D&D 5E (2014) How much fighting do a typical D&D session have?

[Imaculata]

Sometimes I have entire sessions without combat, and sometimes I have 3 sessions in a row that are all cover the same battle.

 

[schnee]

We do 5-6 hour sessions, and have 2-4 combats each one.

We do lots of roleplaying, and enjoy the mapping and tactics, and have a lot of time for shooting the sh and talking character development and barbecue and making coffee.

 

[S'mon]

Running Paizo adventures in 5e I think we must spend over half the time in combat, though less than in a 4e campaign it is still 2-3 hours of fighting in a 4 hour session.

 

[pogre]

This may be an unpopular answer, but when I run D&D we have a lot of combats - probably 65-75% of our time playing is in combat. I use other systems for heavy, non-combat roleplay campaigns.

In the D&D game I play in, we do a lot more roleplaying outside of combat and average two fights in a three and one-half hour session.

So, I totally get that D&D does not have to be a slugfest, but for me, that is what the system does well.

 

[Sotik]

As it has been said, 5E heavily suggests 6 or 7 combat encounters per long rest, and a long rest to heal from combat is expected to be done one per session. Though some cases like traveling over long distances break this, because every time a group camps they are taking a long rest, but it is not usually done to restore the party back to full health/abilities.

However, how long should it last or how much of the session should be dedicated towards it is all situational. I have seen groups breeze through encounters, and I have seen groups slog through it with crappy rolls. You also have to take into account players who stall, are looking things up, those who want to be rule lawyers, those who want to mess around drawing battles out. I've had my own group blow through things faster than I expected, and then have them take an entire session due to bad rolls and the such to get through something I felt was only going to be a half an hour ordeal.

I personally don't try to dedicate so much of a session towards something. I just plan out what will happen, and don't stress over "Is this to much RP, is it to much combat?" If my next session calls for the group to talk to the mayor, it might only be a 2 minute thing. However if the group wants to drag it out into the entire session, that is on them. If they manage to breeze through the next dungeon in 20 minutes when I expected it to be longer, then well they will get more RP when they get back to town and talk to NPC's. I don't try to force combat or RP to meet the status quo, I just let it happen naturally. The problem when you try to force such things, is that it will never happen when you expect it to. If some guards tell a group to travel to a city and talk to a king, they may decide to go exploring the mountains looking for a dragon instead. Or if they were tasked with going out and clearing a cave full of trolls, they may decide they don't like that idea and spend the time in a tavern drinking.

 

[Imaculata]

My group has just had a whole session with just story, roleplaying, dialogue, plot developments, exploration... but no combat. But the session before that had a battle with a Megalodon, and the next session will once again feature quite a bit of combat.

I usually let the session develop on its own, but if I notice a glaring lack of a certain game element in a session, I may add some of that in the very next session. I never worry about meeting a certain combat quota. My goal is a fun adventure for me and my players, and thats it.

 

[Tony Vargas]

This may be an unpopular answer, but when I run D&D we have a lot of combats - probably 65-75% of our time playing is in combat.

I think the answer is truer than it is popular. D&D has been heavily criticized as being 'violent' (from outside the community) or 'roll playing' (from within) for so long that it's almost reflexive to regale folks with how much ROLE-play and non-combat there is in D&D.

As it has been said, 5E heavily suggests 6 or 7 combat encounters per long rest,

6-8, yes.

and a long rest to heal from combat is expected to be done one per session.

Not so much. While 5e combats can be fast, especially the easy ones, sessions can also be short. At my FLGS, AL isn't limited to 2hrs like Encounters was, but it's still a Wed evening...

A rest between sessions is convenient, though - it's intuitive, and it reduces bookkeeping from one session to the next, as each PC is fully re-set the next time you meet. You might have to worry about some un-recovered HD, that's about it.

A short rest between sessions wouldn't be quite as convenient, that way, but if it fit the pacing/length of sessions better, why not?

And, of course, a session with a hard stop could end in the middle of the action, even the middle of combat...

 

[Gardens & Goblins]

With sessions being around 3 hours, we see combat once every 3-4 sessions at the moment.

Of course, this can change with the next campaign and a different DM.

 

[Erechel]

I've noted this before, but I think "combats per session" is an inaccurate form of measurement. How do you gauge your "1 or 2 per session" versus my "4 per session" without knowing if my sessions are 12 hours long and yours are 2 hours long?

To me a better measure is "combats per hour", where the number is a positive number, whole or fractional.

In my case, in our 5e games it probably averages to about .5 per hour. In a four hour session, we typically have two encounters, one fairly small and quick, with one being more substantial.

In our Pathfinder games, we average about .3 per hour - but one session might be all roleplay, and the next a two hour grand melee in the three bour session. Or, we might have one combat in between three hours of exploration. Due to the length of the combats, it takes on a different rhythm from 5e, which are far quicker, to the extent we can have more combat than our Pathfinder games, but it doesn't feel convoluted.

No, I find combats per session more maneagable and less obscure than ".3 fights per hour". And so, an hour of game varies a lot. If you are convinced otherwise, you could say, like I did, "In a 8 hours session" or "in a 5 hours session". This is a valid question, and it helps a lot to design adventures around how many combats are expected, and how much time per session you dedicate to combat. Half the time? a quarter? And also, how many fights says a lot of the session, and the party, and the DM. Also, do you not roleplay when you fight? I'm posting this to see the variation between the tables, mostly. Many people confuse the Interaction pillar of D&D as the only "roleplay". Climbing a mountain is roleplay. Exploring a jungle is roleplaying. Deciding when to fight and when not to fight too is roleplaying. Fighting is roleplaying too.

Also, since I'm posting on the D&D 5e forum, Pathfinder are automatically ruled out, I believe.

 

[Seramus]

My group goes entire games without combat, though sometimes we have massive battles that might take up a whole session. It's whatever the plot demands.

My players are very heavy into politics and roleplaying. We do play other systems that handle social and exploration better, but come back to D&D now and then for nostalgia.