Mark CMG
Creative Mountain Games
That's certainly notable. I'm running a 7th-level 3.5 scenario where rounds last in gametime around two minutes (tops) with five players around the table. You're saying I can reduce that to 20 seconds or less?
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D&D Combat Time - Edition comparisons
- Thread starter Mercurius
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That's certainly notable. I'm running a 7th-level 3.5 scenario where rounds last in gametime around two minutes (tops) with five players around the table. You're saying I can reduce that to 20 seconds or less?
No: you're running 3.5e at the level where it doesn't take too long. A fighter has two attacks per round, other characters are at one attack per round, and the number of dice rolled for damage is quite small.
By 13th level, you can expect the fighter to be getting 4 attacks per round (courtesy of haste), and the other PCs are getting 3 attacks per round. The number of dice rolled for damage has also significantly increased, not to mention the number of special bonuses from everywhere.
By 16th level, 3.5E slows to a crawl. 2-3 hours per combat? Sounds fairly standard.
3.5E starts out quickly, and gets slower and slower and slower.
Conversely, 4E keeps a pretty level speed throughout. It slows down at higher levels, but not to the same extent. My 5th level combats were taking in the order of 40 minutes; at 22nd level, they're taking about an hour. (Personally, I think it'd be a lot quicker if some of the players had better organised character sheets).
Cheers!
Neonchameleon
Legend
No. There's a reason E6 stops at level 6. He's saying that you're going to hit a brick wall in the next few levels.
Mark CMG
Creative Mountain Games
Not in my own experience, though I caution you to remember that this side discussion was in the context of the testing that was done regarding first level characters. My own experiences don't include many combats lasting over an hour even at high levels. I recall an 18th-level scenario with five players including one at the end where a PC turned on the rest of the party. There were six or seven encounters (depending on how you count, one combat encounter being joined into a previous one) that took a three hour session approx (3 1/2 with the pizza session that came first
). We had a range of players, mostly experienced, some that used laptops and a couple that had trouble even with books, but all focused. And that was a game with battlemat, full minis, etc. When I run 3.5 sans minis the times drop dramatically. I find that keeping players focused is more important than having them be expereinced, since anyone can help with the odd spell-look-up here and there.I think the last sentence echoes what I said above. I haven't played the really high level 4E games, and don't doubt the sincerity of your claims about them taking as long as they did, but I can tell you that my high level 3.5 games never take as long as you suggest your own 3.5 games did. Have you tried playing 4E without minis or would that not be doable? D&D, at its heart, is an RPG that should be able to be played without minis, and with a fast pace in most cases by a DM with enough experience.
No walls since 1974, IME.
(see above)Of our 7 or 8 players, we had 2/3 of them that were pretty new to D&D, so it took them longer to pick out which of their dozens of spells to cast that round or which magic item to invoke, as well as which buffs they still had in effect and how that affected their character... heck, if the party had time to prepare, it would take them a while to decide which buffing spells to cast between the cleric, sorcerer and psion, (as well as potions/scrolls) and what types of bonuses each buff did and if they stacked with other bonuses or not. Between potions, scrolls, spells and powers, each PC and bad guy having 6 or 7 "buffs" on them was not unusual. (I think there are 9 or 10 different categories of buffs: dodge, luck, divine, enchancement, armor, shield, deflection, and a few others that I'm forgetting)
Then, at higher levels, spellcasters often spent a good portion of combat casting dispel magics to try & debuff the bad guys, while the bad guys were casting the same to debuff the PCs. And, with each dispel magic, it necessitated a recalculation of the plusses/minuses to each affected PC or bad guy. Not to mention that some buffs/debuffs would not affect Touch AC, while others did.
And then - how much recalcing would be needed if you were wthin an Anti-Magic Shell or hit with a beholder's anti-magic ray...and then, next round, you roll out of the anti-magic zone and have to redo your stats again. Not only do you lose the plusses of the buffing spells, but all your weapons/armor/rings/amulets/boots/etc are now merely masterwork instead of +2/+3/+4. Is the PC who just lost the power of their belt of giant strength now heavily encumbered? Not to mention, his boots of striding & springing are just regular boots now. (And, then you gain them back again when you leave the anti-magic zone and have to redo some of the calculations)
Also, at higher levels, every spell and every attack is a potential game changer, so you can't really prepare an action too far ahead of time: if the party cleric is going to cast Firestorm, but right before her turn, a PC is dropped by a crit from one of the bad guys... does she continue her casting, or does she move to help the fallen PC? Or, does she cast something else entirely? Or, maybe she has something quickened prepared and does that as a quick action, and then proceeds to help the fallen PC. Or, maybe she can use the Quickened spell to help the fallen PC and then cast something else. Or, if the PCs are grouped just right, a Mass Heal can really help out a lot of people, including the fallen PC. Or, maybe she can still cast her spell and rely on somebody else with a potion or power to help out her fallen comrade. Quick, look at the positions of the minis on the battlemat & see who is close enough...
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Mark CMG
Creative Mountain Games
What you describe are certainly the procedures and rules of the situations but I would keep track of buffs (and losses of buffs and suppressions of magic item effects) on the edge of the battlemat or on the whiteboard (I love those) and it only took moments for each calculation, IME. Even at higher levels I've never experienced the same sort of time consumption that some others tend to see.
I don't give the players unlimited time to make a decision, and generally (except in the case of newer players which doesn't apply to high level games) I give them ten or so seconds to declare their action(s). They have plenty of time between their own rounds to narrow things down and the time of their round to decide which is best based on the most recent developments. So, too, I do not take extra time as a DM for the actions of their opponents.
Do all of the players use the same character sheet? And does the GM (you in some cases) always have that information at hand, too?
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Why do so many people have such a hang-up with time? In essence, its all about player and DM preparedness.
I think you could have your game streamlined down to thee perfect timing but you'd still have players deciding what they want to do or BS-ing with other players.
Its just players being social.
I think you could have your game streamlined down to thee perfect timing but you'd still have players deciding what they want to do or BS-ing with other players.
Its just players being social.
I had the buffs on a spreadsheet when I could. It was not always practical at the table, though.
But, given the random nature of dispel magic, it is not the actual math that was a problem. If somebody had 8 "buff" spells on them, you would have to roll 8 times and compare the Dispel Magic roll vs the caster's DC 8 separate times. And, then you'd have to remember that if the buffing spell that gives a +4 deflection bonus to AC is now dispelled, the PC's armor class does not drop by 4 in all cases - the +3 ring of protection that was superceded by the +4 spell is now in effect, so the net was only a drop in the AC by one. Or, maybe the PC does not have a +3 ring, but the spell that gave a +2 bonus to AC (along with another effect) is now the primary Deflection bonus, so the net AC drop is only 2 instead of 4.
Another reason why rounds took so long was because of the size of my group - with three casters (cleric, sorcerer & psion) two or three tanks (dwarf fighter & goliath barbarian, and human fighter) and two "speed" PCs (rogue-spellthief & paladin of freedom), it was almost impossible for me to throw a SOLO monster type at them. (when they were level 13 or so, they annihilated a CR:18 blue dragon, nearly taking him down in one round - last time a ran a SOLO that campaign) I would need to have several major bad guys and bunch of supporting types on the table in order to make it a challenging combat.
Example - for the climactic combat of the campaign when the party was level 18, the bad guys were:
level 20 evil high cleric;
level 16 evil cleric;
a level 16 wizard;
three level 11 or 12 clerics;
a dozen royal bodyguards for the evil high cleric, all level 12 fighters;
Another 40 or so low level warriors (they were assaulting the temple of the evil high cleric after all);
a powerful evil anti-paladin, mounted on a super-nightmare (cauchmar?)
Oh, and a pit fiend.
The evil high cleric's first action was to gate in a fiendish advanced beholder, who then proceeded to catch several party members in its anti-magic eye ray. The pit fiend summoned an ice devil.
So, the bad guys had nearly 100 attacks per round (though, the sorcerer and cleric made quick work of all but one of the 40 low level warriors). The PCs also had the aid of an NPC fighter who was mounted on a medium sized good dragon. A few other NPCs came to aid the players as well.
Mark CMG
Creative Mountain Games
Eight rolls (I use four d20s, so two rolls
) and jot the lost/suppressed boni on down, ticking off the rounds each time it passes the caster's turn for the suppressed boni. It does add a bit of time.That's a huge caster battle (though really could better be described as a bunch of combined btb battles). Did you work out typical attack strategies in advance for any of them? Do you use the same sheet layout for all of them? I can see how this would take up more time than the usual battle with four PCs (you have twice that w/ the NPC, I suppose). Now that you've elaborated on the details more fully, I'm not sure I would stack this up as a typical 18th-level combat. How long did this take to run in total?
For the final combat, I recruited a friend of one of my players to help me run the bad guys, so that helped to save a ton of time and made me less of a bottleneck. The main bad guys usually had to be evil clerics, as the entire campaign was centered around the players thwarting the evil high priest of slavery & tyranny.
However, the last combat still ended up taking two entire overtime sessions - probably 11+ hours in total. We normally gamed for about 4 hours, but ended up going 5 1/2 to 6 hours for the finale.
I would work out strategies for the bad guys ahead of time, but the players in my group were often pretty creative, so most strategies got thrown out the window after the first round. I'd have to react to the changed situation on the ground.
It was also very common for a player or major bad guy to die in combat, get revivified and then healed and rejoin the combat. In the last combat, the dwarf fighter got hit with Implosion and surprisingly failed his Fortitude save. The PC cleric, on her turn, then invoked a 5,000 XP Miracle to instantly resurrect the dwarf (normal casting time was 10 minutes.)
Two combats before that, the players had a showdown with a large group of drow, including one nemesis who had survived three previous combats with the party, the first when they were level 4. During the combat, both sides were pretty battered and down low in hit points. However, the same cleric that did the Miracle was able to cast Mass Heal and restore 160 or 170 hit points apiece to almost the whole party. Other than being down several spells/power points, the party was basically whole. A few turns later that round, the drow priestess was going to do the same thing for her side (what I had decided as the DM) - however, one of the PCs managed to cut her down before she could cast, saving us from basically being almost back to square one in that combat. (I had visions of everybody saying, "We've gamed for 5 hours and everybody is at full hit points? WTF?")
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