Average rounds per encounter?

[Stalker0]

Are you the DM? Are you using your anti-grind rules?

Also, how many PCs?

5 Pcs, 2 leaders, 1 striker, 1 controller, 1 defender.

I'm DM, and I use my rules.

Generally the fights go pretty well. 5-6 rounds for the normal ones, maybe 8 for the big ones. Haven't had too many that seemed to "drag" on into 10+ round areas.

 

[KarinsDad]

5 Pcs, 2 leaders, 1 striker, 1 controller, 1 defender.

I'm DM, and I use my rules.

Generally the fights go pretty well. 5-6 rounds for the normal ones, maybe 8 for the big ones. Haven't had too many that seemed to "drag" on into 10+ round areas.

So, do you ever use n+2 through n+4 encounters?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I had a rather long encounter tonight, considering that it was a level 6 encounter and a level 7 party. Just involved a lot of sneaking around and the first 2 rounds of combat didn't involve any actual attacks because the party was waiting to ambush the monsters at the perfect moment. 7 rounds officially, though only 5 involved any attacks and the last one was pure cleanup. Little longer than an N-1 usually goes.

 

[Stalker0]

So, do you ever use n+2 through n+4 encounters?

N+2 sure sometimes. N+4, almost never.

I use N and N+2, then use terrain/traps to bump up the difficulty.

Quick Example, I gave my party recently up against a frost titan with some of the ice archon shurkian hurlers (don't remember the name exactly). That was around an N+2 encounter.

Then I gave the frost titan three totem poles, which were his primal sprits (it was a story thing). All 3 had a fort attack, first one drop your cold resistance for the encounter, one gave you 10 vulnerability cold, the last one did 2d6+3 cold damage and ongoing 10 cold.


The ice hurlers became deadly snipers with +10 to their damage, and my party had a decently short but very exciting fight. They fought the offense of a party much higher level than them...without all the hitpoints and defenses.

 

[Smeelbo]

6 + level/2 rounds is not a "rule," it was an approximation of my observations to date. I've personally DMed 1-8th level, plus the PHB2 Game Day Paragon Adventure, and those paragon combats were over 10 rounds. There are some biases involved here: most of my games are "store games," i.e. the party composition, size, and player ability vary wildly session to session, as does the quality of the DMs (and hence encounter design). However, the correlation between level and combat length has been pretty consistant.

What I haven't experienced is a stable campaign with 5-6 reliable players and a good DM. I can see that shaving quite a few rounds off. But given the growth of monster HP and defenses, that's how it looks to me. I cannot speak usefully much beyond heroic tier.

Smeelbo

 

[ValhallaGH]

plus the PHB2 Game Day Paragon Adventure, and those paragon combats were over 10 rounds.

How odd. When I played in that, none of the combats lasted longer than 7 rounds (5, 4, 6, 7, respectively).

 

[fba827]

our combats usually last about 4-5 rounds when they are "at or near level" or around 7-8 rounds when they are a "somewhat hard" and maybe around 10-12 when they are exceptionally hard but still doable (anything not doable would have resulted in us running away before hitting that 10-12 round mark).

though, as we gain level, the real-time per round does increase due to complexity of zones and auras and last effects all interacting and remembering "hey, i granted you a +X for that other thing, did you add it in?" etc.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I don't know, growing monster hit points is reality of course, but so is growing character damage output. At 7th level a critical hit from the fighter in our group with an at-will does 27+2d8 damage. Monster hit points are growing at 8 points per level but the PCs are also using at-wills less and less and you don't even want to know what the dwarf does with a level 5 daily... Beyond doing more damage though they also seem to hit more and more often. to-hit definitely grows faster than monster defenses. Righteous Brand on the STR cleric is outright scary.

It seems like the toughest monsters do take longer to actually kill but they also spend more and more time prone, dazed, and immobilized. It seems like the tendency is the lesser monsters fall faster and the toughest ones last a bit longer but by the time you get to the end of the last monster it wraps up pretty quick or the monster runs, or someone intimidates it into surrendering, or you just call the fight.

 

[Blackbrrd]

http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-4t...average-rounds-per-encounter.html#post5050674

I could be mistaken, but I don't think so. Now that the PCs in my group are fighting Paragon foes, the encounters sure seem to take a longer time. In a low level heroic dungeon setting, we used to easily get 3 or 4 encounters in during a gaming session and now we get about 2.

The Cleric is fairly optimized with regard to healing, so she is not DPR oriented. The Swordmage has Aegis of Assault, so he is slightly DPR oriented as is the Fighter who concentrated on burst attacks and on her bonus to attack rolls, so she hits in about 80% to 90% of rounds (depending on foe level) and often multiple times per round. Our final PC is a Ranger who does focus on DPR.

You have a small party (4) with a two defenders and a leader. At higher levels the defenders get better at holding aggro etc and the leader gets better at buffing. None of which does too much good in the DPR department with only one striker.

You have 25% of your party doing high DPR and 75% of your party doing low DPR.

The DPR of a Leader can get very high, but that is dependant of enough Strikers to use the buffs a leader can give. If the leader is only going for healing he will have really low DPR anyway.

My current party has:
One leader, One defender a controller (Invoker, covenant of wrath - it's DPR) and 3 strikers. 33% of the party does low DPR. - The leader is a bard focusing on healing/moving and is not DPR. If he had been exchanged for a Warlord the party would have been down to 16% low DPR.

The combats of my party does not increase by level or not noticeably so. We usually have combats lasting roughly 5 rounds and we manage about 4 combats a session (4 hours).

My conclusion from this is that low DPR parties will have slower at slower combats the higher in level you get, while high DPR parties will have about the same combat length the whole time.

You might argue about what is low DPR and not and you are right that the Fighter has some really nice close burst powers that can hit multiple targets, but that is exactly like the defender in my current party and he does less damage than the strikers. Furthermore I have only two categories, low and high. Your cleric and the bard in my party could probably sit in their own category "extra low", but it doesn't matter that much.

The amusing part of my party is that if any one of the following characters are missing, my party start falling apart somehow: Fighter, Invoker, Ranger and Bard.

• The Fighter is vital to soak some damage away from for instance the Invoker. He also does a lot of battlefield control/AoE damage.
• The Invoker does a lot of damage early in the encounter since he targets 2+ enemies the whole time. Early encounter damage is much more worth than late encounter damage.
• The Archer Ranger finishes mobs, without him there isn't enough focus firing. A mob down early is more worth than a mob down later.
• The Bard keeps everybody alive and with his move powers it is really hard to flank this party.

The last two party members: a Barbarian and an Avenger are interchangeable with any other striker. They just do more damage.

 

[KarinsDad]

http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-4t...average-rounds-per-encounter.html#post5050674



You have a small party (4) with a two defenders and a leader. At higher levels the defenders get better at holding aggro etc and the leader gets better at buffing. None of which does too much good in the DPR department with only one striker.

You have 25% of your party doing high DPR and 75% of your party doing low DPR.

The DPR of a Leader can get very high, but that is dependant of enough Strikers to use the buffs a leader can give. If the leader is only going for healing he will have really low DPR anyway.

Are you claiming that all parties have to have a minimum of two strikers? Is that the norm?


And, 3 out of 4 of the PCs in our group can do higher DPR, at least until they run out of encounter powers.

They took on two elites and a normal at level 10 yesterday.

At one point, the Ranger did 63 points of damage on his turn, the Swordmage did 56 points of damage on his turn and the Fighter did ~36 points of damage (being only able to attack two foes at the time, she could not attack all three, she can do a lot more DPR in situations where she can get 3 or more foes around her). I remember these first two numbers because they were a bit high and the players were having a blast trying to outdo each other after the Ranger went nuts on his turn (and this was with a couple of 1s on some of the dice because the players were groaning how well they would have done without those).

And, these PCs are not overly optimized. Just players picking fairly standard powers and feats.

Granted, the Swordmage cannot do so for long. He runs out of tricks outside of Aegis of Assault fairly quick. The Fighter and Ranger, though, do quite a bit of DPR for quite a few rounds.

My current party has:
One leader, One defender a controller (Invoker, covenant of wrath - it's DPR) and 3 strikers. 33% of the party does low DPR. - The leader is a bard focusing on healing/moving and is not DPR. If he had been exchanged for a Warlord the party would have been down to 16% low DPR.

The combats of my party does not increase by level or not noticeably so. We usually have combats lasting roughly 5 rounds and we manage about 4 combats a session (4 hours).

My conclusion from this is that low DPR parties will have slower at slower combats the higher in level you get, while high DPR parties will have about the same combat length the whole time.

You might argue about what is low DPR and not and you are right that the Fighter has some really nice close burst powers that can hit multiple targets, but that is exactly like the defender in my current party and he does less damage than the strikers. Furthermore I have only two categories, low and high. Your cleric and the bard in my party could probably sit in their own category "extra low", but it doesn't matter that much.

The amusing part of my party is that if any one of the following characters are missing, my party start falling apart somehow: Fighter, Invoker, Ranger and Bard.

• The Fighter is vital to soak some damage away from for instance the Invoker. He also does a lot of battlefield control/AoE damage.
• The Invoker does a lot of damage early in the encounter since he targets 2+ enemies the whole time. Early encounter damage is much more worth than late encounter damage.
• The Archer Ranger finishes mobs, without him there isn't enough focus firing. A mob down early is more worth than a mob down later.
• The Bard keeps everybody alive and with his move powers it is really hard to flank this party.

The last two party members: a Barbarian and an Avenger are interchangeable with any other striker. They just do more damage.

If you have a super-optimized DPR party, then of course the encounters will be shorter.

I opine that you have quicker encounters than normal due to having so many high DPR PCs in your party and because you have 6 PCs instead of 5.

I do not think my group is that far outside the DPR norm. They might lean a bit low role-wise, but with the Fighter being designed to attack multiple foes per round at a high chance to hit, they are probably fairly average. If you replaced the Fighter with a Wizard, then the Wizard could get Scorching Burst in on occasion more often on 2 or more foes, but the Fighter makes up for that with opportunity attacks, her burst attacks, and her high chance to hit (they just made paragon level yesterday and she took Kensai).

Your group, on the other hand, averages 5 rounds only because the party is super-optimized for DPR. They are well outside the normal curve of parties.

My conclusion from this is that low DPR parties will have slower at slower combats the higher in level you get, while high DPR parties will have about the same combat length the whole time.

I don't see it as low DPR versus high DPR.

I see it as average DPR versus high DPR.

If your high DPR group is averaging 5 rounds, shouldn't they be averaging 3 rounds if the theory is that the game system is round balanced at higher levels?

The average DPR groups should average 5 or so rounds and the high DPR groups can easily be challenged with slightly tougher encounters to also do so.

Instead, an average DPR group takes a much longer time if the encounter is not same level. And n+2 encounter often takes 8 to 10 rounds or so.

In your 4 hours, you get 4 encounters. In our last two sessions of 5 hours, we got 3 encounters (n+2, n, n+1) two weeks ago and 2 encounters yesterday (n+3, n). Your average of encounters per hour appears to be about double ours.

And, that is to be expected for two reasons: 1) your group is higher DPR, 2) you have 6 PCs whereas we have 4 PCs. 6 PCs can gang up on a single NPC and change the action economy much faster than 4 PCs. 6 PCs where most of them have high DPR can do so even faster.