What was your largest/longest single combat?

[Thorindale]

About four hours. It was an encounter in the lair of a mountain giant with all its cronies (hill giants, ogres, and trolls - as per the 1st Ed Fiend Folio). It was nearly a TPK.

 

[megamania]

8 hours? Man, that's something else!

My longest was about 4 1/2 hours and was pretty recent - the finale to the Dark Sun adventure Road to Urik with a mass battle between about 220 troops and the PCs on one side and some 350 enemies on the other. .

That was an awesome battle for my group also. Especially since this is when they came to understand the game fully. (rules and stategy) It lasted about 3-4 hours for us also for set up and closure. I had pre-rolled most of the events to unfold during the battle to keep the group going.


GO DARKSUN!

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

We've had two different battles that both took 2 sessions to resolve (about 6 hours per session). IIRC, both involved the BBEG of the adventure in question and the major factor in prolonging the battles was either healing capability (fast healing/regeneration or cure spells) or mobility (flying, climbing on the ceiling, different terrain elevations, etc.). Oh yeah, and lots of minions attacking in waves.

 

[megamania]

Other Classics-

Under a Darksun Storyhour A Lord of Flies Vampiric Gith commanding several Gith clans fought Nibenese Templars, Vieled Alliance and a Free tribe during a sand storm with the heroes exiting the dungeon into the mess. That took me over 6 hours to play out (Under a Darksun SH I run anyone and everyone)

Forgotten Realms a few years ago I had my group take on a fortress surrounded with Hill giants (some with psionic powers) that was long and tough. Lost half the party when a psionically charged boulder struck, critted, nearly maxed AND tossed the hero over the cliff while still fighting a now dead giant. Total damage was well over 250 (he had about 80).

Nothing too big in Eberron (yet). Maybe a few battles that took 1- 1 1/2 hours to complete (Shadow of Last War comes to mind)

 

[Delthius]

I can't remember the number of hours, just that it took us almost an entire day to (stopping for munchies of course) to complete a battle in G2. The Frost Giant module is set up so that many enemies can prepare ahead and come in waves. Even with the Hammer of Thunderbolts and its accessories we were down many players when the end finally came. 1st Ed was greate, Gygax was a genius.

 

[farscapesg1]

I can't say exactly how many rounds it lasted, but we spent an entire 7 hours clearing out the Lucky Monkey Inn in the Shackled City adventure path. Unfortunately, we brought this upon ourselves by bringing the whole lot of them down on us at once

 

[Thanee]

Pretty much a whole session. 15th~16th level party vs 18th level drow archmage and his cheesy anti-Scry-Teleport death trap. I think that combat lasted about 6~8h long, including several retreats and reforms and whatnot.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Tarrasque Wrangler]

I opened my campaign a couple years ago in media res with a pitched battle. The PCs were part of a conscripted army defending a border town from an invading army of gnolls and orcs led by a half-black dragon. I designed my own mass combat system that borrowed liberally from the old Legend of the Five Rings battle system. Whole thing took about two sessions to complete, about 8 hours total and dozens of rounds.

High point: I got to take out my girlfriend's monk with a Mask of the Skull from the BBEG. It was her first character and her first campaign. I'm evil.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

Pool of Radiance module.. the 5th level group assaulted the Necromancers Tower... and I mean assaulted.
5 stories up, 3 stories down. During the fight with the entry guards, the group split up.. and went looking for more opponents.. or something like that. Between the alarms and party members randomly opening doors to bring more bad guys to the fight.. it took 6 and a half hours real time.

Of course it did not help that I was using two house rules.. one was armor converting damage to subdual, meaning they knocked out some of thier enemies and didn't get around to coup de gras... minutes later they would regain consciousness and rejoin the battle...
And the other was a custom spell the necromancers had, a short term Raise spell designed to bring a recently deceased minion back to fight for a couple rounds of nastyness.
One guard they fought at least 4 times before finally finishing him.

It was a very memorable battle

 

[KenM]

Four or five level 7-9 PC's going up against a bodak, a CR 15 demon or devil. 26 rounds, 4 hours real time.