Some Statistics from the first 25 sessions of my last 3E campaign

[el-remmen]

Interesting stuff, el-remmen. Another question: have you kept track of the average length (in real time) of each session? And, more specifically, average length in real time of each combat? I'd be curious to see those numbers.

I've kept similar data for my last couple of 3.X campaigns, and was especially interested in how many combats per hour we could run. This speed-of-combat (or lack thereof) was the major breaking point for my group with regards to 3.X. For the most part, combats can be fairly quick at low levels (10-20 minutes), but by mid-level they settle into 1 combat per hour...and only go up from there.

Bottom line breaking point: it just takes too long to run 3.X combat at just about all levels. (I don't want to hijack the thread with a tangent topic, but speed-of-combat is the first thing with which I'll measure and judge 4E: it's gotta improve for us to play D&D again. For what it's subjectively worth, I'd like to see roughly a half-hour per combat ceiling at all levels).

Like I said before, I have meant to keep those records, but in the heat of the moment I always forget. Even if I remember to look at the clock as initiative is called for, I don't remember until way too long after the combat is over to look at the time again.

I will try again.

BUT, that being said I don't think our combats are too long time-wise, nor do I agree about a 30 minute ceiling. Combats are as long as they need to be. Sometimes brief, sometimes (though VERY rarely) nearly all of a session. It depends on the environment, the # of combatants and the stakes of the battle. In my last campaign, we had 30 and 40-some-odd round battles with 9th or 10th level characters that were as fun in round 1 as they were in round 45.

 

[Umbran]

But that might not be that helpful of a distinction. Better to do averages at each level.

Level 2: Mean: 6.7 rds. Median: 7, Mode: 7
Level 3: Mean: 8.5 rds. Median: 7, Mode: 4
Level 4: Mean: 9.8 rds. Median: 11, Mode: None/All

Looked at this way, yeah they are getting longer as they go up in level, but only about a round longer each time. I can live with that.

Well, note that your sample sizes are getting smaller as you do that. That makes me wonder what the standard deviation is on each of those averages. If you are seeing increased scatter, the increased mean is probably more a matter of random chance and/or your selection of encounters than anything else.

 

[Jdvn1]

Well, note that your sample sizes are getting smaller as you do that. That makes me wonder what the standard deviation is on each of those averages. If you are seeing increased scatter, the increased mean is probably more a matter of random chance and/or your selection of encounters than anything else.

Why is sample size decreasing?

 

[McBard]

Like I said before, I have meant to keep those records...

Ah, right. I now see where Lanefare asked that question in the second post! Sorry for the repeat question....

...nor do I agree about a 30 minute ceiling. Combats are as long as they need to be.

Right, I don't mean any formal 30-minute ceiling. I'd just like to see the overall speed of D&D combat increase: grand, important battles could perhaps take an hour, but I'd like to see typical mid- and high-level ones on average only take about half an hour or less. With 4E's loss of iteratives, this may happen. We'll see.

And I realize, theoretically, that long battles can be "fun". However, our group (after 8 years and a handful of 3.X campaigns) feel that, in practice, longer battles have more often than not become a grind--despite interesting map schemes and dynamic foes and challenges. YMMV.

 

[broghammerj]

Are you planning on switching to 4E? I would be curious if you showed equivalent stats for similar levels in 4E. Obviously the "speeding up" of gameplay is meant to be in real world time which it sounds like you didn't keep track of. I can't blame you....it would be a bit tedious. However, you're group has played a lot of sessions and if you figure out the rounds of combat per equivalent number of sessions then I think you could extrapolate how fast gameplay was.

For example if you played 25, 4E sessions which resulted in 47 combat encounters with 321 rounds of combat then both your combat encounters and rounds of combat would be greater in 4E, therefore one may conclude that 4E gameplay is faster. That being said, purists will argue the experiment is null unless you play with similar characters, similar levels, and play the same adventure.

 

[Jack99]

In case anyone is interested in stats:

We have played 12 times so far in my latest campaign.
All encounters are average party level +3-+6
Format is: # of players, average lvl, length of session, enc# - # of npcs/monsters (duration of encounter, rounded up to the nearest 15 min)

1st: 6 players, lvl 5, 5 hours played, enc1: 3 npcs (45m), enc2: 9 npcs (1h45m)
2nd: 6 players, lvl 5, 5 hours played, enc1: 2 npcs (1h15), enc2: 1 npc (15m), enc3: 1 npc (5 min)
3rd: 6 players, lvl 5, 5 hours played, enc1: 10 npcs (3h45 - ends in almost TPK)
4th: 6 players, lvl 5, 5 hours played, enc1: 9 npcs (3h30), enc2: 1 npc (30m)
5th: 6 players, lvl 6, 8 hours played, enc1: 3 npcs (45m), enc2: 6 npcs (2h30), enc3: 5 npcs (1h30), enc4: 2 npcs (1h15)
6th: 6 players, lvl 6, 5 hours played, enc1: 1 npc (1h), enc2: 1 npc (3h15)
7th: 6 players, lvl 6, 5 hours played, enc1: 2 npcs (30m), enc2: 7 npcs (2h15)
8th: 5 players lvl 7, 5 hours played, enc1: 1 npc: (45m), enc2: 6 npcs (2h45)
9th: 6 players lvl 7, 5 hours played, enc1: 6 npcs: (4h)
10th: 5 players lvl 7, 5 hours played, enc1: 2 npcs (30m), enc2: 7 npcs (2h15)
11th: 5 players lvl 7, 5 hours played, enc1: 6 npcs (1h30), enc2: 5 npcs (2h45)
12th: 5 players lvl 8, 5 hours played, enc1: 4 npcs (15m), enc2: 2 npcs (1h), enc3: 7 npcs: (2h30)

Cheers

 

[el-remmen]

Why is sample size decreasing?

Because in way the data was broken up in the section he is quoting, there were fewer encounters at 4th level than there were at 3rd or 2nd. At least, I think that's what he meant.

 

[el-remmen]

Are you planning on switching to 4E?

As of now, no. If it turns out I do end up liking the ruleset then my next campaign (which won't be for a few years yet) will use them - but as it stands, I am not happy with the flavor of 4E and don't see it as easily fixed by houserules as I found 3E to be.

 

[theredrobedwizard]

Interesting statistics. I still can't wrap my head around it taking 25 sessions to get to level 4, though. Six sessions per level seems a bit... lots of sessions-y. Maybe my group just blitzes through things faster than yours, I'm not sure.

For reference, we just finished up Pathfinder Adventure Path 1: Rise of the Runelords. It took us 6 1/2 months (~26 sessions) to get to level 15.

-TRRW

 

[Jdvn1]

Interesting statistics. I still can't wrap my head around it taking 25 sessions to get to level 4, though. Six sessions per level seems a bit... lots of sessions-y. Maybe my group just blitzes through things faster than yours, I'm not sure.

For reference, we just finished up Pathfinder Adventure Path 1: Rise of the Runelords. It took us 6 1/2 months (~26 sessions) to get to level 15.

For the record, there are 6 PCs and in those 25 sessions they went from 2nd level (and 0 XP) to 4th level (actually they hit 4th level at Session #21).

It's closer to 5 sessions/level. Still, 2 sessions/level seems really fast to me!