D&D 5E DNDNext Commentary on Arstechnica

[Brax]

It's just it's quite hard for me to understand how an 8 minute combat turn works. I introduced people to the system a few days ago... [snip] If we can do 9 rounds of combat with a party that's almost brand new to the system in a little over 2 hours, using pregenerated level 3 characters, I don't see how it takes 4 hours to run a simple combat with people who have been playing for years.

The problem I've seen, is that as my group has gained more experience with the system, there are more and more options to consider. This consideration and debate at the table takes up more time. When all you know about are two options, an at will attack or an encounter ability, things go faster than when you consider more possibilities. Things like bull rushing, talking tactics, etc. take time.

 

[GreyICE]

The problem I've seen, is that as my group has gained more experience with the system, there are more and more options to consider. This consideration and debate at the table takes up more time. When all you know about are two options, an at will attack or an encounter ability, things go faster than when you consider more possibilities. Things like bull rushing, talking tactics, etc. take time.

Maybe it's time for the DM to step in then. I'll let people discuss tactics at the start of an encounter, and I'll usually let people stop at one point to discuss tactics in the middle, but generally I try and keep things moving.

And again, it still beggers belief that all of that reaches an 8 minute turn. If he said "every combat takes an hour," okay, that's not super-fast or something, but it's very believable. If he said an hour and a half or two hours, okay, they're mighty slow. Four hours?

What do you do with the time, read and debate the rules compendium every session? The only system I saw that got that bad had calculations for bullet drop that included coriolis forces.

 

[Mattachine]

In my 4e games, character turns take 2-4 min per person once they are level 6 or so. I also need about 5 min to run my monsters and NPCs (more for setpiece fights). With four players and me, that means about 17 min per round. Most combats at heroic tier would last my group 4-5 rounds. On average, that makes 75 min per combat. A big setpiece combat would grow to 90 min, or even 2 hours.

I love 4e, but the combats can really drag.

I made some house rules to speed things up. I cut monster hp in half, but raised their damage by +4, +10, or +20 (by tier) per attack. This made fights tough and short (30-45 min). Still, an individual PC typically only acted twice per fight.


When I ran AD&D, most fights would last 25-45 minutes, with an hour or more for major setpiece battles. Most players only needed a minute or less for their turn, except casters (especially wizards). Monsters usually had only one simple attack to make. PCs typically got to act more times in a fight, but options in a fight were usually limited or nonexistant for non-casters.

 

[slobo777]

In my 4e games, character turns take 2-4 min per person once they are level 6 or so. I also need about 5 min to run my monsters and NPCs (more for setpiece fights). With four players and me, that means about 17 min per round. Most combats at heroic tier would last my group 4-5 rounds. On average, that makes 75 min per combat. A big setpiece combat would grow to 90 min, or even 2 hours.

I love 4e, but the combats can really drag.

I made some house rules to speed things up. I cut monster hp in half, but raised their damage by +4, +10, or +20 (by tier) per attack. This made fights tough and short (30-45 min). Still, an individual PC typically only acted twice per fight.


When I ran AD&D, most fights would last 25-45 minutes, with an hour or more for major setpiece battles. Most players only needed a minute or less for their turn, except casters (especially wizards). Monsters usually had only one simple attack to make. PCs typically got to act more times in a fight, but options in a fight were usually limited or nonexistant for non-casters.

I run 4E, and the group as a whole are fans of the game.

For us, with 8th level PCs, an at-level encounter takes ~2 hours, and a bigger L+2 or L+3 can take 3-4 hours.

We play evening sessions, and typically get one battle done in a session. If it's a big one, then that's the focus of the entire session, and quite often I am hand-waving wrap up of an adventure as we tiredly pack away our things!

We tried to speed things up, and decided could probably run the thing at twice this speed, by cutting down on distractions, tactics talk, getting organised around a more formal play style etc.

But we play to relax, not to cajole each other into taking game turns faster. So we accept the slow play as part of the game.

I think 4E has a "natural" pace for players like us that matches the blog.

However, unlike the blogger, we're still big fans of the game and enjoying it.

It would be nice to have more incidental and faster (yet still meaningful in game resources) combats, saving the epic battles for once every now and then. I'm still waiting to see D&D Next's tactical module, because if that makes it possible we'll move. But maybe not at the expense of e.g. class/class balance or other things I've grown to love about 4E.

 

[adamc]

While I think that 4e fights can take too long (probably my biggest gripe with 4e), I don't think we've ever had a battle take longer than 2 hours. 75 minutes is more like it (if we really slog the whole thing out).

There are lots of suggestions out there for making fights go faster, but the gist is: have victory conditions. Minimize the number of fights where you have to grind every opponent into dust, because it's... boring. (If you group doesn't find it boring, then there's no problem... grind away.)

 

[Hussar]

It is somewhat amusing to see those who were formally up in arms over the 4e comments about 3e, now turning around and defending EXACTLY THE SAME COMMENTS when they are made about 4e. Would be nice to see a slight reduction in hypocrisy. Aw well, such is life.

 

[slobo777]

It is somewhat amusing to see those who were formally up in arms over the 4e comments about 3e, now turning around and defending EXACTLY THE SAME COMMENTS when they are made about 4e. Would be nice to see a slight reduction in hypocrisy. Aw well, such is life.

"EXACTLY THE SAME COMMENTS" - do you have a couple of links for comparison?

I think 4E's and 3E's strengths and flaws are quite different. And this is one of the reasons why the arguments go around in circles without end.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I mean 4 hour combats? Regularly? At the heroic tier? WHAT IS HE DOING? Combat takes 3-5 rounds at that tier. That means, with a 5 man party, you have a total of 15-25 turns, plus the DM. For that to take 4 hours, you'd have to be averaging around 6-8 minutes PER TURN. SIX TO EIGHT MINUTES PER TURN

Just had a fight last night take nearly 3 hours. Heroic tier. We had only two monsters.

What did it in this instance was a monster who turned invisible and a party with exactly 1 source of attacks that don't take a -5 penalty to hit. Said monster was probably also at least an Elite, so it had a decent pool of hp. We also had a pretty big party going into it.

I bet certain encounters with solo soldiers or creatures who can weaken or insubstantial monsters would all become similarly tedious.

Just because you didn't experience a thing, doesn't mean the thing doesn't exist. I've never seen a platypus, but they probably exist. I've never seen scry-buff-teleport, but I'm pretty sure it's happened. You haven't had much of a problem with grind, perhaps, but that doesn't mean that problem doesn't exist.

 

[Obryn]

Just because you didn't experience a thing, doesn't mean the thing doesn't exist.

In fairness, he said "regularly."

It should also say, "...unless your DM throws an utter trainwreck of an encounter at the party which is guaranteed to turn into a grindfest," which your example illustrates. In 3.x terms, that encounter is the lich casting Disjunction after your party spends an hour and a half casting their buff spells.

-O

 

[I'm A Banana]

In fairness, he said "regularly."

Man, if it happens once or twice or three times, that's too much for me. Considering that I am a growd-up with stuff to do, adding numbers until I can move on with the plot ain't my idea of fun. I'll complain about a bad movie I've seen and that's just two hours of my life I'll never get back!

It should also say, "...unless your DM throws an utter trainwreck of an encounter at the party which is guaranteed to turn into a grindfest," which your example illustrates.

Right, the "Mythical Good DM" solves all problems with a wave of their magic hand, healing all your games' ills in hindsight on message boards all across the internet.

Dude, my DM last night was no slackjawed doofus, nor does it take a bad DM to get a grindy 4e game.

In 3.x terms, that encounter is the lich casting Disjunction after your party spends an hour and a half casting their buff spells.

Except in 1e-3e, the Lich then goes on to murder your party, thus ending the encounter before you've wasted the night spinning your wheels and getting nowhere.

In 4e, you're probably gonna win...eventually...sooner or later....just....any minute now....oh, guess the session's over, we'll pick up next week!

This isn't an all-the-time problem for every group, but neither was scry-buff-teleport or killer dungeon adventures. It's out there. It happens. It's not a statistical outlier. One of 5e's best selling points for me so far has been a dedicated effort to obliterating that, and it's clearly something this writer noticed as well. That doesn't make him a hater, it just makes him observant of his own tables.

And probably not a Mythical Good DM. But then I'm not sure anyone ever really is that, though so many people talk as if it's The Solution To Your Problems (regardless of edition -- I'd bet even Gygax has his share of this solution. I'm positive I do, too.).