Nellisir
Hero
But this is why I hate saying fights should take X or Y amounts of time. Fights should take exactly as long as they take. Because there's absolutely, 100% NO reason to even have a fight if there's no going to be some value in it. ... Why have a fight if for no other reason than to have a fight? It's a pointless waste of time. ... Fights should serve a purpose, they're a gating mechanic, they make you use resources, they test your coordination, your raw power. If you walk into a room, crack a few kobold heads without expending any real effort and then walk into the next room, what was the point?
And the flip-side of "quick fights" means "deadly combat" and we shouldn't be using the length of a fight as a measure of how deadly it is.
You seem to have made a giant leap here equating fast combat with pointless and easy combat, based on absolutely nothing that I can see. As DEFCON1 and Kamikaze Midget said, the importance of the fight, the purpose of the fight, the value of the fight...that's all in the DM's arena.
Unless...are you thinking in game time? A fast combat is over in four rounds, and a slow combat in twenty rounds? Because I'm looking at it "table time", in which a fast combat is ten minutes, and a slow combat is three hours. Both can be the same number of rounds in the game, but the table time is dramatically different.