D&D 4E How long are your 4e combats taking, real time?
evilbob
Explorer
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Plane Sailing
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I've been running a game once a fortnight for about 6 months. Half the party have just reached 7th level, the other half will after their first encounter this coming Sunday.
The last adventure we played was 6 hours, in which time two encounters were completed - one lasted 12 rounds and one lasted 15 rounds. Average time for each combat was about 2.5 hours.
The adventure before that we did 2 small and one big encounter and a skill challenge in 6 hours, The encounters were 8 rounds, 17 rounds and 9 rounds.
This is about half as many combats/encounters as we would have had in 3e.
Cheers
The last adventure we played was 6 hours, in which time two encounters were completed - one lasted 12 rounds and one lasted 15 rounds. Average time for each combat was about 2.5 hours.
The adventure before that we did 2 small and one big encounter and a skill challenge in 6 hours, The encounters were 8 rounds, 17 rounds and 9 rounds.
This is about half as many combats/encounters as we would have had in 3e.
Cheers
In my experience it depends a great deal on party makeup. In home games, you tend to have more characters that are not combat optimized, but are more versatile and have better roleplaying hooks.
In LFR games you know that you are usually going to have 3 combats and 1 skill challenge (most common format by far), and free access to all current magic items, feats, powers, and races from dragon magazine and other WOTC products. Characters tend to be more combat optimized, and tend to have more options to optimize themselves with.
In a group where 4 or more of the characters are combat optimized (rogues, tempest fighters, battle cleric, taclord, bravura warlord, barbarian, etc.) fights tend to go very fast, as in 45 minutes to an hour.
Just last night, I was playing a LFR group consisting of two tactical warlords - (one of which was an eladrin with a 20 str and a greatspear), my minotaur Bravura warlord, a wizard with a 27 standing AC, and gnome healing cleric. All characters were lvl 5 or 6. Generally, we have 80 to 100 points of damage being dealt per round. In one case, my Bravura warlord charged a 4-armed skeleton brute with 110 hit points, did 18 damage and knocked it prone, then the tempest fighter walked up to it and did Rain of Blows, dealing 65 points of damage, the used an Action Point and hit with Dual Strike and an extra attack from the Bravura presence. It died before it had a chance to act. The rest of the bad guys (a skull lord, 2 blazing skeletons, and 4 decrepit skeletons) died about 2 rounds later (with one of those rounds being the non-ranged guys running up some stairs to get to them). The gnome cleric never got to the fight.
I've played that same module with a different group of players and characters, and taking that same creature out took about 3 rounds of attacks from most of the party. With that group the fight took much longer.
In LFR games you know that you are usually going to have 3 combats and 1 skill challenge (most common format by far), and free access to all current magic items, feats, powers, and races from dragon magazine and other WOTC products. Characters tend to be more combat optimized, and tend to have more options to optimize themselves with.
In a group where 4 or more of the characters are combat optimized (rogues, tempest fighters, battle cleric, taclord, bravura warlord, barbarian, etc.) fights tend to go very fast, as in 45 minutes to an hour.
Just last night, I was playing a LFR group consisting of two tactical warlords - (one of which was an eladrin with a 20 str and a greatspear), my minotaur Bravura warlord, a wizard with a 27 standing AC, and gnome healing cleric. All characters were lvl 5 or 6. Generally, we have 80 to 100 points of damage being dealt per round. In one case, my Bravura warlord charged a 4-armed skeleton brute with 110 hit points, did 18 damage and knocked it prone, then the tempest fighter walked up to it and did Rain of Blows, dealing 65 points of damage, the used an Action Point and hit with Dual Strike and an extra attack from the Bravura presence. It died before it had a chance to act. The rest of the bad guys (a skull lord, 2 blazing skeletons, and 4 decrepit skeletons) died about 2 rounds later (with one of those rounds being the non-ranged guys running up some stairs to get to them). The gnome cleric never got to the fight.
I've played that same module with a different group of players and characters, and taking that same creature out took about 3 rounds of attacks from most of the party. With that group the fight took much longer.
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Vayden
First Post
Usually around 1-2 hours in my groups. A lot depends on the players - one or two players who take a while to choose which power they're using and don't have their attack and damage for each power written down can really slow the group up. I very rarely use throw-away encounters either - if my players are fighting something, they've learned to expect that they're risking their lives.
gtoasnt3
First Post
We are getting good at combat and have been playing since this version came out last year. 30 minutes would be a good average for most level-equal combats, up to an hour for duals with the mid level bosses or boss themselves.
Why are we faster now compared to earlier?
1. The rules are very clear now and simple to implement.
2. Our PC's use all of the powercards printed on one or two sheets with all the bonuses and damage pre-filled out (thanks to the great Excel sheets created by members here and now the WOTC Character generator). The use of 3.5 cards was a mess. They were all over the table, people needed to shuffle through them and find the right power during their initiative turn, etc.
3. I'll stop the fight once it appears that all the monsters are going to be defeated. For instance, 4 hobgoblin grunts and two soldiers are in a fight with the PC's. The grunts are minions and get taken out in the first two rounds. None of the PC's have been threatened by the hobgoblins, and so I'd probably have them flee once they are both bloodied or they could surrender. If they "fight to the death", I'll still have the hobgoblins go down with one more hit.
This is a game, and the plan for us is to have fun. When there's just a monster or two left, and they just don't have much to threaten the PC's with any longer in the fight, it's time to end it NOW!! LOL
Why are we faster now compared to earlier?
1. The rules are very clear now and simple to implement.
2. Our PC's use all of the powercards printed on one or two sheets with all the bonuses and damage pre-filled out (thanks to the great Excel sheets created by members here and now the WOTC Character generator). The use of 3.5 cards was a mess. They were all over the table, people needed to shuffle through them and find the right power during their initiative turn, etc.
3. I'll stop the fight once it appears that all the monsters are going to be defeated. For instance, 4 hobgoblin grunts and two soldiers are in a fight with the PC's. The grunts are minions and get taken out in the first two rounds. None of the PC's have been threatened by the hobgoblins, and so I'd probably have them flee once they are both bloodied or they could surrender. If they "fight to the death", I'll still have the hobgoblins go down with one more hit.
This is a game, and the plan for us is to have fun. When there's just a monster or two left, and they just don't have much to threaten the PC's with any longer in the fight, it's time to end it NOW!! LOL
DrSpunj
Explorer
Most in my group I wouldn't consider optimized either, and Lady Luck has certainly blessed me (as the DM) on occasion and/or crapped on various players at times. All of those could certainly be lengthening our typical combat, though again, in the middle of combat no one is complaining of things moving too slowly or that they're not having fun, we just get done with it and are shocked that half our 4 hr play session is gone (and we only meet every other Wednesday, at best!).
This comment leads me to this follow-up question:
Since my group of 7 PCs just literally hit 3rd level at the end of our last session (as in, we haven't tried any 3rd level powers yet!), could part of our long combats just be that the PCs don't have that many encounter & daily powers to use (assuming at least some of them hit, and statistically some of them should
)?I guess I just always assumed when people were describing low level games that the slowness came from "learning the game". While we have 1 new player to D&D, the rest are veterans to at least 3e if not earlier editions of the game, so I don't think that's been slowing us down too much beyond the first handful of combats.
Now I'm wondering if things will just naturally speed up noticeably with another Encounter power at 3rd level for all the PCs to throw around, and maybe again at 5th level with their next Daily (if I remembered that correctly)?
Thanks to all for sharing their experiences, very interesting! And so far makes me feel quite a bit better about how we're doing things.
We're using the magnetic combat pad (which Nail uses to track Initiative so I can focus on other DM things) & most of us are rolling one or more d20s for attacks along with the damage dice (and some are doing it just ahead of their turn to speed things up a bit more). My combat maps are typically Dungeon Tiles or Skeleton Key Games printed tiles so I lay them out and explain any pertinent features which never seems to take all that much time.
We're also using the Alea Tools markers though a couple sessions ago we felt we spent way too much time adding & removing various markers, mostly on the PC minis related to ongoing damage, bloodied, conditions, etc. so we tried something different the last session which really worked well.
Each PC gets one designated color (it's the same from session to session, like Dark Green for the Elven Ranger) set of four 1" & two 2" markers. Each player puts one of the 1" markers under their mini, sets one of the 2" markers in front of their stuff at the table where everyone can see it, then puts the remaining markers off to the side. Any time a PC was bloodied or affected with some condition by a monster I'd throw them a marker that they'd place on the 2" base in front of them. Same thing if they were given a bonus to attack or damage or some other effect by a fellow player, the player would just toss one of their markers onto that player's base. When the effect was saved or the duration ended they'd just slip the marker off and send it back.
This way there was never any fumbling with the PC's minis directly and everyone could just glance around the table to see which PCs were bloodied, poisoned, weakened, etc. There were still markers going on & off the enemies but that's generally a lot more limited: Hunter's Quarry usually stays put until the enemy dies, Warlock's Curse lasts the whole combat (and with a Rod of Corruption pretty quickly it became easier to keep track of who wasn't cursed), bloodied mobs generally don't last that long with focused fire, etc. The Defenders still had to move their Mark around but I don't think there's much room for improvement playing with minis.
Hehe, uh, sorry to derail my own thread but hopefully someone else will find this helpful!
Pbartender
First Post
We play weekly and our session usually run about 4 hours.
We typically average 2-3 combat encounters per night with exploration and roleplay and goofing off in between. A typical combat runs about 30 minutes for us. I can't be certain of the number of rounds, but a half dozen rounds would be a good guess for a typical enounter.
There have some very easy encounters that have gone as little as 10 or 15 minutes, and some epic and complex battles that have taken hours (one memorable one lasted practically the entire night). But those are exceptions.
I like to have combats that are filled out with minions. Also, unless the enemy is particularly mindless or fanatical, I like to have the opponents begin to withdraw and retreat when the non-minions start becoming bloodied.
We typically average 2-3 combat encounters per night with exploration and roleplay and goofing off in between. A typical combat runs about 30 minutes for us. I can't be certain of the number of rounds, but a half dozen rounds would be a good guess for a typical enounter.
There have some very easy encounters that have gone as little as 10 or 15 minutes, and some epic and complex battles that have taken hours (one memorable one lasted practically the entire night). But those are exceptions.
I like to have combats that are filled out with minions. Also, unless the enemy is particularly mindless or fanatical, I like to have the opponents begin to withdraw and retreat when the non-minions start becoming bloodied.
Intrope
First Post
Our third session (3 veteran D&Ders, level 2) had about 7 hours of play (there was a couple of hours of re-reading character sheets, getting food, etc. This was after a 4 month hiatus).
We fought 6 battles, negotiated out of another, and had 2 essentially trivial encounters (in both cases, the only real challenge was to dispatch some minions before they could raise the alarm). That's in addition to some role playing and inter-party chat. (Also, it include healing my sick dragonborn fighter). IIRC, we got about 1000xp each for the evening, so we were averaging 500/battle--fairly challenging (the target value is 375)
We've since gained two new players, so it's slowed down a bit. Hopefully, that'll pick back up as we all get more used to it (and use the character builder!)
We fought 6 battles, negotiated out of another, and had 2 essentially trivial encounters (in both cases, the only real challenge was to dispatch some minions before they could raise the alarm). That's in addition to some role playing and inter-party chat. (Also, it include healing my sick dragonborn fighter). IIRC, we got about 1000xp each for the evening, so we were averaging 500/battle--fairly challenging (the target value is 375)
We've since gained two new players, so it's slowed down a bit. Hopefully, that'll pick back up as we all get more used to it (and use the character builder!)
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