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General Tabletop Discussion
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
Legends & Lore: Combat and Other Forms of Violence
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<blockquote data-quote="Keldryn" data-source="post: 5580908" data-attributes="member: 11999"><p>I have many issues with 4e, but the length of combat is one of the biggest and perhaps the most insurmountable. </p><p></p><p>We play for 4 or 5 hours every other week (in theory; it seems to end up being once every 3 to 4 weeks). There are usually three combat encounters each session, and the typical encounter takes 45 minutes to an hour or more to play out. So the immediately obvious issue is that 2/3 to 3/4 of each game session is consumed by combat encounters. True, I could run only one or two battles per game, but they need to be tougher (and thus probably longer) encounters or else the PCs daily resources are never tapped out. Also, my players like combat and find it exciting... for the first 15 minutes or so.</p><p></p><p>In TSR-era D&D, exploration could be slow-paced and combat encounters would often be used to liven things up. In 4e, a combat encounter absolutely kills the pacing of my games as we take a break from the story for a good hour to play out the combat. After a combat wraps up, it's not uncommon for one of my players to say "so... what were we doing again?"</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I agree completely, on both counts. 10 to 15 minutes for a typical encounter sounds about right to me, with 30 minutes as an upper limit for an important set-piece battle. A very rare climactic encounter at the end of a long story arc could even take up to an hour. </p><p></p><p>After over half a dozen 4e game sessions, even the trivial encounters in <em>Reavers of Harkenwold</em> were still taking us 40 minutes to play out. Only one of my players actually enjoys these tactical encounters; the rest of my players wish that the rules were simpler and that the battles were over in about 1/3 of the time.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Keldryn, post: 5580908, member: 11999"] I have many issues with 4e, but the length of combat is one of the biggest and perhaps the most insurmountable. We play for 4 or 5 hours every other week (in theory; it seems to end up being once every 3 to 4 weeks). There are usually three combat encounters each session, and the typical encounter takes 45 minutes to an hour or more to play out. So the immediately obvious issue is that 2/3 to 3/4 of each game session is consumed by combat encounters. True, I could run only one or two battles per game, but they need to be tougher (and thus probably longer) encounters or else the PCs daily resources are never tapped out. Also, my players like combat and find it exciting... for the first 15 minutes or so. In TSR-era D&D, exploration could be slow-paced and combat encounters would often be used to liven things up. In 4e, a combat encounter absolutely kills the pacing of my games as we take a break from the story for a good hour to play out the combat. After a combat wraps up, it's not uncommon for one of my players to say "so... what were we doing again?" I agree completely, on both counts. 10 to 15 minutes for a typical encounter sounds about right to me, with 30 minutes as an upper limit for an important set-piece battle. A very rare climactic encounter at the end of a long story arc could even take up to an hour. After over half a dozen 4e game sessions, even the trivial encounters in [I]Reavers of Harkenwold[/I] were still taking us 40 minutes to play out. Only one of my players actually enjoys these tactical encounters; the rest of my players wish that the rules were simpler and that the battles were over in about 1/3 of the time. [/QUOTE]
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Legends & Lore: Combat and Other Forms of Violence
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