D&D 5E Length of Combat & Time Taken per Round (collecting data from my games - updated 3/13 with an hour 30 minute 11 round battle!)

[kigmatzomat]

I am not going to post the notes from yesterday's 15h level game as the GM got multiple phone calls that stalled the game and I can't readily identify how much time that was through DDB given some players roll physical dice.

I will say we had what was perhaps our slowest fight ever with 6 PCs+2 allies vs 17 NPCs: 8 guards with bows, 2 monk/casters, 2 casters, 2 raksasha soldiers, an invisible stalker, a djinn and the 17th level caster villain.

We were trying to free the djinn serving the villain without killing the djinn plus we were aware illusionists were in play so we were far more tactical & cutious. At one point 3 PCs were invisible for two rounds trying to get in position to destroy the djinn's anchor. The primary melee was using a bow to snipe at flying foes, which meant he was doing half as much damage as normal so the enemies were lasting longer. (The fight lasted 5 rounds, the "mooks" survived until round 4). The flying enemies would either make 3+ attacks or use an AoE like lightning bolt & thunderwave to catch multiple PCs. The villain was a 17th+ level caster with Legendary Actions & Defenses and Foresight active, meaning she would cast a spell then get 3 melee attacks that were likely to hit and our attacks were less likely to hit. I'd guesstimate each round averaged 60+ attacks/saves, even with the attacks skipped during invis.

 

[el-remmen]

I was thinking "time per round / number of turns per round,"

Yeah, I was not picking up what you were putting down. I think I just had the fact that I had that I had access to that data, so I interpreted what you were saying as "figure out how long each individual turn is." Regardless, as I said in my post, I am really glad I did it that way, even if just once.

 

[el-remmen]

the GM got multiple phone calls that stalled the game

That's definitely a not uncommon factor, sometimes stuff just happens that puts a kink in smoothly flowing combat or just a smoothly flowing session in general.

 

[el-remmen]

Ran my in-person today and recorded the whole session - I hope to get a chance to extract data from the video over the next two days and share.

 

[O-Castitatis-Lilium]

I enjoy reading through this. It's pretty insightful. When playing I don't honestly tend to notice how long things take, usually we are too busy having fun slaying monsters and in my case, playing out monsters so that they are entertaining for the players. I'm considering timing it...but I have a REALLY bad habit of forgetting things like that, but I will continue to enjoy reading your thread here and admiring your dedication to gathering data lol.

 

[kigmatzomat]

We ran a one-shot because one player had covid and another had to work. So we made some "I've had an idea" characters at 20th level. Lots of "where's the rule on THIS power? How does THAT work"

The first fight was pretty straight forward but we were far from optimal. There was a second fight very similar that we got done a bit faster.

Encounter	Combat Type	Party Level	Nbr PCs + familiars/ steeds/ etc	IG Rounds	RW Time	Average / Rd	Average Rd per Player	Average Rd per character
4 red dragonborn	VTT + IRL	20	4 +1	5	50m	10	2.5m	1m

This one was a fun challenge. The constructs were magic resistant and immune to necrotic & force, which messed with the sor-lock-adin. When we finally destroyed one, magmin poured out of it. The red dragonkin & magmin were immune to fire and the caster had a few defensive spells.

It was a long fight as we'd try a thing, see it fail, and everyone would dig through the rules to see what they had that didn't do whatever that was.

There was also a lot of "wait, I think I'm resistant to that..." bits. Still, we didn't go that slowly.

One note, mounted Combat is a pretty awesome feat. Advantage a lot of the time on attacks, forces enemies to target the PC and gives the mount evasion.

Encounter	Combat Type	Party Level	Nbr PCs + familiars/ steeds/ etc	IG Rounds	RW Time	Average / Rd	Average Rd per Player	Average Rd per character
2x Large Helmed Horror (filled with 4 magmin ea), 1 dragon-kin caster, 3 dragonkin.	VTT + IRL	20	4 +1	7	1h50m	16m	4m	1.5m

 

[jmartkdr2]

We ran a one-shot because one player had covid and another had to work. So we made some "I've had an idea" characters at 20th level. Lots of "where's the rule on THIS power? How does THAT work"

Encounter	Combat Type	Party Level	Nbr PCs + familiars/ steeds/ etc	IG Rounds	RW Time	Average / Rd	Average Rd per Player	Average Rd per character
Priest (9th-ish), sorcerer (9th-ish), 4 bodyguards, 2 bugbears, 4 lizardmen (12)	Grid/VTT in person	15	6+2	3 rounds	55 minutes	18 minutes	3 minutes	1 minutes

1 min per character at 20th? You guys are snappy!

 

[kigmatzomat]

1 min per character at 20th? You guys are snappy!

It was a straight forward "go kill some guards" bit. We didn't use any big powers, just weapons and maneuvering. The rogue-20 did some pretty brutal hits, barbarian/cleric PAM+Sentry kept them at arms reach, StarDruid sniped steadily, and sor-lock-adin could EB while closing to flank then dropped pain-sword.

Enemies generally shot at the sorlockadin who was in their face and had the highest AC in the party. Plus We use "kill THAT one! Okay, now kill THAT one!" tactics so one enemy died a round, so each one got faster.

The other fight went the other way as 2 constructs turned into 8 magmin, who were each tough enough to survive a round or two of barb-eric abuse.

 

[el-remmen]

When playing I don't honestly tend to notice how long things take, usually we are too busy having fun slaying monsters and in my case, playing out monsters so that they are entertaining for the players.

That's all that matters!

I am just an obsessive who got tired of people complaining about combat slog and rounds taking too long as a fact of the game when that has not matched my experience with D&D in any edition (as a general rule - not claiming every combat is perfect either) so decided to see if combats in my game actually are long and we tend not to notice because we're having fun or if they aren't really that long.

But ultimately, when it comes to playing a game the feeling matters more than the reality, because it is the feeling you remember not the average length of time per round.

 

[el-remmen]

Here is the data I extracted from my in-person game this past Sunday. I have added some categories that the new method of collecting info has made available to me, and that is changing how I determine some numbers.

1. I have started numbering encounters for this experiment so I can more easily reference them when discussing here.
2. I added a category for "# of Characters"
3. I added a category for "initiative," which lists how long it took to roll, collect, and note initiative.
4. "Real World (RW) Time" now does not include the amount of time it took to deal with determining initiative.
5. "Average / Rd" is now determined without including the amount of time use to determine initiative.

Session #​	Encounter #​	# of Characters ​	Encounter Type​	Combat Type​	Party Level​	IG Rounds​	Initiative	RW Time​	Average / Rd​
12​	5​	4 PCs + NPC ally​	2 perytons​	G​	3​	3​	1:48​	19:07​	6:22​
12​	6​	4 PCs + NPC ally​	3 diseased wolves + Janx​	G​	3​	2​	1:38​	11:47​	5:53​
12​	7​	4 PCs + NPC ally​	3 diseased wolves + Janx + 2 death dogs​	G​	3​	7​	1:54​	45:21​	6:29​

It is worth noting that in Encounter 5, one of the perytons got away, in Encounter 6, the party put Janx to sleep with a spell, but since they had no way to effectively keep him prisoner, they ran knowing they'd encounter him again after they had his cure in hand, and in Encounter 7, the death dogs did not arrive until round 3 or 4 (see below).

I plan to return (if not tomorrow, then later in the week, it depends on how work and prep of this coming weekend's remote game games) and lay out how long each individual round was and break down one of these combats (probably encounter 7).

So far everything seems to be averaging out in around the same neighborhood.