D&D General How often (on average) do you have D&D sessions with absolutely no combat?

[prabe]

Like @TwoSix I'm finding that it's happening more often while I'm running virtually than it did when I was running in person. At a guess I'd say it went from 10% of the time to maybe 20% of the time.

The session length hasn't changed: it's been 3-4 hours, every-other week, for both campaigns (with the occasional session running longer).

 

[Charlaquin]

The distinction between options 2 and 3 seems pretty subtle to me, but I voted for 3.

 

[el-remmen]

The distinction between options 2 and 3 seems pretty subtle to me, but I voted for 3.

I am subtle and devious.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

I'm running three campaigns.

My main campaign has a heavy focus on combat. We play about 40 sessions per year. I'd say we have a non-combat session about three times per year. All of the non-combat sessions are good and sometimes they're mind-blowingly great.

My second campaign is a heavily modified version of Dragon Heist with a lot of intrigue and skullduggery. I'd say it's about 50/50 between combat and non-combat sessions. This is a very fast-moving campaign and it feels like there's a lot happening whether we're rolling dice or not.

My third campaign is taking a bunch of noobs through Dragon of Icespire Keep from the Essentials Kit. We have non-combat sessions about a third of the time, but that's often due to disorganization rather than design.

 

[Charlaquin]

I am subtle and devious.

Well, the granularity the categories has resulted in a pretty nice bell curve of results, so well done.

 

[aco175]

I try to make it a point to have some sort of combat each week. We did have a no-combat week a short time ago with only some roleplay in Waterdeep and shopping through the city. The only rolls were to see if there was an encounter and some rolls to see if vendors had certain items the players wanted, mostly minor magic they were trying to sell or collect. The next week I made sure that wererats invaded a noble party they were invited to.

 

[jgsugden]

I think the question of session length must be considered when answering this question. 2.5 and 12 hour sessions are very different situations.

 

[Shiroiken]

Really depends on the game. Back in 1E we did everything we could to avoid combat! I ran a story heavy campaign in 2E where about half the sessions were pure RP. My college 2E game regularly had a session every few months that was just RP and planning between adventures/story arcs. Since 3E most games seem to have been geared towards combat, but we'd still have the occasional session that either had no combat, or minimal combat. In my current campaign we just had 2 back to back sessions with no "combat" (there was a brief combat where the party was trying to knock out some guards before they could summon the alarm, but I don't count that). My last session was a dungeon crawl that only had 1 combat section (phantoms attacked the PCs while they dealt with some traps), with a lot of exploration instead.

D&D may have a strong focus on combat, but it's not that hard to have entire sessions without it.

 

[Blue]

Talking specifically D&D as it is a much more combat-centric game than other systems.

Depends on table, anywhere from 25% to 75% sessions have no-combat. I usually don't break 3 sessions in a row without combat, which is how I know 75% is the upper edge.

Mind you, combat is possible more often than it breaks out by a good deal - it's one way to resolve challenges among many. So that's a combonation of DM and player, with the players definitely able to increase the frequency if they wanted.

 

[Blue]

I think the question of session length must be considered when answering this question. 2.5 and 12 hour sessions are very different situations.

Yeah. I wonder if how much combat is also of interest. For example, if I have combat one session in four but it's usually most of that session, vs. having 25% of every session having combat - it's the same ratio, but the distribution is very different.