[4e] How long are your combats?

[Vadin]

This question relates to an idea for an alternative power scheme for 4e wherein a player builds up a number of charges gained from at-will powers to fuel encounter and daily powers. This question is also just a general point of interest for me as to how long other players spend in combat.

On average, how many rounds do your 4e encounters last? Is this average higher or lower at different tiers? At different ends of tiers? Some levels at which this number would be especially useful: levels 1, 5, 10, 11, 16, 20, 21, 25, and 30. What are some different factors that change the length of your combats?

[dsmiles]

For my groups, it has always depended on the tactics of the party. Whether they do a deliberate or hasty attack, or a deliberate or hasty defense. Doing a defense takes longer than an attack, and a hasty attack can take longer than a deliberate attack (i.e. the party goes in with no plan vs having a well-thought-out plan). I'd say an average hasty attack takes about 10-12 rounds, were a deliberate attack may take about 5-8 rounds. A hasty defense takes about 10-12 rounds, and a deliberate defense may take about 15 rounds. It all depends on how good your players are at tactics.

[Hal]

It also depends on the DM. Are you throwing a fully developed encounter at them, with several different classes of monster? Are you throwing a solo monster at them? Are there minions, or are all of the mooks higher than that?

DMs have a lot of control over combat duration because of this.

[Kurald Galain]

On average, how many rounds do your 4e encounters last?
Four or five rounds.

Sometimes a few more rounds of "cleanup" are needed, but those are a foregone conclusion so most DMs around here don't feel the need to play them out.

Combats with solos last longer, about eight or nine rounds usually. Often, this is the result only of the ludicrous amount of hit points solos get, and this gets tedious.

What also makes combat longer (but also boring) are either high-defense monsters that cause attack penalties and live in terrain that hampers the players; or incorporeal monsters that regenerate and have weakening attacks.

[AB]

In heroic tier, around 10 rounds. But this is pure playtime, no "Oh, I´ve to check the rules of Spell "Greater Cheese of Awesome" in the Forgotten Spellcompendiums Players Guide of Exalted Mortis, this may take a while...".

[valadil]

Well, there's combat and then there's combat. It depends on the type of fight we're talking about. A random encounter that poses no real challenge is probably going to last 2-3 rounds. A boss fight can last 10 or more. How many random encounters you face is something that varies from group to group.

I've heard that optimized characters can be stupid powerful at later levels, but I haven't seen it first hand. I was talking to some friends who went to Anonycon about their paragon experiences. A few groups were able to end encounters, even boss fights, on the first turn.

[AllisterH]

5-7 and like others it depends on what TYPE of monsters we deal with (and also what type of party we are in).

[tcrudisi]

This question relates to an idea for an alternative power scheme for 4e wherein a player builds up a number of charges gained from at-will powers to fuel encounter and daily powers. This question is also just a general point of interest for me as to how long other players spend in combat.

On average, how many rounds do your 4e encounters last? Is this average higher or lower at different tiers? At different ends of tiers? Some levels at which this number would be especially useful: levels 1, 5, 10, 11, 16, 20, 21, 25, and 30. What are some different factors that change the length of your combats?

For the enemy: Soldiers + Controllers = very long combat (8+ rounds)
All other types? 4-5 rounds

That pretty much holds true (for my groups) throughout both heroic and epic (I have never played paragon).

However, optimization can really change things. In one game we only had 3 players show up and the combats were taking 7-8 rounds due to low dpr (only one striker) and the fact the DM was giving us xp values equal to 6 players (we optimized and wanted a challenge).

[Yakk]

Most fights I have done recently have been multiple-phase affairs, where a few rounds into the fight a new supply of opponents show up. Or where the fight goes from a holding action to a chasing one (as the boss tries to escape, leaving his fanatical guards behind to slow the PCs down).

If you go with the fuel method, I'd have daily powers be fueled by encounters, and encounter powers be fuelled by rounds. This means you build up a supply of daily powers by persisting over encounters (encouraging longer days), and your encounter powers and daily powers are not fungible (you cannot turn one into the other).

Note that daily power resource management is important, because it lets players deal with extra hard/easy fights due to die rolls and/or DM plans and/or unforeseen consequences.

[Saph]

Kurald's figures are the most accurate in my experience. Combat will typically be over in 4-5 rounds. Minus a round for an unusually short one, plus a round or two for an unusually long one.

If the combat is taking more than 6-7 rounds, it probably means you're fighting a solo (since solos have a tediously large number of HP) or it means the DM has specifically set things up to create a long battle (respawning enemies, unreachable enemies, unusual movement conditions, etc).

[Hzurr]

For my PCs (6 PCs, currently level 11-12ish), a typical combat is about 7-9 rounds (which is longer than typical, since with the additional PC I typically have to add an additional monster or two). I think the longest encounter we've every had was about 16 rounds (The solo we fought last session with waaaay too many hitpoints was 14 rounds).

[Decoy Lockbox]

The party in my game is lvl 8, and combats tend to take 4-6 rounds. I shave monster HP down to 75% of what it normally would be, and have them deal increased damage to compensate (I usually use the "high normal" expression for a monster about 4 levels higher). I also homebrew almost all the monsters they face, so that might be skewing the combat time as well.

[DabblerWizard]

I'm most familiar with heroic tier battles, just to be clear.

5-7 rounds sounds about right. It's worth noting, though, that not all rounds are equal in the amount of time it takes to run through them.

Some rounds can take a few minutes if all the players are ready to act, and some can take hours if players are new, not used to a power, facing a unique tactical situation, etc.

There have been times when I've secretly subtracted HP from NPCs just to make a battle end faster. There's no need to belabor a battle that's already obviously vastly in the PCs favor. I have however, made battles where the PCs were required to drop their weapons and beg for mercy, or die. :smallwink: They naturally chose to save the lives of their very well thought out characters instead of having to face the pain of rolling a new one, as I expected.

[cupkeyk]

Our longest one so far was against a Chimera, we were level 9. a fighter, a barbarian, a wizard and a ranger. 7 rounds.

4-5 sounds right. it's usually longer than that, but the late rounds are us gloating and torturing the survivors in initiative order. If by teh fifth round the baddie still seems like it has a fighting chance, the ranger whines, "it's too powerful"

[Colmarr]

In early heroic, it was extremely unusual for a fight to last past round 6.

Now in late heroic (currently level 9), it's not unusual for a fight to get to round 8. It's generally only boss or massive fights that reach round 10 though.

Note: We have 6 PCs. Not sure how that affects the numbers.

[Vadin]

All very helpful responses.

Thanks for the advice, Yakk. You are quite clearly absurdly good at balancing things and coming up with things for the 4e system (I actually have one or two of your threads from the Homebrew forum bookmarked in my '4e - House Rules' folder). Can you proffer an estimate as to how many Charges (in a system where a player gains one Charge per round) an encounter power would cost to be balanced? My gut says two or three, but I'm not sure.

Instead of doing a whole homebrew class, I'm going to try and retool the power system into something along the lines of what Yakk suggested. For the purposes of full disclosure I should note that this is for a 4e game of Pokemon (with the standard D&D races and fantasy elements blended in) that will take the players from level 11 to 19, all the way through the paragon tier, set around the same time as Lucario was from in Lucario And The Mystery Of Mew (no potions or pokemon centers, pokeballs are just for travel and safety and don't include brainwashing and can always be resisted if the pokemon doesn't want to enter, and both humans and pokemon utilizing armor and weaponry).