D&D 5E How many rounds of combat is too much?

[Imaculata]

I've had battles that took up the entire session, or sometimes, multiple sessions. I recently had a huge naval battle in my pirate campaign, that took us three days to finish. As long as exciting things continue to happen, this is not a problem. And I think that is key. It shouldn't be a long grind where you chip away at the hitpoints of monsters.

In my battle, it started out as an ambush, where sail hunters tried to disable the fleet of the players. While their captain executed various strategies with their ship, the rest of the party tried to snipe at the captains of the enemy ships, or to support the ship with magic spells.

Then it moved to a big battle, where multiple ships were caught in a trap, and being shot from all directions. Here they confronted the big ship of the big bad. I gave the other players control of their allied ships, so they all got to take part in the naval battle, and not just the player playing the captain.

Lastly, they boarded the ship of the big bad, and now the battle moved to a simple land battle. They had to fight their way into the holds of the ship, and then deal with the genie that the big bad had summoned from his magic lamp. And to make matters a bit more interesting, an enemy wizard used a reverse gravity spell on the entrance to the hold. This all lead up to an epic confrontation with the big bad. It was captain against captain, while the rest of the party dealt with the genie and the other enemy pirates.

So, as long as you keep it exciting, a battle can be as long as you want it to be. But you have to keep moving things forward. There have to be a lot of strategic choices to make for the players. I skipped a lot of the battles that were happening in the background, and focused on the battles that the players themselves were involved in.

A friend of mine once described how he had DM'd a game where his players battled a huge undead army that counted in the hundreds, and they fought every last one... that sounded like the more tedious battle ever.

 

[transtemporal]

2-3 rounds for "normal" encounters, 5-6 for big boss fights. Any less than that and they feel a bit trivial, any more than that and you have a bag-of-hp situation.

 

[JeffB]

There is alot of great advice here..I do already provide as dynamic combats as I can (and usually modify pre-written adventures like the one I ran).There is always room for improvment but...

Its not necc the length of time that is the issue. Its going several rounds. They seem to think after 3 rounds they should be able to defeat an enemy and move on. I think it's nintendo syndrome.(17/18 HS students). They have been playing games with me since they were 11-ish, but are very casual players. Don't own any books, don't want to read them, etc. But the videogame mentality continues to dominate. They like what they like.

 

[ClearlyTough69]

In my experience long combats are boring when (a) both sides use the same tactics round after round, and (b) the PCs aren't seriously threatened. Change one of those factors and it gets interesting again.

One more thing: I think opportunity attacks must take some responsibility for making combat less dynamic as PCs tend to hunker down in their positions. I've toyed with the idea of applying disadvantage to OAs, perhaps balanced by allowing multiple OAs per creature per round. Has anyone else tried this?

 

[Pickles III]

Its not necc the length of time that is the issue. Its going several rounds. They seem to think after 3 rounds they should be able to defeat an enemy and move on. I think it's nintendo syndrome.(17/18 HS students). They have been playing games with me since they were 11-ish, but are very casual players. Don't own any books, don't want to read them, etc. But the videogame mentality continues to dominate. They like what they like.

The old advice to people who found 4e grindy was to double monster damage & halve their HP.

I will say I have only played a handful of really fun 5e fights & lots of very routine ones but I still find 4e for all its slowness engaging - liking what you like is certainly a thing.

 

[CydKnight]

As others have inferred, I think it depends on how interesting and engaging the encounter is made. A 2+ hour long battle with a beholder is probably going to be very engaging for everyone while a 2+ hour long with a dozen or so Fighter class NPCs probably won't be without the DM adding a lot of flair to it.

I try to run through different possibilities for a battle I have set-up beforehand to head off this kind of thing in advance and make tweaks if required. Sometimes, I have even made tweaks on the fly during the battle like having other creatures that behave quite differently form the ones already engaged enter the battle during combat.

 

[Barolo]

Before my PC is dead? None.

After that? Any.

 

[KahlessNestor]

Just for trivia, I heard the Critical Stats numbers for the big Thordak/Raishon fight on Critical Role was 15 rounds, 90 seconds game time, almost 6 and a half hours real time, over 2 episodes.

Sent from my SM-G900P using EN World mobile app

 

[Sunseeker]

I've had combat take minutes, I've had combat take hours. What really gets to me is when combat crawls to a halt due to players either not knowing what they want to do or not knowing how to do something. There's a certain aesthetic to a fight that really gets lost when people don't know what they're doing.

 

[TerraDave]

The occasional big epic combat can be quite entertaining.

In 4e, we had a lot 8 or so round fights. Each on its own could be interesting, but we were getting into another level of repetition, and making major fights less major. Plus, they chewed up a lot of time, and distorted how adventures would play out in the process.