Six hour combats


log in or register to remove this ad


Big time 3E time eaters

*Indecision
*Attacking Ability scores
*Buffing Ability scores
*Multiple aspect buffs
*Multiple attack rolls
Word. Also:

*Multiple creatures controlled/character (Druids, I'm looking at you)
*And, for my group at least, unfamiliarity with their characters (leading to indecision).
 

I've had a 5-hour combat - 14th level PCs vs a Duergar squadron of 30 or so, mostly 3rd-5th level. Way too long and not that interesting. I guess it was my fault for running a
1e module in 3e.

Edit: OTOH I've learned a lot. I ran an entire adventure with 9 or 10 encounters on Saturday in around 4 hours or so of play time. The trick was: 1st level PCs, and NPC and monster stats came out of Mentzer Basic or Labyrinth Lord, not out of the 3e DMG and MM, both of which have a lot to answer for IMO.
 
Last edited:

14 trolls in a narrow cave against 9th level PCs. The trolls had access to healing magic too (removing fire damage).

It never actually ended. The bookkeeping was horrendous and I called it a stalemate.
 

I just finished up a high-level 3.5e with 8 12-15th level characters.

It probably didn't help that I had 8 PCs. But yeah, combats either went really fast or took hours, particularly climatic battles. They assaulted the Upper Temple of Orcus in Rappan Athuk. I added a few more demons to make it more of a challenge. But things got bogged down fast. The battle lasted 5 hours, real time. A lot of it had to do with summoning creatures and characters going down lists of powers the could implement. Not only that, I, the DM, had to consult lists of powers for the bad guys.

I'm hoping that high level combat in 4e doesn't take as long.
 

To be honest Ulrick, I don't mind if the combat takes 5 hours, I just want there to be more than 5 rounds in 5 hours. :p That seems to be the biggest advantage of 4e so far. The fights will last just as long, but, you'll be doing something more often.
 

14 trolls in a narrow cave against 9th level PCs. The trolls had access to healing magic too (removing fire damage).

It never actually ended. The bookkeeping was horrendous and I called it a stalemate.
Considering that healing also removes non lethal damage equal to the lethal damage it healed, I can see that happening unless the PCs can and are willing to sunder the healing source.
 

Having played and run Champions, and read comics, I think that's to be expected in the genre. 90% of many comics is fighting, anyway.

The trick is to have it be interesting combat.

Isn't "The New Era" the Fusion-based Champions? If so, I suspect that was your problem. I never could enjoy that system.

The combat was interesting, in mechanical and tactical senses. It was just wildly excessively long due to the segments and the VAST array of choices every character had at every juncture. Funny thing was, we were playing this because we thought it ran fast than normal HERO (which was super-slow compared to the system we were used to), but as you had so many more options than normal HERO, it was even slower! We'd all started expecting a moderate lengths (i.e. 1-2 hours of play) dust-up in the desert (at a nuclear missile silo, iirc), but 6 villains (and one of them's riding dragon) vs. four PCs just went on and on and on and on. They still talk about some of it, though, it must be said. Like when the dragon suffocated to death on solidified shadow. Ouch. Still after all that, there was a joint decision Never To Play It Again.
 

I don't know what we do differently, but the longest single fight I've been in once a system is known lasted 2 hours and this was 3.5e(18th level home brew adventure). Champions, 2e/1e/basic D&D all much faster for us. Now I've had extended encounters go over 2 hours, but running battles where they get into what could of been like 5 fights i don't think really count.

The fight in 4e with the kobolds took longer, but system mastery is fairly low now so that is to be expected.

Usually for us fights are over quickly like 30 minutes or so. I think the slowest thing for me was mis-matched saves in groups of enemies, I've since made anything that the group fights in large numbers have the same reflex save, so I can just roll a crap load of 20s and know anything above a 14 is a save. I have 5 color coded 20s each 1 representing monster 1-5, then 6-10 etc. I quickly can blow through a list like this.

Outside of that maybe I just game with machines. when the fighter is up, he is like I hit a AC 35, 38, 29, 23 for 28, 35, 20 and 24. Total turn time like 30 seconds.
 

Remove ads

Top