D&D 5E Do you time your players in combat?

[robus]

He has only used this a couple of times that I can recall and neither were for an actual combat. Once was for escaping a rapidly approaching lava flow after a combat and the other I recall was to escape a chamber rapidly filling with sand.

Yes, I have seen all 95 episodes that have aired, in their entirety, by the time of this post.

If anything I think Mercer lets the combat drag. It's really my least favorite part of the show because they drag on so (well that and when Liam wants to go off stealthing by himself and everyone else has to twiddle their thumbs )

 

[Glomb175]

Huh - I've not seen that, is that a newish addition? (I'm way behind schedule).

But it does seem that what actually happened is the group burned out after 3 hours and were wanting to do something else. If they actually were wanting a marathon session then a 20 minute break or something might be all that's needed to let them refresh and get stuck back in.

But it's probably the actual limit of their attention. So aim to end your sessions around the 3 hour mark. If the players know that you'll keep to a reasonable end point then they'll be able to retain their focus (hopefully); when people thing the session is going to be endless, well, then they get antsy.

We did have a half hour break after 3 hours, it was an hour or two after the break they started losing interest. But you're right, they definitely have a limit, and now I know what it is.

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[Glomb175]

He has only used this a couple of times that I can recall and neither were for an actual combat. Once was for escaping a rapidly approaching lava flow after a combat and the other I recall was to escape a chamber rapidly filling with sand.

Yes, I have seen all 95 episodes that have aired, in their entirety, by the time of this post.

My bad, I just watched the dm tips videos by mercer and he mentioned in that that he likes using an hourglass to promote urgency, clearly I misinterpreted that. I'm only on e15 so I assumed he used it in the future. My apologies.

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[Glomb175]

I agree, I prefer the actual role playing, apart from Tiberius, he's a twat, so I'm glad he left. I'm not a fan of Vax either, and I have a Vax in my group, the overpowered elven rogue who wants to stealth everywhere and has ridiculous modifiers completely overshadowing all other players. He's been known to kill all the enemies before people even get a turn.