D&D 4E How long are your 4e combats taking, real time?

[chronicali]

Speeding up Combat

I found that what I like to call a "bloodright" works wonders so far in our campaign. I have the players add an additional amount for spells when they "cut" themselves to add to the spell. they take 1d4 points of damage each time they do this. I also saw on another thread of the possibility of pre rolling your dice so I made a handy sheet in excel that I have attached for others in another post that you just mark off what number you "rolled" as you use them. Last week when I tried both of these systems together, our group ended up going on 4 encounters before we had to get to sleep. That was within 2 hours. The link to the excel sheet is below.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/251551-dming-skill-not-art-3.html#post4690965

 

[evilbob]

Your pre-rolls are for the monsters, right?

As for myself, given that each roll requires different math anyway and there are plenty of existing "dice bag" javascript applications out there that let you roll as fast as you can click a mouse, I haven't found pre-rolls useful.

 

[Goumindong]

Using Maptools and provided that i don't have to cross check much stuff it goes from 20 minutes to an hour or two depending on the combat.

Most of the time is eaten up by the problems of the personal attention rather than doing stuff. If everyone is present and paying attention i would be surprised if anything other than a massive encounter would take more than 30 minutes. Exceptions for when the RNG decides to hate the players (two encounters ago, the rogue had enough stacked bonuses to hit on a 3 and still missed 4 attacks in a row)

I pay for it in prep work though.

 

[evilbob]

That's interesting: I've tried playing on a laptop with a shared map that way and I have to say, it's been really hit or miss for me. Yes, if you spend the prep time (which I think is much higher unless you have a ton of pre-gen maps) then the actual battle goes faster, since you don't have to draw out the map or take breaks to put down effects or anything, and no one is actually rolling dice and adding things up. On the other hand, the software tends to be so flaky that about 1 in 3 sessions sees a delay of 30 mins to over an hour trying to get the blasted thing to work for everyone - thus nullifying all gains. Everyone's millage will vary, of course.

 

[cbbakke]

How do you handle things like delaying and readying actions that way? These game actions change the initiative order while then encounter is busy so as soon as someone delays you can't keep the order of initiative constant. Also does your system mean that all monsters always go together (when it is the DM's turn)?

Greetings,

On the delaying it depends. If their delay is only for other players and not monsters, then they generally go back to their orginally slot. If it is more then that it kind of depends on where they are on the circle. Our group doesnt do a ton of delaying "generally one spot so the player next ot them can go" and they just flop back the next turn "that other player delays nexst turns so they go back tot heir spot".

As far as monsters. It depends on the encoutner. Soemtimes I have the monsters in 2 or 3 different groups. Sometimes all at once. Generally I split them into 2 groups.

 

[Jack99]

During our last 5-hour session, combat was over very quickly. Because we didn't have any at all! Just 5 hours of investigation and role-playing, with the odd skill check thrown in!

It's been a while, but it's fun. Anyway, at 13th level, combats last around 40m-1h20 on average for us, with a few stretching towards the 2 hour mark and a few being over very quickly (20 min). The ones taking long are (almost) always the BBEG-encounter, when people run out of everything, including surges. Last fight, the cleric ended the fight with 1 hp, 0 surges, only at wills and two failed death saves. Being down to only at-wills did certainly not make the combat boring

However, in all fairness, I have been testing a few things for a couple of sessions, namely monsters having -25% hit points, while dealing damage equal to the DMG guidelines, instead of the standard (low) damage from the MM. So far, I like what I see.

 

[Hejdun]

Using Maptools, with 3 players running 4 characters, combats easily average less than an hour. I'd hazard a guess that the average is between 30-45 minutes.

 

[DrSpunj]

However, in all fairness, I have been testing a few things for a couple of sessions, namely monsters having -25% hit points, while dealing damage equal to the DMG guidelines, instead of the standard (low) damage from the MM. So far, I like what I see.

Hmmm, I don't get a chance to read most of what's here in the rules forum, so I may have missed any analysis of this point. I certainly haven't done any of my own though I do reference that part of the DMG when I'm stealing powers from other mobs and/or essentially creating a creature from scratch.

That said, are most all of the monsters in the Monster Manual using the DMG Standard Low damage stats? What about with Encounter or Recharging abilities? Is that also Limited Low most of the time?

I haven't run enough combats to make this type of a change but I've been considering doing something like it already and started to pay closer attention to what might need to be tweaked for a better scenario IMC.

Thanks!

 

[Nail]

Using Maptools, with 3 players running 4 characters, combats easily average less than an hour. I'd hazard a guess that the average is between 30-45 minutes.

FWIW, in one game I play in, we use laptops and MapTools. Combats take *forever*. And the "fiddly bits" out of combat really slow us down too. Destraction runs rampant in that group.

 

[Jack99]

Hmmm, I don't get a chance to read most of what's here in the rules forum, so I may have missed any analysis of this point. I certainly haven't done any of my own though I do reference that part of the DMG when I'm stealing powers from other mobs and/or essentially creating a creature from scratch.

That said, are most all of the monsters in the Monster Manual using the DMG Standard Low damage stats? What about with Encounter or Recharging abilities? Is that also Limited Low most of the time?

I haven't run enough combats to make this type of a change but I've been considering doing something like it already and started to pay closer attention to what might need to be tweaked for a better scenario IMC.

Thanks!

Okay, I see how my previous post could be misunderstood. No, the monsters from the MM do not universally use the LOW column from the DMG, but rather, they are just plain lower than the appropriate guideline in almost all cases. I am not sure there has been done any analysis, but I had a theory and figured that I would rather test it in practise, rather than doing a whole lot of math