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Riffington
2009-05-07, 08:21 AM
I am actually curious about both senses:
1. How many Earth hours do your battles tend to take?
2. How many game rounds does it usually take before your battles are a foregone conclusion? For these purposes, I define "foregone conclusion" as "at this point the apparently-winning side could spend a round doing nothing, and (absent a crit or something) would still be clearly winning"

Include what level(s) you are talking about in your answer, if relevant.

The biggest reason I ask is that I often hear two things that seem contradictory.
A. Combat, particularly at high levels, is a foregone conclusion after a round or two.
B. Swordsages need to take Adaptive Style, while Crusaders have the best maneuver recovery mechanism.

Maybe it's different groups who espouse A and B? Or maybe it's the same groups, just different fight types?

Saph
2009-05-07, 08:36 AM
Hard to say in terms of rounds - what really determines how long the battle will take is the layout, and that's up to the DM. Higher levels tend to lead to slower combats in terms of real time, but faster ones in terms of game time, due to the large number of abilities characters have.

In the level 10-12 game I played a year or two ago, combats were usually decided in the second round. First round was everyone engaging, and third round finished things off. Boss battles, however, took three or four times as long.

In terms of hours, though, I usually find that a shortish encounter takes about an hour, including lead-in and mop-up. Longish is two hours, very short is half an hour, and I've DMed occasional monster battles which took five hours of continuous combat.

As a player, I once fought one combat which went on for two months of real time. It was a combination of a slow party, a limited amount of gaming time per week (4 hours max) and a functionally infinite number of enemies. Kind of fun, just to say that you've done it, though it was pretty repetitive at the time.

- Saph

Olo Demonsbane
2009-05-07, 08:36 AM
I am actually curious about both senses:
1. How many Earth hours do your battles tend to take?
2. How many game rounds does it usually take before your battles are a foregone conclusion? For these purposes, I define "foregone conclusion" as "at this point the apparently-winning side could spend a round doing nothing, and (absent a crit or something) would still be clearly winning"

Include what level(s) you are talking about in your answer, if relevant.

The biggest reason I ask is that I often hear two things that seem contradictory.
A. Combat, particularly at high levels, is a foregone conclusion after a round or two.
B. Swordsages need to take Adaptive Style, while Crusaders have the best maneuver recovery mechanism.

Maybe it's different groups who espouse A and B? Or maybe it's the same groups, just different fight types?

1. Earth Hours? Maybe .008 hours at low levels, .004 at higher?
2. Low Levels; we never have that. Higher Levels; It is always that. Pretty much.
A. True.
B. Swordsages get so many known maneuvers, that, if you start fighting fire enemies, you want to swap out all of your desert wind stuff. And, IMO, Warblades have the best maneuver recovery system.

Kaiyanwang
2009-05-07, 08:37 AM
Well.. it depends, at least in my experience, from the purpose of the fight.

The creatures involved want to kill each other? Take prisoners? Everybody wants to fight, or someone flee (from the start, I mean)?

Thera objects or people that PC have to save or mantain whole? There are prisoners you have to avoid to arm?

The nature and the enemy is well known? Things can vary a lot.

Sometimes, we have a 1 round fight. "Surprise!" Whack Whack Stab ZZaap. End.

Sometimes, i make the enemies harassing, striking and fleeing away, or striking from the distance. Minutes.

Anyway, yes, generally fight in my campaigns take 3-5 rounds (50% times) 1-2 (30%) 6-10 (10), other (10%). Percentages are indicative, of course.

All of this, 30 minutes - 1,5 hours of earth time. more if we chat a lot :smalltongue:

In my past epic campaing, yes, agree. If you didn't win at round 3, you were dead (exceptions existed, of course, but they often involved "3" substituted with "1"). Earth time: 1 hour, 3 hour. But of awesomeness :smallcool:

JeenLeen
2009-05-07, 09:56 AM
My party ran into the problem of battles taking 3 or 4 hours of real-time, usually less than 5 rounds in-game. It was a combination of each of us having two characters (3 players; 6 character party), being high level (15-18), and some players needing to look up spells or check books for details during battle.

We had a TPK and went to 1 chara/player and instituted rules about having all spell data written down. Battles are now usually 30 minutes (maybe an hour if complicated), ending about the same 5 rounds in-game. It's a lot more fun.

Our battles usually seem even at the beginning, then the enemy appears to be winning, then we turn the tide and win.

Thajocoth
2009-05-07, 11:50 AM
Until 1am.

We can start at 8, 9 or 10 o'clock, but the battle always lasts until 1am. Except the time we started at 7... That one ended at midnight. So 3-5hrs. Should be a bit quicker now, as we're losing two players, bringing us down to 5 party members and the swarm of villagers they're escorting home from their neighboring town's prisons. And one more battle and the villagers are home too. I've been getting faster at taking the enemy's turns... And the players have been getting faster at theirs.

In-game? 6-12 rounds.

It takes 1 round to know how hard the battle will be for the players. If they scatter, they risk TPK and losing. If they band together and hold their ground, they will not fall.

AmberVael
2009-05-07, 12:15 PM
1. Earth Hours? Maybe .008 hours at low levels, .004 at higher?

.008?

Um...
.008th of an hour is... like... less than a minute. About 30 seconds, actually.

I think you're making a mistake with either your numbers, math, or the question.

HailDiscordia
2009-05-07, 12:41 PM
The battles we have seem to be much shorter than most. I would say that minor encounters take around 15-20 minutes, with even the largest of encounters rarely reaching an hour. It does happen from time to time though.

Right now our group is 5 players, plus a druid's companion. And the conjurer frequently has friends dropping in as well. I do try to keep things moving though and often have some strategy worked out ahead of time for the bad guys. We also don't use miniatures which probably speeds things up as well.

Combat is fun, but when you have about 3-3 1/2 hours to play (our usual each week) I don't think anyone wants to spend the whole time killing. Actually, that may not be true...

kjones
2009-05-07, 01:16 PM
It depends on several factors - party level, encounter level relative to party level, the type of enemies, the type of PCs, the type of battlefield.

Lower level battles tend to be quicker in terms of realtime than higher level battles - but often take longer in terms of rounds, since people tend to miss their attacks and what not.

Spellcasters on either side slow everything down - both because they have to choose spells, and because those spells cause effects that take time to resolve.

More challenging encounters generally take longer, unless they end in a TPK.

And web slows everything waaaaaay down.

Specific numbers:
In my current 3.5 game, with party level 9, combats tend to last 1-2 hours, and about 5 rounds. They're often a foregone conclusion after the second or third round, though.

Olo Demonsbane
2009-05-07, 01:54 PM
.008?

Um...
.008th of an hour is... like... less than a minute. About 30 seconds, actually.

I think you're making a mistake with either your numbers, math, or the question.

Yeah, I realized that. Im just stupid.

Reanswering the question:

1. They take anywhere from 15 minutes to 1 hour. This is our standard, not including the quick fights when my assassin death attacks the wizard first turn.

bosssmiley
2009-05-07, 03:22 PM
I am actually curious about both senses:
1. How many Earth hours do your battles tend to take?
2. How many game rounds does it usually take before your battles are a foregone conclusion? For these purposes, I define "foregone conclusion" as "at this point the apparently-winning side could spend a round doing nothing, and (absent a crit or something) would still be clearly winning"

Include what level(s) you are talking about in your answer, if relevant.

Gawd mate, you might as well ask "how long is a piece of string?" I presume by the ToB references you're asking about mid/high-level combat in 3E. Well, even with that narrowing of focus it all depends (natch) on party composition, party level, enemy abilities, player concentration and/or rule knowledge, RL deadlines, etc, ad nauseum...

<wiffles and havers for a bit>

Let's just call it 10 minutes (+/-3) per combat round at mid levels, with most fights lasting 6 rounds (+/-2). So, roughly an hour or so, with a margin of error of anything up to 30 minutes either way, depending on how multiple factors impact that combat. Generally time will tend towards the top of the range if the opposition is multiple creature types, or if there are several complex casters and/or martial interrupt types on the field (usually a given), and down to the lower end for simple brawls.

Wow, when looked at in that way I begin to see why the retro-clone games have been exerting such a pull on me recently: life's too short for combat that requires a spreadsheet. :smallamused:

Eldariel
2009-05-07, 03:29 PM
We usually do most fights in ~10 minutes (smaller ones in 5); everyone thinks their action beforehand and if they wait too long, they skip their turn. Works like a charm, especially with quick mathematicians.

oxybe
2009-05-07, 04:10 PM
Hard to say in terms of rounds - what really determines how long the battle will take is the layout, and that's up to the DM. Higher levels tend to lead to slower combats in terms of real time, but faster ones in terms of game time, due to the large number of abilities characters have.

In the level 10-12 game I played a year or two ago, combats were usually decided in the second round. First round was everyone engaging, and third round finished things off. Boss battles, however, took three or four times as long.

In terms of hours, though, I usually find that a shortish encounter takes about an hour, including lead-in and mop-up. Longish is two hours, very short is half an hour, and I've DMed occasional monster battles which took five hours of continuous combat.

As a player, I once fought one combat which went on for two months of real time. It was a combination of a slow party, a limited amount of gaming time per week (4 hours max) and a functionally infinite number of enemies. Kind of fun, just to say that you've done it, though it was pretty repetitive at the time.

- Saph

this mirrors most of my experience with D&D. my 3rd ed group is pretty large (normally 7 players, though 2 of them are currently away doing on-the-job training for their university courses). the first 2 rounds are the big deciders.

on round 1 the melee guys gets into position/charge, ranged guys start picking away at the weaker looking enemies and the casters start their buffing/debuffing/SoD. afterwards the melee guys start full attacking, ranged guys provide extra support for the melee guys. casters start battlefield manipulation and continue SoD'ing the enemies.

things are a bit different in 4th ed, mostly due to buffs & debuffs lasting less long so the casters just keep pouring them on the enemies.

individual rounds go faster, so instead of having 3-5 round combats 3rd ed takes, ours are probably closer to 10 rounds in 4th ed, give or take 2-3 depending on enemy strength and our dice rolling luck in both editions.

Knaight
2009-05-07, 05:38 PM
About 45 minutes in 3.5, usually 6-8 rounds. 5 minutes is typical for Fudge, but totally epic encounters sometimes go up to half an hour. For instance a giant flying serpent chasing after a jeep shooting mortar rounds at it while two people with jet packs use razor wire to cut redwood trees down on it: 25 minutes.

Thurbane
2009-05-07, 06:18 PM
My group is 6 people (5 players, 1 DM) - with one player out of town and his PC being run as a 2nd character by me. We play 3.5, current character levels 9-10. Our average combat would be around:

4-8 rounds of game time
1/2hr to 1 hr real time

...of course, this can vary quite considerably...

AslanCross
2009-05-07, 08:12 PM
Back when I started, my 6-player party would take approximately 1.5 hours to finish a 6-round encounter. Many of my players had very short attention spans and were beginners, so often they would spend 15 minutes asking what they could do and looking spells up. @_@

Currently, my 4-PC, 2 player RHOD run moves a lot faster. I haven't exactly been paying attention to time since we have whole-day sessions now instead of the 1.5 hour sessions we had when I started 2 years ago. We were playing after school then, so we were stuck in a 4:10-5:30 time slot---and people liked arriving late.

Decoy Lockbox
2009-05-07, 08:49 PM
Back in 3.5, our fights usually took 1-3 rounds, and about 1-2 hours of real time.

In 4e, our fights usually take about 5-10 rounds, and about 1-2 hours of real time.

I really hated how short fights were in 3.5 I remember once we were fighting a hydra that had attacked us on the side of the road. It was supposed to be a really epic fight, since this was the only hydra in the country, and it had been terrorizing travellers for months.

Here is how the fight went:
Me -- lance charge on horseback
other character -- lance charge on horseback

barbarian -- rage, throw club at hydra

Hydra -- death