How Many Battles Per Gaming Session?

[Evilhalfling]

Im more conistant than I thought -
10 games, 30 combats.
9 skill challanges - usally in pairs.
4 sessions with at least an hour roleplaying, few dice.

The last is pretty low, but I am usually disatisfied with a 4-5 hr session that has no combat, and also get bored with all fighting, no plot or conversations with nonviolent NPCs.

 

[Abraxas]

About 3-4 in our 15th level 3.5/pathfinder game and our 6th level 4E game.

 

[el-remmen]

As others have pointed out, the problem with this poll is that different people play for different lengths of time that comprise "a session" for their group.

Also, for some people the low number may mean that their combats take a long time, or that regular combat encounters are not necessary for the game to progress. Or in my case (both, I think. . .)

 

[Tiny Little Raven]

My group get together twice a month and does a 12 hour session (thats not including breaks). We manage 7 encounters per session.

Currently playing Conan & Pathfinder.

 

[doctorhook]

My group is always slow to start, and I think my players are a little slow in combat. We're playing 4E, and fights regularly take between one and two hours. During a three-hour weekly session, this means we usually get maybe two encounters in.

 

[fba827]

We seem to average somewhere bewteen 2-5 encounters per session.. it really depends on how big the combat encounters are and where in the plot we're at - we don't do dungeon crawls so it's not one opportunity after another for combat; there is travel and plot and social-interaction time between combats. Our sessions usually run around 6-7 hours.

 

[Lanefan]

I could run some stats and come up with an average number of combats/session, but in my case I'd have to get a ruling first:

Do I count combats against other members of the party (using the dealing of actual damage as a metric to determine whether it's a combat or just some pushing and shoving - kinda like the distinction between roughing and fighting in hockey)?

If I do, that'd probably up my average by somewhere in the 0.3-0.5 range.

In any case, I'm guessing it's about 3, with some wide variance: some sessions its 0 (treasury division nights, for example) while others can get up to 5 or 6.

::sigh:: now I'm curious. I'll be back later with a hard number.

Lanefan

 

[Jeff Wilder]

For us, as 3.5 players, it's changed slightly as we've moved into the mid- to mid-high levels. (In three games, the PCs are 11th, 12th, and 14th levels, respectively.) The number of combats has dropped some with higher levels, but not as much as I'd have thought. Preparation for combat takes longer, and in-combat calculations take longer, but the combats themselves often don't go as many rounds. The net effect is a slight increase in time per combat.

Still, 2-3 per session pretty much covers it. On top of that, we'll have 1-2 social encounters, and usually spend a good amount of time in group discussion or other roleplay.

 

[Lanefan]

::sigh:: now I'm curious. I'll be back later with a hard number.

And, as promised, here it is for my current game:

48 sessions
about 120-125 conventional encounters, nearly all of which ended in combat
13 party-vs-party battles
10 significant non-combat encounters (e.g. major traps, meeting an immortal, etc.)
no real way to quantify other encounter types e.g. information-gathering.

So, that's about 2.5 conventional encounters per session, plus a party brawl about every 4 sessions and a major non-combat encounter about every 5 sessions.

An interesting perspective...

Lanefan

 

[DeusExMachina]

I'm at a 2 battles per 4-5 hour session on average, sometime slower and only very rarely higher.
Although I admit I did a solo fight last session that a stretched out over 4 different encounters, but then that was combined with a skill challenge and some exploration in order to be able to defeat the dragon and meant to last the whole session...