D&D 4E [4E Encounters] Real Time?

[Shimrath]

I have seen many descriptions from playtest reports as to the makeup of encounters (number and types of characters/enemies), but have any of these reports given any indication of how much real time the encounters required to resolve?

 

[inkmonkeys]

I'm planning to put up some notes on my aggressive playtesting soon, which will include a mention of real length. Since there's no reason to keep you in suspense, these playtest encounters seem to be taking from 45 minutes to an hour. This length appears to be unrelated to the encounter's level, though data is inconclusive.

 

[Xethreau]

45 min... I am not going to extrapolate wildly like some people would at this, but I am surprised at the length of the the encounter. Of course, if its still only that long at high levels, that might not be so bad!

 

[Shimrath]

45-60 minutes per encounter, in my experience, is an improvement.

Before i posted the original question, i searched a bit for a similar topic, and did find one regarding how long the average encounter in 3E should last (rounds & real time). Several posters mentioned that thier encounters tended to take 30 minutes to resolve, and i found myself thinking "I wish". In my experience, which is almost always 5+ players and 50% online via Fantasy Grounds 2, a complicated encounter with lots of combatants can easily take 2+ hours to resolve.

I would be grateful to see a few examples of encounters detailed and accompanied by how long they took to resolve. Thanks in advance inkmonkeys.

 

[inkmonkeys]

45-60 is an improvement in my experience. Note also that we're working with a system we're constantly critiquing and trying to impove. My players, for example, are taking notes on their choices of actions, damage inflicted, and damage taken. Without such slowdowns and after a month or two becoming expert in a static system that satisfies us, I beleive it would move more quickly.

 

[Hussar]

60 minutes with what essentially count as newbies is pretty fast IME. That's not bad at all.

Count me in for wanting to see a stopwatch account of a combat, including reasons for slowdowns.

 

[jasonbostwick]

Under 60 minutes isn't too bad, given the inexperience with the ruleset.

Also, it seems individual encounters are a bit more important in 4e, so this seems more like it would mean an hour long "boss fight" rather than spending an hour to dispatch a few throw-away humanoids.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I can tell you that on average encounters seem to take about 1 hour in 3.5. Whenever we write adventures for Living Greyhawk we tend to use 3 encounters as a baseline for how much combat to have during an adventure mostly due to time reasons.

They are scheduled for 4 hour time slots and 3 encounters tends to take around 2.5-3 of those 4 hours.

So it doesn't seem like a huge change in the time to finish an encounter.

 

[vagabundo]

My experience:

Avg enounter takes 1.5~2 hours, pretty much the majority of the session, nowadays.

Obviously this scales with level, number of opponents, number of magic users in the party, number of magic users in the enemies.

So at 1st my encounters have taken from around 30~45mins. At their current level, 12/13, my lads take 1.5 hours to finish, it is scaling up from there.

Ive had to implement a few procedural rules to speed things up and crack down on the OT conversations. I give them an OT break every 30-45 mins now.

Sometimes it is tough being a DM.

 

[Jack99]

I can tell you that on average encounters seem to take about 1 hour in 3.5. Whenever we write adventures for Living Greyhawk we tend to use 3 encounters as a baseline for how much combat to have during an adventure mostly due to time reasons.

They are scheduled for 4 hour time slots and 3 encounters tends to take around 2.5-3 of those 4 hours.

So it doesn't seem like a huge change in the time to finish an encounter.

1 hour for an encounter? Let me guess, if you are writing for LG, it's an encounter that is equal to party level, representing 25% of a day's workload? (meaning a CR 5 encounter for a lvl 5 party).

If so, no wonder you can do it in an hour. However, it seems like a good deal of DM's like to challenge their players more than such encounters, and therefore throw up to level +4 (even more for some) encounters at them regularly. Those encounters (in my experience) rarely take less than 90-120 minutes, sometimes more.

If 4e is clocked at 45-60 min, no matter the level and no matter the type of encounter, I will definitely start to drool very soon.