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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Beginning of the End" data-source="post: 5481245" data-attributes="member: 55271">I would venture that:(1) Members of the group(2) Familiarity with the rulesAre two of the largest factors in how long combat takes to resolve.Beyond that, I haven't done any kind of systematic study, but based on recent play experiences using a similar or identical group of players and with some independent verification in the form of audio recordings, here are my observations:(1) OD&D and 3rd Edition have comparable combat lengths when <a href="http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/2050/roleplaying-games/revisiting-encounter-design" target="_blank">comparable encounter design</a> is used.(2) D&D4 combat was 1.5x to 3x as long, but a comparison of comparable encounters was difficult to gauge because the rules are so radically different that "comparable" is not easy to judge.Gauging from my experience, D&D4 combat is longer because of (a) the padded sumo wrestler thing (non-minions have a lot of hit points), (b) the game is designed specifically to accommodate and encourage the types of encounters that also take longer in classic D&D, (c) the "all classes are based around the same mechanics" things means that all players are susceptible to analysis paralysis; and (d) the number of modifiers (particularly situational modifiers) that need to be tracked has drastically increased.Some of these factors can be seen in certain scenarios in previous editions: For example, if you got an analysis paralysis player trying their hand at a classic D&D wizard they could waste a ton of time dithering over spells. And there are several monsters or effects that create complex mechanical scenarios that would slow down combat in a fashion similar to D&D4's "cloud o' modifiers".</blockquote>

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