Combat length and Adventure pacing

[thecasualoblivion]

I've seen this, and I'm not sure how big of a problem it is, or what can be done about it.

Running 4E for close to two years, combat can take an hour. Most of the time, it takes less. I'd say my combats average about 35-45 minutes, still a considerable amount of time. Hour long(or longer) combats are uncommon(about once a night) but not rare. What doesn't seem to happen in 4E are short combats. With the rules as written, there doesn't seem to be a way to reliably create 20 minute fights. You could use weaker monsters, but then the fight would be so trivial that it wouldn't threaten survival or resources, and wouldn't be any fun at all. I don't really see any solution within the rules themselves.

On whether its a problem, its a hard call. I much prefer the pace of AD&D, with 20-30 minute fights being the norm. Its better for adventure design and keeping your head in the game. That being said, combat is so engaging in 4E that earlier editions have effectively been ruined for me. I'd like things to run faster, but I'm not willing to go back to 2E.

 

[Ariosto]

Pacing in Bigger Chunks

Here's a curious thing I've seen: People who get bored with "too long" combats (or stretches of non-combat activity) can sometimes perk up when the pendulum swings right over the top.

Back when I played Champions, some groups basically divided time into "combat" and "non-combat" sessions. The other kind of activity might pop up, but very clearly as a secondary concern.

Another approach was to have players waiting for their turns in a fight conduct (usually by exchanging notebooks) free-style role-playing among other of their characters.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Merric:

You've pegged it.

I've been having these very problems.

The last one has been a more onerous problem for me.

I am busy. I only get a few hours in a week to play. I do not want combat to eat up 50-75% of the play time. I like combat. I want there to be plenty of combat. I do not want there to be mostly only combat.

 

[Rechan]

Here's something I found that can really impact combat length:

The map is too freaking big!

I have a DM who will regularly put maps so large that it takes about 1-2 rounds just to reach the enemies. And in some cases the enemies are so spread out that the only one who can reach them within the same round is the barbarian (who can pump his speed up significantly).

I've been in an encounter under a different DM where several rounds encompassed pure movement alone, because the place was so dang big. And no one wants to RUN because that causes Combat Advantage. So at least you're double moving.

 

[Nightson]

I don't find rounds spent moving to increase combat time because generally it's a clear decision. You double move, end your turn, things go quickly.

 

[S'mon]

Lower level Heroic tier isn't too bad with 7 players because their options are limited. Once we got to 6th or 7th levels, the grind started to noticeably impact our encounters. As players get more and more powers, the grind gets worse.

I don't think increasing PC powers will be much of a problem for me; I expect the players to know what they're doing before their turn, or they delay until they've worked it out. I'm more concerned about monster defense outstripping offense, and too many status conditions.

 

[S'mon]

I don't find rounds spent moving to increase combat time because generally it's a clear decision. You double move, end your turn, things go quickly.

I haven't seen movement causing increased encounter time causing grind.

What I have seen is players unwilling to 'waste' a round on movement/positining, so they charge right in to the enemy and things go badly. This is particularly an issue with Defenders. The solution for them is probably to combine movement with more Readied actions.

 

[Prism]

What I have seen is players unwilling to 'waste' a round on movement/positining, so they charge right in to the enemy and things go badly.

When playing I feel this is a significant change from other games. In 4e I feel I need to use my round to make an attack. If I second wind or double move it feels like a waste. I'm not totally sure why this is - it wasn't like this in earlier editions or other games. We used to 'waste' actions all the time getting equipment out, healing allies, stowing and drawing weapons. In 4e we sometimes sit looking for something to do with even our minor actions, trying to claw out an extra bit of efficiency. This slows things down

One thing I have noticed. In earlier editions we rarely won or lost a fight with hit point damage. There was nearly always a charm spell, sleep, posion that speeded up or finished the fight. In 4e every time you don't do some damage in your round you have contributed less to the fight. In earlier editions the spell caster could do nothing productive for several rounds and then finish the combat in 1 round. The melee types could miss plenty and then wipe out their opponent with one crit. I'm not saying that was better - just felt different. We sometimes finished hard fights in 2 rounds. Sometimes easy fights took ages. It was far less predictable - I sorta miss that

 

[crash_beedo]

I've been running a weekly 4E game since the beginning, but only have a limited time slot (9pm to midnight on Saturdays, after everyone's kids are asleep). I would also say my group of 40-year olds agonizes over every move, of every round. (Except the optimized artful dodger drow rogue, who just kills things).

I was finding it was typical we'd clear 1 fight per night, sometimes two per night if there was minimal roleplaying or exploration. Our session time wasn't going to increase, so about 2 months ago I went with the houserule...

Half hit points for monsters in a non-boss fight, monsters get a damage boost equal to their level.

It's taken fights down from 1 - 1.5 hours to about 45 minutes (4-5 rounds or so), keeps a high threat level for the players, and gives us extra time for more exploration, roleplaying. Obviously something this drastic has side effects (most monsters die in 3 hits, so they may not get a chance to do all their cool stuff) and the PC's usually end the fight with encounters/dailies intact - rarely/never hit the at-will grind space.

Unfortunately, the primary campaign is still going through the WOTC modules (P2 currently) and they are long combat-fests.

For the next campaign, I'll definitely make heavy use of delves and smaller 3-encounter adventures that support better pacing and resolution within our typical session length.

 

[Festivus]

Indeed, that's one of my points, which leads off the second section of the post. 1 hour for a combat may be too long (and that's based on how many rounds it takes to defeat the monsters).

I mean: one hour combats, if the combats are fun, are fine if you want combat to be the dominant feature of your game. However, what do they interfere with?

Cheers!

At the conclusion of our Age of Worms campaign, I had players with character sheets 6-8 pages long and rolling 20-25 dice at a time. More time was spend figuing out what to do next and adding up dice per turn, but combats might only last 3-4 rounds. Still... it took an hour per combat.

Personally, I don't feel 1 hour is too long for a combat encounter. I expect that number. However, as a DM if it's certain that the players are going to win an encounter, I will either slay the solo early (assuming I have used all his tricks) or have him get away. But while the combat is going on, people are having fun. Once I feel that drag I end the combat one way or another.

The point of combat (at least to me) isn't to see if the characters can kick a bunch of monsters butts, it's to see if they can kick some monsters butts in a way that makes sense for the story... or to find out they are up against something far more powerful than they anticipated. As soon as that point has been made... move on.