Combat Speed Comparison

[CleverNickName]

I'm the guy who voted slower because I decided not to compare it to 4E/3.x but to Basic D&D, which I am currently playing.

Of course it's faster than 4E (anything is) and around as fast as 3.x without too many options. Play full 3.x/PF with everything in terms of rules and 5E is faster.

Yeah, I thought about rewording the poll to include every edition of the game, but it was just too convoluted to be useful. Faster than 4E/Slower than 4E/About the same as 4E/Faster than 3.x/Slower than 3.x/About the same as 3.X/Faster than 2E/Slower than 2E/About the same as 2E/etc., etc. Blah.

Thanks for clarifying. And I agree; combat under D&D Next was still slower than it was under the Moldvay Basic Rules. But even so, I think it is a dramatic improvement over the past 12 years.

 

[bbjore]

More than anything, I hope the game designers resist the temptation to add a bunch of "tricks" to the game (whether they are called class features, special attacks, combat tactics, or so forth). Tricks are great, and I like having a few of them...but too often, they just bog the game down.

I agree, I love 4E, but I think it went too far in the trick department. I think the game is much better served with the semi rules light approach they started with, and then adding a small set of really cool tricks each PC can do. Three or four choices are easy to deal with, and if you make each one useful and cool, instead of a simple plus 1 to damage or whatever, you can end up with a tactically complex game, especially when you add the improvise/RP elements when they come up in play.

Look at chess, it's an incredibly complex game, but the rules are pretty simple. It's complexity grows from a set of tactically interesting choices based on movement & position. D&D could do the same thing, each player could have simple choices on their turn, but you could get a pretty complex fight if each PC has four or five really cool things they can do that can change the way the fight is operating.

 

[mach1.9pants]

I have just run a quick combat with my kids (6 & 8). Their experience is a dozen games of the 4E board games and one go at the adventure from the PF BeginnerBox. The combat was a bit quicker and easier than the BB, and my 6 yr old was so much happier with his wizard options than BB lt crossbow wizard!
However compared to combats with my previous group (2 adults) in 4E the combat is much much quicker. We dropped 4E because of the combat grind and went to Dragon Age, which has a very similar speed to 5E. No more 45 minute combats, yay!

 

[Invisible Stalker]

Much quicker than 3e/4e, I'll wait and see where it falls on the fun combat/ minutes spent on combat ratio.

 

[MichaelSomething]

I much prefer the D&DNext concept of "describe what you want to do, and let the DM figure out the math." It takes very little time, it has infinite variety, and it doesn't chain the players or DM to a static list of options.

Of course, there are people who won't do well with that type of game. What about people who get shut down every time they try to stunt because the DM says, "that will be a DC 50 to do!" Or what about the people who always played and hated the earlier editions because it was always "roll to attack, roll for damage, end turn." All those combat tricks didn't pop out of no where; there were people out there who wanted that type of play style.

If D&D next really does go that way, it'll need to spend a good deal describing and explaining how to play in that style. While you may get it, there are many people who won't; just like you won't get how they play...

 

[GX.Sigma]

i've only played two full encounters so far, both were about 40-60 minutes long and only involved 6-8 combatants.

You mean in the D&D Next playtest? You mean "encounter" in the sense of a single fight? If so, which cave did your party enter, and was it the one full of 8000 HP owlbears with no legs?

On topic: I have never played BD&D or AD&D, and I don't have much experience running 4e (I ran the playtest game), but holy crap it's the fastest game I've ever played. We had a 4 hour gaming session, and we got through: an hour of waiting for people to show up, choosing who's playing which character, several paragraphs of read-aloud text (thanks, Gary!), plenty of dicking around at the Keep, and a nice hacky-slashy dungeon crawl in which the party cleared out the entire Kobold cave.