Do you like spell and effect durations?

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

In addition to my point above about the effective differences between "1 minute" and "1 encounter" durations, I'm not a fan of any rule which is, by nature, designed to be inconsistently applied (e.g., at-best-occasionally-enforced speed limits).

Durations expressed in real-life terms longer than a few rounds are almost always this kind of rule. Take a spell that lasts 20 minutes - you cast it, and then the party wanders around for a bit, pokes for a secret door, checks out a hidden chest, etc., and then a combat starts.

How many people actually have a completely accurate tally of how many rounds that spell has left *right now*?

In my experience, no one does. You were walking around for "about five minutes or so." You checked for the secret door for "a couple minutes." It took "a little bit" to elf the chest. Etc.

Therefore, you cannot have a completely accurate idea of exactly how many rounds are left on your 20-minute-duration spell. It could be 10 - it could be 50; who knows?

The only time I've ever seen such durations accurately handled is in computer games.

So, in my mind, if you're just going to handwave the actual duration, anyway, you might as well go whole-hog and just use metagame or event durations: until the next short / long rest, until sundown, etc. Then, at least, you'll be accurate.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

I track it. Just look at their movement rates. Say they walk down a hundred foot corridor, explore a room and search a chest. In AD&D, that would be 10 minute for movement, assuming the party is mapping, 10 minutes for searching the room, and another two minutes to search the chest, assuming they check for traps. The spell has expired.

 

[StAlda]

TL;DR (most of it)

I think durations could mostly be handled by triggers

until you take short rest
until you make an attack
until you take damage
until you are bloodied (assuming that mechanic carries forward)
until you take an extended rest
until a remove curse is cast on you
until Dispel Magic is cast upon you

 

[Sammael]

My current solution is this:

Spells that normally last 1 round/level: Sustain: Minor or Sustain: Simple (depending on spell) - i.e. you must spend a minor/swift or simple/move action to maintain them.

Spells that normally last 1 minute/level: Duration: Scene (default to 10 minutes for non-combat scenes).

Spells that normally last 10 minutes/level: Duration: 1 hour

Spells that normally last 1 hour/level: Duration: 12 hours

Also, if the spells seems OP, particularly in combination with other spells (e.g. invisibility/fly), its duration will almost always be Sustain: Simple or even Sustain: Standard.

 

[jeffh]

I am all for 4th-Editionizing these, and in fact mostly do so in my Pathfinder-based game. This is one thing 4E did right that is directly applicable to versions of D&D that otherwise resemble 3E or even earlier editions, and as such I hope to see it adopted wholesale for 5E.

The great majority of spells in my current Pathfinder game have, sometimes in addition to other changes, their durations errattaed, mostly to either "Encounter" or "Until the end of your next turn". (You'd be surprised how little difference the latter makes compared to, say, 1 round per level durations - most fights only last a few rounds anyway, so one complete round plus a tiny fraction of another is a BIG chunk of most fights, enough time for plenty of stuff to happen.) Some spells have concentration durations, which I've also revised to work more like 4E "Sustain" durations, especially in that the action used to maintain them isn't necessarily a standard action. It works well and no-one has complained that spells whose durations have been shortened in the process aren't powerful enough.

I've only kept one spell of 400 I've looked at so far at a duration of 1 round per level, and that was because it relied heavily on the Pathfinder mechanics for bard abilities (which I'm not crazy about either, but can live with).

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I'm OK with a variety of spell durations, but I have this to say:

While I really want to see some long-duration (i.e., more than one combat long) buffs*, I can live with buffs that last a few rounds. If, however, there are too many 1 round buffs, I'm probably not going beyond the core 3. One of the most ** annoying things about combat in 4Ed is tracking all the little +1 or so bonuses that pop up due to the use of powers and abilities.

Note: buff spells that have a duration measured in XdN*** that may occasionally result in a 1 round duration are perfectly fine with me.










* including debuffs
** supply your expletive of choice
*** where X = number of dice and dN = type of dice

 

[pemerton]

I track it. Just look at their movement rates. Say they walk down a hundred foot corridor, explore a room and search a chest. In AD&D, that would be 10 minute for movement, assuming the party is mapping, 10 minutes for searching the room, and another two minutes to search the chest, assuming they check for traps. The spell has expired.

Huh? The AD&D rules about what can be done in a minute, in a 10 minute turn, etc, are functionally no different from metagame "per scene", "per adventure" etc durations. No one actually thinks that every room takes exactly 10 minutes to search. It's a metagame-driven stipulation.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I'm OK with a variety of spell durations, but I have this to say:

While I really want to see some long-duration (i.e., more than one combat long) buffs*, I can live with buffs that last a few rounds. If, however, there are too many 1 round buffs, I'm probably not going beyond the core 3. One of the most ** annoying things about combat in 4Ed is tracking all the little +1 or so bonuses that pop up due to the use of powers and abilities.

Note: buff spells that have a duration measured in XdN*** that may occasionally result in a 1 round duration are perfectly fine with me.










* including debuffs
** supply your expletive of choice
*** where X = number of dice and dN = type of dice

I think there is at least a good chance that D&D Next will default to less "fiddly" buffs. They are aiming for combat too be much faster than in 4E, and stuff like micro-management buffs are anything but fast.

 

[billd91]

Huh? The AD&D rules about what can be done in a minute, in a 10 minute turn, etc, are functionally no different from metagame "per scene", "per adventure" etc durations. No one actually thinks that every room takes exactly 10 minutes to search. It's a metagame-driven stipulation.

You may view it as a metagame-driven stipulation, but it doesn't have to be. Suppose I've got a 10 minute buff going that improves my ability to search. In 3e, it takes a standard action to search a 5' square (that's about 6 seconds). I can search 10 of those in a minute or I could take 20 and spend 2 minutes per square and search it to the absolute best of my ability. With my 10 minute buff, I can search wide areas, probably multiple rooms and maybe even have a combat in the meantime. Or I could search 5 squares extremely well - I'd probably focus on the desk, the bed, the trunk, and maybe the areas behind the tapestries on the left.

Durations with some time are really useful for bringing out those choices. For another example - my wizard's polymorph self last for 140 minutes so he turns into a wren to sneak into the enemy king's council chambers to spy. He's now got a shade under 2 hours (assuming some transit and buffer time) to observe the king receiving reports and issuing orders. But he's seeing people all afternoon and into the evening and I've only got the spell prepped once. I have to choose when to use it and hope I've made a good choice. I may even have to avoid a couple of encounters with more aggressive other birds or a cat. I'm in that time frame in which I've more than one reasonable encounter but not all day and I have to think about time management.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

Huh? The AD&D rules about what can be done in a minute, in a 10 minute turn, etc, are functionally no different from metagame "per scene", "per adventure" etc durations. No one actually thinks that every room takes exactly 10 minutes to search. It's a metagame-driven stipulation.

Depends on the size of the room, but the default is a 20 x 20 room takes 1 turn to search. A 10x10 room should take half that, etc. It has nothing to do with a "scene" and everything to do with a believable game world.