D&D 5E Making 1-minute features or spells "encounter"-length instead.

[Helldritch]

Why do you do this? Is it because your combats tends to go over the 10 rounds mark just like me?

 

[groody]

I would enjoy having spells that last one encounter instead of one minute. Most of our combats go less then 10 rounds, just as others have reported, only the occasional „hard“ combat where the group has a protracted battle against large numbers of enemies trying to manage them with choke-points and such does run longer.

Tracking spell durations in those cases is an annoying administrative task, especially if there are multiple spell casters to handle for the DM. All of this would go away, which would help with flow of play.

To play it like that you need is a clear, testable definition of when an encounter ends. In one post above encounter is equated with combat. That is not the only kind of encounter. Think of cases where the party casts a mind affecting spell on someone they meet, or maybe a blur spell on one of their own, without hostility breaking out. What if their new acquaintance tags along through the dungeon, will you now have blur until they die?

What I do (when I am DM) is only marking what spell is cast when in larger battles where it is likely to become relevant, and then, if the battle goes longer, at some point take a bit of time out to track back if there are spells close to expire. In essence, for expedience of play, I treat them as „per encounter“ in encounters where this is highly likely to work.

Last point: I think there are other things to consider when you start playing around with hp progression. That is certainly a WAY bigger change to the game system than the duration treatment of short-but-not-single-round spells. For example, what about damage dealing spells? Fireball would be twice as powerful in a world where monsters only have 1/2 hp. Healing spells and abilities become much more powerful too.

I‘m also not a big fan of the 130 hp giants and the resulting slugfests grinding down their hp, and like 1e where every hit point counts. But I believe these systems have a lot of internal dependencies and balances, and massively changing one of them will lead to unintended consequences in other places.

There are ways for the PCs to get to massive damage output in the system as written. We had one Duergar Berserker (played by my brother) with polearm master and great weapon master who was able to routinely dish out more than 50 damage per round against opponents who did not have high AC, and on a good day with some criticals more than 100. A feat like great weapon master is an example: if you half monster HP, now it‘s as if you add +20 damage to each hit with that feat.

 

[Helldritch]

Good points. But the monster's HP reduction goal is exactly to reduce combat's length. On the other hand, it does reduce the resource attrition from the fact that monsters have such high HP. Playing around with HP of standard monsters is calling for a lot of work.

On the other hand, making spells lasting for 1 minute or for one combat encounter could have some merits. This is all in theory.

 

[DND_Reborn]

I would enjoy having spells that last one encounter instead of one minute. Most of our combats go less then 10 rounds, just as others have reported, only the occasional „hard“ combat where the group has a protracted battle against large numbers of enemies trying to manage them with choke-points and such does run longer.

Tracking spell durations in those cases is an annoying administrative task, especially if there are multiple spell casters to handle for the DM. All of this would go away, which would help with flow of play.

To play it like that you need is a clear, testable definition of when an encounter ends. In one post above encounter is equated with combat. That is not the only kind of encounter. Think of cases where the party casts a mind affecting spell on someone they meet, or maybe a blur spell on one of their own, without hostility breaking out. What if their new acquaintance tags along through the dungeon, will you now have blur until they die?

What I do (when I am DM) is only marking what spell is cast when in larger battles where it is likely to become relevant, and then, if the battle goes longer, at some point take a bit of time out to track back if there are spells close to expire. In essence, for expedience of play, I treat them as „per encounter“ in encounters where this is highly likely to work.

In my mind, whether in combat or out of combat, the encounter is like a story-beat and the DM is the author. So, when the DM says it is over, it is.

Last point: I think there are other things to consider when you start playing around with hp progression. That is certainly a WAY bigger change to the game system than the duration treatment of short-but-not-single-round spells. For example, what about damage dealing spells? Fireball would be twice as powerful in a world where monsters only have 1/2 hp. Healing spells and abilities become much more powerful too.

I‘m also not a big fan of the 130 hp giants and the resulting slugfests grinding down their hp, and like 1e where every hit point counts. But I believe these systems have a lot of internal dependencies and balances, and massively changing one of them will lead to unintended consequences in other places.

There are ways for the PCs to get to massive damage output in the system as written. We had one Duergar Berserker (played by my brother) with polearm master and great weapon master who was able to routinely dish out more than 50 damage per round against opponents who did not have high AC, and on a good day with some criticals more than 100. A feat like great weapon master is an example: if you half monster HP, now it‘s as if you add +20 damage to each hit with that feat.

Yeah, I've considered the other ramifications. Personally, how many spells were nerfed compared to AD&D, I am happy with spells being more powerful. Here are two prime examples:

A sleep spell: in AD&D you would get 4-16 orcs (average 10), in 5E you get 1, max 2 if you are lucky. With the proposed change, at least sleep would get 3 orcs typically, and could get 5 if you are lucky. Not as good as AD&D, but better IMO.

A fireball spell: in AD&D was only 6d6 (21), but would kill every orc it hit; in 5E, half will save and still be alive (albeit with only 1 hp on average). But the spell is hardly as effective as it was. With the change, it will be much more effective, but if a bad roll happens and orcs save, they can still survive.

Although characters can do a lot of damage, it takes a pretty optimized build, which I try to discourage as a DM. We have a fighter/rogue (assassin) who is brutal in combat, and my sorlock in the CoS game is powerful as well (even without a ton of min/maxing).

The goal is to speed up combat. By keeping PC HP lower, but monster damage the same, it increases the risk of battle (something sorely missing in 5E IMO, unless you have hordes, etc.). By lowering monster HP, combat takes half as long (theoretically, a bit more than half in practice).

Now, I plan to return to casting times, spell interruption, etc. to balance it out. We have play-tested it and it works well so far.

 

[dave2008]

Why not just increase the duration? 1 minute becomes 2 or 5, whatever makes sense. I am kinda with @Saelorn on this one. If it doesn't have a "limit" what does that mean for everything else.

For example, what if your in a big battle (field or war type scenario) where your are battling for an hour/hours. Does it make sense for the spell to last the entire length of the "encounter" or should there be some limit. Personally, I think more clearly defined limits are better.

Now, if you want to say an "encounter" is 5 minutes and "battle" is any number of encounters required to resolve the battle. Then encounter length spells make sense to me

 

[DND_Reborn]

The idea of an encounter to me is pretty obvious.

Why increase the duration if doing so just makes it last for the "encounter" anyway?

A "big battle" is a series of encounters, as you say.

For tables who like time limits it works fine, it is the way it has been done for decades after all.

But it brings to mind another idea: why limit concentration spells to a time? What, after one minute you can no longer focus on it? Whether you are 1st level or 20th, those entangle, faerie fire, and heroism spells are just too difficult to hold onto once 60 seconds ticks over to 61?

Maybe when the time limit expires, a concentration check could be made to continue it? So, it won't be indefinite (usually). I already agree with many people that concentration checks should be spellcasting checks and not CON saves.

 

[Shiroiken]

That got me thinking back to Basic where an encounter was always a full turn (i.e. 10 minutes) because a round was 10-seconds then and you would have 60 rounds in a turn. Most encounters will never go that long in terms of rounds (IIRC, my own experience was about 42-45 rounds once) and the additional left-over time is used for bandaging wounds, searching bodies, cleaning weapons, resting sore muscles, etc.

Hmm... I seem to recall in 1E that a round was 1 minute and a turn was 10, but everything else is the same. Also, I've never had a combat go more than 25 rounds in any edition except in 4E (because a lot of battle devolved into 1 monster left with HP but was no real threat to the party, taking forever to finish). The one that went into the 20s was an epic 3E fight against a sorcereress, her dozens of undead minions, and a dracolich, so it took a long time to defeat. That you've done in the 40s is kinda amazing.

In other words, make the "round" into an abstract quantity of time which allow each person a turn. Spells are already instant, 1 round, or 1 minute in encounter situations. We can basically think of them really as "now", "until I go again", or "encounter". Anything longer is typically an hour or more.

Sigh... I don't know. It is getting late and this probably won't make sense. I'll revist it when I have slept. Cheers.

It makes a level of sense, but it simply doesn't matter IMO. The specific durations of everything only matter in relation to the durations of everything else. Making this change really won't impact your game in any meaningful way, except for the potential for some players that might attempt to abuse the definition of "encounter." Because of this, I see no need to make such a change, but if it works for your group, go right ahead.

 

[DND_Reborn]

1E was a minute, I was referring to Basic. As for the those really long encounters, yeah they were epic LOL.

The biggest benefit as I see it as not having to track 1-minute long spells or features (annoying in general and bad for the DM when you have multiple things to track). The fact that for many tables that few encounters last more than 10 rounds just makes doing this even more logical.