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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 6132641" data-attributes="member: 1465">I haven't playtested since the Xmas packet, so my experience tells me that 5e encounters were too quick, and when I say quick I mean most encounters ended at the first or second round! And I had 3 PCs only, smart people for players but two of them had never actually even played D&D before...IMO that needed to be fixed somehow... maybe now they overcompensated, and the game tends to suffer from the opposite problem. Maybe it's just the XP budget numbers that have become wrong.I still think that the surprise rules make the surprise round too valuable. In our case, it made a huge difference, because one full extra round when combat lasts 1-2 rounds is indeed HUGE. I preferred the first rules where being surprised made you lose "half" a round i.e. you went last because of -20 on Init. It's slightly more complex than just losing a round but the effect was more balanced (but I'm coming from running 3e for years with the rule that surprise round only granted a partial action).15 monsters clearly is going to be too much with the current rules however I remember they announced rules for handling large groups of creatures differently, presumably running them in subgroups of 3-5 treating each as a single creature.I definitely don't want combats to regularly be less than 3 rounds, but neither I want them to be always more than 6. I think 3-6 rounds is a good length for 90% of encounters. Make sure you write your findings in your playtest feedback!</blockquote>

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