D&D 5E CRs and what is going on?

[FormerlyHemlock]

Combat routinely ran to 5-6 rounds, and sometimes ran into the 15 round range, in Cyclopedia when using the encounter balance guidelines in Cyclopedia.
Many of my AD&D 2E combats ran 10 rounds... because of constrained spaces and/or hard-to-hit monsters.
3e, tended to, for me, run 5-10 rounds.
I can't speak to 4E - didn't play enough to judge.

I've had 5E encounters that lasted 1 round (bunch of crits vs an easy encounter) to 15 rounds (Beholder versus party of 6, levels F5, D5, Ro5, Wa5, Mo5, Ro4, constrained space. Not even to deadly level. CR 13 = 10,000 XP, with DXP being halved for Solo vs large party, vs a deadly threshold of 6000 Difficulty XP - and I killed the fighter with a luck roll. Death ray.).

I've had 5E encounters that lasted for hours. Not hours of continuous combat of course but there were two Enkidu allosaur cavalrymen which shadowed a necromancer PCs and his skeletons for several hours as he approached the city, which scared him off into the woods. Eventually he decided on a flank attack up the mountain to avoid them, but in any case he was at least notionally engaged with those cavalrymen for hours.

IMO there's nothing more fun than occasionally using light screening forces to threaten the PCs' ability to operate freely. Two hobgoblins on horses may not be a existential threat to an 8th level paladin operating solo, but they can definitely threaten his mission. Even a "defeated" enemy can turn into this kind of threat--if players kill six out of a dozen goblins and the other six goblins scatter, and the players only manage to hunt down three of them, those other three goblins remain a force in being which they have to worry about running for reinforcements, or jumping the PCs while they're engaged with another enemy, or cutting PC throats in their sleep.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

I misremembered. Engagement range in Afghanistan averages 300m, not 1 km. Ehrhart recommends changes to weaponry to bring effective range for infantry up to 500m, which he wouldn't do unless there were a good chance of spotting enemies at 500m.

Paper: http://www.dtic.mil/get-tr-doc/pdf?AD=ADA512331



The point I have argued and will continue to advocate is that a 600' range on a longbow really isn't that far, compared to visual range, and that a monster with no capability to engage at long range is critically hampered unless it has stealth or mobility to compensate. E.g. a bulette or purple worm can close to melee range even in open terrain--but a Balor as written cannot, and therefore is restricted w/rt under what conditions it can operate against the PCs. It has to fight defensively, which isn't really how I want Balors to be.

Edit: hmmm, come to think of it, one way to deal with this would be realistic or semi-realistic rules for how elevation affects weapon range. E.g. if each foot of elevation change cost 2 feet of weapon range, then a longbow could only shoot a maximum of 200 feet straight up, which seems reasonable. Then Balors could simply dive-bomb you out of the sky, taking only one round of fire in the process. However, it's not clear whether or that same range limit should apply to spells like Eldritch Spear. The idea needs more work.

There isn't much realism in the D&D combat rules so why get so hung up on range?

 

[aramis erak]

I misremembered. Engagement range in Afghanistan averages 300m, not 1 km. Ehrhart recommends changes to weaponry to bring effective range for infantry up to 500m, which he wouldn't do unless there were a good chance of spotting enemies at 500m.

Paper: http://www.dtic.mil/get-tr-doc/pdf?AD=ADA512331



The point I have argued and will continue to advocate is that a 600' range on a longbow really isn't that far, compared to visual range, and that a monster with no capability to engage at long range is critically hampered unless it has stealth or mobility to compensate. E.g. a bulette or purple worm can close to melee range even in open terrain--but a Balor as written cannot, and therefore is restricted w/rt under what conditions it can operate against the PCs. It has to fight defensively, which isn't really how I want Balors to be.

Edit: hmmm, come to think of it, one way to deal with this would be realistic or semi-realistic rules for how elevation affects weapon range. E.g. if each foot of elevation change cost 2 feet of weapon range, then a longbow could only shoot a maximum of 200 feet straight up, which seems reasonable. Then Balors could simply dive-bomb you out of the sky, taking only one round of fire in the process. However, it's not clear whether or that same range limit should apply to spells like Eldritch Spear. The idea needs more work.

A 600' range on a longbow isn't even realistically long for a longbow. English longbow exceeded 1000yd in enfilade fire. 600 yd was mentioned as the limit of longbow direct fire. (I wish I knew where my copy of Keegan's The Face of Battle is... his pre-1850 coverage is excellent. His post-US CW is... ivory tower excrement of bovine... to paraphrase a couple infantry colonels I've talked to.)

Enfilade, in bowmanship, means "Arrows as artillery" - the arrows are coming in from above. It's not very accurate, and is used mostly against massed formations.

600' could be explained away as limit of range in a dungeon, but then it's way too long. ≤shrug≥

 

[The Crimson Binome]

3E combats against substantial foes or powerful enemy groups lasted a lot longer than 3 rounds.

In my experience, coming out of a lengthy Pathfinder campaign, three or four rounds is about average for a huge boss fight. It just takes 30 minutes to an hour to resolve each round. The last encounter of the entire campaign, with a level 20 spellcaster and three demodands and four elder elementals, was still finished in four rounds.

We had exactly one fight during the entire campaign which took longer than ten rounds, and it was a dragon spellcaster with Mirror Image and Displacement, given that we were a melee-heavy party and it had Flyby Attack that meant we never got a full-attack action. Our sorcerer failed to overcome Spell Resistance to Dispel, so we had to wait out the Displacement before we could hit.

 

[ExploderWizard]

A 600' range on a longbow isn't even realistically long for a longbow. English longbow exceeded 1000yd in enfilade fire. 600 yd was mentioned as the limit of longbow direct fire. (I wish I knew where my copy of Keegan's The Face of Battle is... his pre-1850 coverage is excellent. His post-US CW is... ivory tower excrement of bovine... to paraphrase a couple infantry colonels I've talked to.)

Enfilade, in bowmanship, means "Arrows as artillery" - the arrows are coming in from above. It's not very accurate, and is used mostly against massed formations.

600' could be explained away as limit of range in a dungeon, but then it's way too long. ≤shrug≥

In early editions ranges were expressed in feet for indoor use but outdoors they were expresses as yards. Areas of effect remained the same, but range tripled outdoors. I always thought that was a great way to handle it.

 

[Celtavian]

In my experience, coming out of a lengthy Pathfinder campaign, three or four rounds is about average for a huge boss fight. It just takes 30 minutes to an hour to resolve each round. The last encounter of the entire campaign, with a level 20 spellcaster and three demodands and four elder elementals, was still finished in four rounds.

We had exactly one fight during the entire campaign which took longer than ten rounds, and it was a dragon spellcaster with Mirror Image and Displacement, given that we were a melee-heavy party and it had Flyby Attack that meant we never got a full-attack action. Our sorcerer failed to overcome Spell Resistance to Dispel, so we had to wait out the Displacement before we could hit.

Against major bosses fights were between 8 and 12 rounds for our groups. That is probably because I built everything custom to ensure it was a challenge for the group and would not die to a few crits or a missed save.

 

[Celtavian]

There isn't much realism in the D&D combat rules so why get so hung up on range?

When someone is using artillery rules as an example for small unit combat, the realism problem is assuming that a small group can use enfilading fire. Small units can effectively take cover and spread enough to avoid such tactics. In small unit warfare that type of fighting is a waste of resources. D&D is definitely small unit warfare for the majority of groups. Using examples of engagement in Afghanistan at 300 meters when they are using advanced optics and vehicle scouting is pretty ridiculous.

A better example would be small groups of Medieval unit fighting. Of which there are few examples. Using large scale military examples as your basis for small unit combat creates a very false image of how that would go.

Then again in 3E ranges were much longer for a lot of things. 5E is one of the shortest range versions of the game and not very simulationist. Makes things faster. Using realism in 5E is pretty much a waste of time.

Talking to soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq, very few were ground soldiers. The military in both incursions were highly mobile deploying from vehicles in wide open areas. Very little marching. So any papers listing engagement range was likely occurring durin overland travel with vehicles including strong scouting support using advanced optics, something D&D characters do not have access to.

 

[Hussar]

Combat routinely ran to 5-6 rounds, and sometimes ran into the 15 round range, in Cyclopedia when using the encounter balance guidelines in Cyclopedia.
Many of my AD&D 2E combats ran 10 rounds... because of constrained spaces and/or hard-to-hit monsters.
3e, tended to, for me, run 5-10 rounds.
I can't speak to 4E - didn't play enough to judge.

I've had 5E encounters that lasted 1 round (bunch of crits vs an easy encounter) to 15 rounds (Beholder versus party of 6, levels F5, D5, Ro5, Wa5, Mo5, Ro4, constrained space. Not even to deadly level. CR 13 = 10,000 XP, with DXP being halved for Solo vs large party, vs a deadly threshold of 6000 Difficulty XP - and I killed the fighter with a luck roll. Death ray.).

Again, how? How do you have a 3e fight that lasts for 5-10 rounds? In 5-10 rounds, if the fight lasts that long, the baddies should be killing multiple PC's. And how are your groups doing so little damage per round?

Look, a given encounter in 3e is generally speaking, about 15 HP/EL. That's a rule of thumb, but, it's fairly close. An EL 10 encounter will have about 150 HP, give or take. Whether that's a single CR 10 critter or 2 CR 8's, or whatever. It's fairly close. For a fight to last 10 rounds means your party would have to only do 15 points of damage per round. How can you do so little damage.

OTOH, an encounter's max damage is about 10 points/EL/round. Now, that is max damage, fair enough. But, even if we say the baddies are only doing 25% of max, for an EL 10 encounter, that's still 25 points of damage/round, or 250 points of damage total. That's enough damage to kill about 3 10th level 3e PC's. More than enough to kill one.

So, how do your fights last so long?

 

[Flamestrike]

Forgive my skepticism, but my understanding from reading Army papers on engagement ranges in Afghanistan is that the typical firefight in Afghanistan occurs at ranges of about a kilometer (due to range limitations on weaponry).

Yeah. Thats what I said. I the open and mountainous areas you get an engagement range of around 800m (just short of a kilometer). A 5.56mm rifle has an effective range of around 300m (with most rifle ranges having firing mounds at the 100, 200 and 300m marks) and a maximum effective of 600m (with the right optics, a lot of skill and a ton of luck).

Urban fights in Iraq were much closer, on the order of 100m, but if you're claiming that Afghanistan fights average 30m then I just don't believe you know better than the Army does. Sorry if I'm misunderstanding your claim.

I specifically called out engagements in Afghanistan as being at ranges longer than the norm. When patrolling on the open fields or in the mountains (which is much of the country) long range (800 odd meters) engagements were quite common. It was either that, or urban contacts where the ranges were much shorter (from 30m to CQB range).

Here in Washington it's hilly enough that I often can only see half a mile. Sometimes I can see a mile or more, along roads, when it's either flat or elevated terrain. And that's without even deliberately trying to gain elevation, like I would if I were, say, a PC who is actively expecting life-and-death struggles and has a vested interest in knowing who or what is around to kill him. There's a reason the DMG gives standard visibility range as 1-2 miles.

Here in Perth Australia, as soon as you go out into the bush, its scrub all around. All exersizes I do here (and elsewhere in Australia) the majority of engagements begin well within 100m. Out in the desert, you can spot dust trails from vehicles from a few kilometers away, but as soon as there are trees and bushes around you in even low density, (and dead ground) your visual range drops.

I don't know about you, but I scan at least 500' ahead of me even when I'm just casually driving, not even fighting for my life.

Yeah, the limit of our scanning range is about 100m ahead. That's the outer range of where we scan, as I said earlier. We focus (in detail) on things within about 25m of us.

I'm not saying that people cant look beyond a few hundred meters or so,; its just that people are accustomed to scanning well within that range (even soldiers, seeing as that is where the majority of the things that can kill you are).

Seriously. Go out in your local woods and see how often you find yourself scanning stuff a mile (1.6kms) or more away. Maybe at a lookout point or something.

I assure you you'll spend 95 percent of your time casually scanning out to around 100m or maximum visual range (whichever is shorter), and examining things in detail within about 25m or so.

You keep talking as if PCs spend all their time in thickets and undergrowth; I'll agree that 1 mile is not a realistic encounter distance for forested terrain, but when I said that I start many or most encounters at distances of 1 mile (absent Stealth) you can then infer that my campaign doesn't happen in a thick forest. Furthermore, when PCs are travelling, they generally travel through open terrain instead of through thick forest because it is faster. The same factors that lead to faster travel also support higher visibility.

Even on a laser straight freeway, a car a mile away is tiny.

I'm telling you from personal experience mate, beginning engagements at a mile (1600m) is very unlikely to happen.

And I just flat out don't share your apparent belief that an SF scout or veteran PC won't generally notice a large body of non-stealthy enemy troops until they get within 100' of him. That is shorter than my driveway!

All troops are 'stealthy' when patrolling. That's what the camouflage, face paint, hand signals etc is for you know!

I'm more referring to a small patrol or small fire team of insurgents, both sides patrolling through standard scrub/ bush/ woods. Standard engagement and contact distances are well within 100m, with around 30m being the norm.

I've heard the distribution is long tailed - a majority could still be under 30, but the occasional long range (km or so) drags the average up. I've seen the average urban fight stated as under 30m.

Yeah this. 7 engagements at CQB (0-5m) range plus three engagements at 1000m gives an average of around 300m (which is not accurate).

You're either capping a bloke across the other side of the street, or in a compound, or behind a clump of bushes between 0-30m from a creekline, or you're arcing MG fire from a Mag 58 at an enemy position 800 or so metres away.

The majority happen at one or the other extreme (point blank or a klick away) , and Afghanistan was unusual in the respect that longer distance engagements were more common than in most other theaters (due to a combination of the terrain, and the nature of the insurgency).

 

[Flamestrike]

I misremembered. Engagement range in Afghanistan averages 300m, not 1 km. Ehrhart recommends changes to weaponry to bring effective range for infantry up to 500m, which he wouldn't do unless there were a good chance of spotting enemies at 500m.

Paper: http://www.dtic.mil/get-tr-doc/pdf?AD=ADA512331

I think you're reading that document wrong.

Saying '50 percent of engagements happened at ranges over 300m' is not the same as saying 'the average range of engagements was 300m'

I can assure you from experience that isn't the case.

Its usually either in your face (0-30m), or you're shooting at people you cant see (800m-1km).

For an example of an engagement (and a great shot) with a 7.62mm MG at 800m:

[video=youtube;D2vsmdtPonc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2vsmdtPonc[/video]

Note that that human sized target (that you cant see) is 800m away. At a mile we're talking 1600m away (double that distance).