D&D Combat Time - Edition comparisons

[NewJeffCT]

You keep missing most of my questions (which would help me understand why some of these things take so much time, I think) but "11+ hours in total" really has me reeling. I could see maybe 2-3 hours for a combined combat (twice the PCs, three times the usual opponents, approx) but that is truly outrageous. I suppose there is the notion that with extra healers those "resets" essentially negate earlier rounds. Did everyone on both sides come into this huge combat completely fresh? A typical combat in 3.5 is meant to garner about 20% of a party's resources, so it's also tough to not look at an all or nothing, do or die, 100% on the line combat as a bit more, too. All in all it is not in any way (number of opponents, number of PCs, expectation of "win or lose all" situation, etc.) a typical 18th-level combat, from what I am seeing, so it is tough for me to use it in direct comparison to other combats of similar levels in other editions. Still, 2 1/2 times the typical combatants times five for the do or die rather than twenty percent typical resource encounter would probably take me a great deal more than usual, too. Did you at least get a couple of Attaboys for running it?

yes, both sides were completely full in terms of hit points, power points and spells (and whatever else). It was the final battle of a 2 1/2 year long campaign, so I wanted all the PCs to be able to be able to pull out all the stops for this showdown. I didn't want them to say, "Damn, if only I hadn't used Time Stop (or Wish or Weird or whatever) in that last encounter..."

Also, because my group met every other week and was very large, almost all of the combats were big climactic events with both sides at full. Almost every combat was designed to stretch the players to their limits for that one combat encounter. After all, it was an epic, save the world from the Ultimate Evil campaign.

It was too much work to give the party a 4 encounter day that used up 25% of their resources each time out and wouldn't really have worked in the context of the campaign.

 

[NewJeffCT]

MerricB, that takes like a minute or two. I really think the primary examples of time consumption fall under the headings of "rules searching" (particularly spells and effects), "recalculating buffs/effects" and "too many choices" (again, often pointing heavily toward spell choices, or psionic power choices). I suppose if you have a player who repeatdly blows on the dice, shakes them until the pips fall off, and then rolls off of the table as often as not it might add up to some serious time.

It's not just that, though. If the fighter is surrounded by several foes, he takes his first swing and does his damage, then the DM has to subtract the hit points for the first person attacked. If that first person is dropped, the fighter then has to decide which person or monster he attacks next.

And, sometimes it takes a person a while to add up 10d6 + whatever bonuses they currently have. I don't know how many times over my 2 1/2 year campaign I heard something like:
PC A: "32 points of damage"
PC B: "Don't forget the +1 for XYZ buffing spell"
PC A: "oh yeah, 33 points."

 

[Defender_X]

I have noticed that combat in 4E takes few rounds than other editions. What eats up time is players reviewing options and bickering over tactics. The DM has been encouraging us to speed up decisions and tactics, though. I have one player in the group that rants and raves about 2E. Me, don't ever intend to step back and play that edition. I'd jump back to BECMI before that.

 

[Hussar]

And, let's not forget when talking about people's turns, if players started getting a fair bit of use out of things like pets and summoning, a character's turn could easily start taking a really long time as the player had half a dozen different actions to take into account. Summon baddies+pet+buff=lots and lots of time. Particularly if pets/summons started doing things like grappling.

Watch what happens when the druid drops and animal summoning+Enlarge Animal spell. Gack.

 

[Obryn]

IME...

Fights in 1e took my group anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour or so. (This was about 2-3 years ago, mind you, so I apologize if I'm not precise.) There were actually quite a few rounds, because the whiff rate at low levels in 1e is pretty darn high.

Fights in my mid-level (14th or so) 3.5 game could be expected to take anywhere from 45 minutes to many hours. We played 6-hour sessions, and it wasn't unheard of to spend 3 of it on a single fight. This was Expedition to the Demonweb Pits, and some of my players had pretty complex stuff going on - for example, the necromancer.

In 4e, heroic-tier fights are pretty quick, but generally I expect a decent combat to take between 45 and 75 minutes. I sometimes have longer ones, on purpose - I just finished running a 3-hour gladiatorial match with 6 different factions, alliances, betrayals, attacks from the stands, rules about playing to the crowd, moving terrain, etc... There was a ton of roleplay mixed in with the rest, so that extended it a bit.

My high-paragon group took over an hour per fight, but I think part of the blame for this was on the poor design of high-level monsters, and the necessity of using L+3 encounters to even approach a challenge. I'd like to run it with better-designed monsters, now; I expect it will help speed it up. Part of the time extension is because players get a good deal more out-of-turn actions at higher levels.

Anyway, my longest fights in the past 5 years were in mid-high 3.5, followed by upper-paragon 4e, followed by heroic tier 4e, followed by low-level 3.5, followed by 1e.

-O

 

[NewJeffCT]

And, let's not forget when talking about people's turns, if players started getting a fair bit of use out of things like pets and summoning, a character's turn could easily start taking a really long time as the player had half a dozen different actions to take into account. Summon baddies+pet+buff=lots and lots of time. Particularly if pets/summons started doing things like grappling.

Watch what happens when the druid drops and animal summoning+Enlarge Animal spell. Gack.

Good point - summoning/gating in a powerful monster was a common tactic for some of my high level bad guys in my 3.5E campaign.

The lich-archmage gated in a balor to soften the party up for her first (she/it had advance notice of the PCs arrival...)

The evil priestess that was #2 in the evil religion the PCs were fighting summoned a pyroclastic dragon in the campaign's penultimate encounter.

And, the evil high priest gated in a fiendish greater beholder for the final encounter, and already had a special long-term planar ally in a Pit Fiend.

Those summonings, and the PCs' counter-summonings, really added to the complexity and length of the combat. A lot of math involved in calculating and recalcing AC and to hits when you're in the beholder's anti-magic ray, then roll out the next round, and then get stuck in it again later that round on the beholder's turn.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

Good point - summoning/gating in a powerful monster was a common tactic for some of my high level bad guys in my 3.5E campaign.

The lich-archmage gated in a balor to soften the party up for her first (she/it had advance notice of the PCs arrival...)

The evil priestess that was #2 in the evil religion the PCs were fighting summoned a pyroclastic dragon in the campaign's penultimate encounter.

And, the evil high priest gated in a fiendish greater beholder for the final encounter, and already had a special long-term planar ally in a Pit Fiend.

Those summonings, and the PCs' counter-summonings, really added to the complexity and length of the combat. A lot of math involved in calculating and recalcing AC and to hits when you're in the beholder's anti-magic ray, then roll out the next round, and then get stuck in it again later that round on the beholder's turn.

Don't forget how those monsters fight additionally add to increased complexity, since they're rarely if ever just smash-and-bash monsters. The Balor, for example, can then summon more minions on its own, then proceed to constantly teleport out of range and throw out various save-or-HAHA! abilities.

 

[triqui]

The most dreaded thing any 3e spellcaster can say: "I cast Dispel Magic."

Second place is "I'm summoning some monsters"

No, the worst thing is when the spellcaster says "I'm summoning some monsters that can cast dispel magic"

 

[triqui]

MerricB, that takes like a minute or two. I really think the primary examples of time consumption fall under the headings of "rules searching" (particularly spells and effects), "recalculating buffs/effects" and "too many choices" (again, often pointing heavily toward spell choices, or psionic power choices). I suppose if you have a player who repeatdly blows on the dice, shakes them until the pips fall off, and then rolls off of the table as often as not it might add up to some serious time.

At low to mid-levels, yes the fighter turn is fast as hell ("i power attack -roll -damage). At higher levels, no, it doesnt. Becouse that same fighter would be flying, hasted, using blink and self "casting" buffs through items, potions and the like. He was very much "needed" to, or would be otherwise unable to touch enemy casters that fly, are ethereal, or use force-cage/mirror/reverse gravity/whatever other no-save-AND-suck spell on them. Not to mention the horror stories about Paladins with Dispel-at-will Holy Swords....

One of the reasons 4e fights last long, too, it's becouse everybody is in the fight until end of combat. In 3e, frecuently one or two of the players did not play for the entire combat ("ok, bad guy wins initiative. Cast hold person on Bob. Please bob, go and buy a few pizzas for us, could you? We'll finish in half an hour or so"). That, however, is a questionable way of speeding things up. At the very least, for Bob...

 

[NewJeffCT]

No, the worst thing is when the spellcaster says "I'm summoning some monsters that can cast dispel magic"

True - that can cause havoc. For that final encounter I mentioned earlier in this thread, I upped the HD of the pit fiend, which consequently upped its effective caster level. So, it was able to use a Quickened dispel magic a few times in that combat instead of what it normally has.

And, having the evil high priest gate in a fiendish beholder, who then proceeded to use its anti-magic ray just made me (as DM) a glutton for punishment who has a math fetish.