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Message: <blockquote data-quote="wedgeski" data-source="post: 5451084" data-attributes="member: 16212">Four hours is our designated 4E session length on sunday afternoons. After 3+ years of doing it weekly, I think I can at least speak with authority on what *I* expect to get out of it.. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />The earliest I can expect people to turn up is 15 minutes early. More likely, they will turn up either exactly on time or a few minutes late. Since we're only just squeezing in the 1pm-5pm slot without annoying several significant-others, I don't have much hope of changing this, so I just roll with it. There follows ten minutes of settling in and chat which I think is important to get everyone relaxed and sat down and with hot/cold/whatever beverages in front of them, and 5-minutes of recap. This leaves 3.75 hours of my 4 hours.Cutting to the chase, at that point I would expect each session to fall into one of three profiles: all RP, RP and *one* combat encounter, or all *one* combat encounter.Pure roleplaying sessions, or sessions with skill use/skill challenges, happen pleasingly often but I do have players who get fidgety if they go whole afternoons "without hitting something". I don't have a problem with this, it's how they like their D&D and they're quite happy to sit in support of the roleplayers and skill-monkeys at the table if the situation calls for it. I try to avoid two sessions in a row without a combat, or without some kind of tactical challenge involving the application of an edged weapon in some form.Sessions which only have one combat encounter, which may or may not eat the entire afternoon, may sound painful to those out there who like to make fast progress through the game, but it's something we've got used to.We have five PC's, two with companions, all operating at Paragon level. These guys aren't optimisers and can quickly find themselves in trouble if they're not careful... which means they're careful most of the time. So a serious encounter which might take five or six rounds or more to come to a conclusion can easily take 90+ minutes, and that's with a keen eye towards avoiding the tell-tale grind at the end of the fight. The result is that I've modified the way I design encounters so that, given they're going to last a while, there's always something interesting going on.When I extrapolate that principle into big, campaign-critical encounters or denouements, a single combat can easily eat the entire session. But, no-one seems to mind based on the feedback I've got, and I certainly don't mind running long fights as long as there's enough to keep me interested as well as the players. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />This post is already too long but in terms of getting the best of our time during the game, I have several crib-sheets with often-referenced rules, well-prepared encounter notes with Initiatives already rolled, and where possible, pre-prepared battle-mats (something I should do more of though). We absolutely subscribe to the "make a ruling, move on, someone other than me look it up" school of thought.To reference the OP, for four combat encounters that are anything more than "You encounter two orcs and kill them" would be a pipe-dream, but I don't think it would make the game any better anyway.</blockquote>

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