work mechanically, but it felt less precise to say that combat rounds were 1 minute (or even the 10-second ones of B/X D&D) than 6 seconds.The RAW don't describe it this way, but I view the 6-second combat rounds a bit more abstractly.  A 6-second round dictates how many actions a character can take in that amout of time, and a 5 rounds of combat will describe 30 seconds of action, but not necessarily 30 consecutive seconds; that amount of time can't really account for any lulls in the battle or opponents circling each other, waiting for an opening.  I think this is one reason why a 5-round encounter that takes 40 minutes of real time feels so short when you realize that it only took 30 seconds of game time; the rules essentially account for every second of a battle, but nobody who plays the game describes their actions at this level of detail.As for the whole thing about the RAW allowing players to stay awake searching a dungeon for 36 hours straight with no ill effects... that's simply a matter of common sense.  You don't need explicit rules for that.</blockquote>

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