D&D 5E Length of Combat

[The_Gneech]

I have between 3 and 5 players. Here's how it goes :

3 rounds = typical fight. Usually easy/moderate (according to my standards, not the DMG's), unless I chose a monster that hit very hard on purpose to scare the PCs. Ex : 1 Bone Devil and 14 Imps (4 level 6 PC)

5-6 rounds = boss fights or fights I want to count. Usually hard/deadly. Ex : 1 Gladiator and 2 Bandit Captain (3 level 5 PC)

More than 6 rounds = I miscalculated CR or HP. Boring fight.

I like when fights are dynamic, people move around the battlefield, retreat, counter-attack. I hate static fights where you just stand there and throw dice. Which longer encounters tend to be.

Same.

-TG

 

[pkt77242]

Yeah for me most important is real time - less than 1/2 hr is perfect. That could be 3 rounds, or 10 rounsd, doesnt matter. Unfortunately 5e combat is often much longer than this, more like 1 hr. Which is doable. Just not as enjoyable, and hinders other aspects of the game, like improv side treks/random encounters.

1 hour. Wow.

I don't think that I have had a combat go longer than 30 minutes in 5E besides when we had to defend a town against an invading force where we fought at the gate for 20ish minutes and then fought the general of the opposing army and his bodyguards for another 20 minutes and that could be viewed as 2 different encounters.

 

[cmad1977]

It's probably an average of... 5?. Some shorter, some longer.

As an aside, I'm of the opinion that if combat is 'too long' or 'boring' it's a DM issue not a number of rounds issue.
If by turn 8 your combat is boring... well it was stale by turn 3. That's on us.


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[cmad1977]

Sure. Part of that's down to relative inexperience with 5e - I hadn't realised just how long it was going to take to finish it off 'properly'.

That said, I am inclined to think there's a weakness in 5e's design - it seems that monsters have a lot of hit points, while the damage that the PCs can do doesn't seem to keep up. So while it's a good thing that they've tended to model a monster's resilience by giving them hit points (rather than high ACs or lots of immunities, as was often the case in 3e), they have perhaps gone too far. Either that, or I've been very unlucky in my selection of monsters!

A lot of people have said that the standard HP of monster is too low. Not in my experience, but I've seen it said a lot,


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[Xeviat]

A lot of people have said that the standard HP of monster is too low. Not in my experience, but I've seen it said a lot,


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If by "standard monster", you mean the DMG table; no, the standard monster has a ton of HP. The new encounter builder guidelines say that a first level character is equivalent to a CR 1/4. The "standard" CR 1/4 has something like 40 HP. They also deal six damage per round but have terrible +3 to hit and 13 AC, so they're all hp, all the time.


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[cmad1977]

If by "standard monster", you mean the DMG table; no, the standard monster has a ton of HP. The new encounter builder guidelines say that a first level character is equivalent to a CR 1/4. The "standard" CR 1/4 has something like 40 HP. They also deal six damage per round but have terrible +3 to hit and 13 AC, so they're all hp, all the time.


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I'm missing something. What CR 1/4 creature has 40 hps?

And I'm not saying monsters don't have too many or too few HPs. I haven't had an issue either way. I have seen many a post of 'waaaah! My PCs beat up the monsters! Teh HPz are broken low!'

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[Harzel]

I'm missing something. What CR 1/4 creature has 40 hps?

If you're looking in the MM, probably none. Xeviat is talking about the table on p.274 of the DMG.

 

[cmad1977]

If you're looking in the MM, probably none. Xeviat is talking about the table on p.274 of the DMG.

Hmm. I looked at that. I don't think it's designed to simply take a CR and go across the chart.


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[The Crimson Binome]

Hmm. I looked at that. I don't think it's designed to simply take a CR and go across the chart.

The way it's described, you could just take a CR and go straight across the chart. That's supposed to be the easiest way of creating a monster for a given CR.

In practice, and probably in expectation, you use those numbers as a baseline and then shift some numbers up and other numbers down in order to customize your creation. Most of the monsters in the manual, for example, have their HP shifted down and their damage shifted up.

 

[Xeviat]

I think only legendary monsters use the straight across numbers to any degree. It makes sense. You want a solo monster to be able to take hits and threaten the whole party, but not one shot someone in the first round.

Too bad the masses said no to minion/standard/elite/solo ... *readies dodge*.


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