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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 4527098" data-attributes="member: 29398">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</blockquote>

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