How long should a standard combat last?

[jensun]

I try to avoid "Kill 5 orcs, take their stuff" encounters... most encounters in our campaign are meaningful... still, more than 45min and I get the impression they are to long...

I am in a similar position. I dont have any (or at least very few) run of the mill fights. If the weapons come out then its normally important to the game and I dont mind spending an hour or so on it.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I am perfectly fine with the idea of long combats, if they need to be that long, or are particularly important events.

This.

It's a foregone conclusion that I'm going to survive a basic encounter. The only thing that combat determines is, basically, how much HP (and in 4e terms, how many healing surges/dailies/AP) this cost me. It's almost an economic transaction, and I want to hurry up and make my purchase so I can go enjoy it.

If there's something at stake, though, be it my life or some mook or whatever, then I can spend some time on it. You gloss over the boring parts, and if I'm going to win victory and pass through the other side anyway, the part isn't going to be THAT exciting.

 

[The Human Target]

This.

It's a foregone conclusion that I'm going to survive a basic encounter. The only thing that combat determines is, basically, how much HP (and in 4e terms, how many healing surges/dailies/AP) this cost me. It's almost an economic transaction, and I want to hurry up and make my purchase so I can go enjoy it.

If there's something at stake, though, be it my life or some mook or whatever, then I can spend some time on it. You gloss over the boring parts, and if I'm going to win victory and pass through the other side anyway, the part isn't going to be THAT exciting.

Thats sorta how I look at it too.

So for me...

An easy encounter- 10-15 minutes if its not just flat out hand waved.

A moderately difficult encounter- 15-30 minutes

A hard encounter (like say the main fight of the night)- 30-45 minutes

A rare epic battle- 45 minutes to an hour and a half



Again, thats not what I get out of my current 4E games, but thats what I'd like.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

I voted 45 minutes, that's how long my non-boss battles tend to take in 3.5, and I don't do quick little fights that are won in a few attacks. Boss fights vary wildly, I've had some where the players rolled very well or came up with an ingenious idea and won in less than half an hour. I've had other times where the fight is an epic struggle with several near death experiences and goes on longer than the rest of the adventuring time combined. Just tonight, finished up a wilderness adventure with a boss fight that took 3 1/2 hours...and it was awesome! The spellcasters on both sides blew through nearly their entire allotment of spells it went on so long, but no one seemed to mind. (gestalt game of 4 level 5 PCs versus 2 level 6 NPC's who entered invisible and with a summoned army)

So, I don't really care about length as long as it's fun. And I agree with the others that have said so: A five minute battle seems so trivial I don't know why to even bother with them. Only times I've seen those happen is when the PCs overestimate the opposition and unleash total overkill on round 1 (and then are screwed when the REAL boss fight happens).

 

[Lanefan]

So, I don't really care about length as long as it's fun. And I agree with the others that have said so: A five minute battle seems so trivial I don't know why to even bother with them. Only times I've seen those happen is when the PCs overestimate the opposition and unleash total overkill on round 1 (and then are screwed when the REAL boss fight happens).

That, or when the PCs underestimate the opposition and learn a hard lesson.

And, even a seemingly-trivial encounter can go south for the PCs if the dice let it. Last Friday, the party ran into a batch of nobody bandits in the hills; I as DM threw the scenario in as what amounted to a wandering monster, and thought it'd be a 15-minute pushover.

Well over an hour later, they finished mopping up - after nearly losing half a party. Of their 7, 3 were down and unconscious and 3 more were tottering on their feet; only one was reasonably healthy. Main reason: they couldn't hit the broad side of a Barbarian!

The flip side, of course, is the climactic encounter that ends in the second round due to a lucky strike or a failed save. It happens.

I think the longest combat I've ever run went almost 3 sessions (total of about 10 hours), when a party of 12 high-ish level souped-up PCs took on an assassins' hideaway the size of a small village, with its own share of tricked-out inhabitants and spellcasters. And the scariest part? It never did resolve! It only ended when both sides mostly ran out of people and decided to retreat with their prisoners. (party was down to 2 functioning PCs at the end, with 2 or 3 more taken prisoner by the enemy; a prisoner exchange got them back later).

So, to sum up; the only possible answer to the title question is:

As long as it needs to.

Lanefan

 

[Serendipity]

I put down for about thirty minutes but that's an average. I tend to make and prefer somewhat challenging encounters - but yes some are explicitly there for a bit of "chop chop" as it were (ooh, goblins!) - so about thirty for a challenging but by no means threatening (comparitively) encounter, and say about 15-20 for something more workmanlike.

 

[firesnakearies]

So for me...

An easy encounter- 10-15 minutes if its not just flat out hand waved.

A moderately difficult encounter- 15-30 minutes

A hard encounter (like say the main fight of the night)- 30-45 minutes

A rare epic battle- 45 minutes to an hour and a half

That little chart is pretty much spot on for me, if you just double all of the listed times. 30-60 minutes for a moderately difficult encounter, 90-180 minutes for a rare epic battle.

 

[Amphimir Míriel]

I find this laughable. We run over twice that many in some adventures in the same time span. Again, though, we play 1e. We tend to like exploring, planning, solving puzzles, with several fast and furious combats mixed in. Anything over 10 minutes, unless it's a major fight with the boss, and folks start yawning.

Well, to be fair, first edition does not have any combat options beyond "I hit it with my sword/dagger/bohemian earspoon"

In such a game, I would also expect for a combat to be over before 10 minutes, so that we can go back to the exploring and the puzzles.

Now, in my 4th edition game, our current combats take 45-60 minutes in average, but we expect that once we become more used to the rules, we will be able to cut that time down to 30min, so we can go back to the exploring and the puzzles faster.

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Some useful props to cut down 4e combat time:

1- Gamemastery Combat Pad or a small whiteboard for the DM to quickly track initiative, hitpoints and conditions.

2- A combat mat and minis (if you don't want to buy minis, like us, use colored glass beads and/or printed counters)

3- Give each player a small amount of playdoh (a different color for each one) so that they can place a small bit of it on each creature they are marking/cursing/quarrying

4- Combat Cards. I got jokes from my players about "tapping their encounters and dailies" at first, but after the first session everyone was sold. The cards help players visualize their options and limits book flipping to a minimum.

 

[Joshua Randall]

My point is that D&D is not the game for someone who, as a whole, does not want combats to last longer than 10 (or even 20) minutes. Combat is the primary focus of D&D (3.x and 4e in particular). If combat is uninteresting enough to you that you don't want a combat encounter to last more than 10 minutes, D&D will waste a lot of your time.

Even if I grant you your assumption ("Combat is the primary focus of D&D"), your conclusion doesn't necessarily follow.

I like combat (a lot), but I only want it to last a short time so I can get more combat into one session.

 

[buzz]

Even if I grant you your assumption ("Combat is the primary focus of D&D"), your conclusion doesn't necessarily follow.

It does follow if we're talking about people who want 3.5 or 4e combats to end in 10 minutes or less.

Unless your group is hyper-competent and incredibly decisive, the only way you're going to reliably get D&D combats to last no more than 10 minutes is to hand-wave a lot of rules. And if you're doing that, I have to wonder why you're using D&D as a ruleset. There are lots of great RPGs out there with a less tactical emphasis that will let you focus on the other aspects of roleplaying that you obviously prioritize.

I like combat (a lot), but I only want it to last a short time so I can get more combat into one session.

Sure. 4e has done a lot to provide this for my group, too. But "5-10 minutes" is, I think, unreasonable.

EDIT: And as for the basic assumption, I think it's a given. The topic's page-count alone shows that combat encounters are D&D's bread-and-butter.