On average, how rounds does combat last in your games?

[harpy]

When Monster Manual V came out in '07 and I read the design article (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dd/20070803a) about it, one of the things that has stuck with me these last couple of years was Noonan's assertion "A typical monster has a lifespan of five rounds."

After over a decade of playing euro games, that was a significant highlight for me. I'd spent years playing "efficiency engine" games like Puerto Rico, where the number of actions you had in the overall game were very limited, and so squeezing as much out of each of those actions was essential to victory.

If it really is the case that on average, a monster is only going to last five rounds, then the overall combat system can be framed and more precision can be made with how various game elements function within that time frame.

So, I'm just wondering, does five rounds feel about right? More? Less? Remember, this is averaging, ancedotal 21 round mega battles is doubtfully the norm.

Also, I'm not sure how much of a difference the editions make, at least between 3.0, 3.5, Pathfinder and 4e. There could be some differences, but they seem to be hovering around the same length.

[Foryn Gilnith]

If they stay and fight to the death? Yeah, five rounds; but the figure is ultimately irrelevant. Between pre-battle preparation, fleeing, and general machination, my enemies of my PCs have a campaign lifespan measured in hours and often days or perhaps weeks.

Approximate Figures:
I'm in a first-level game and a wolf fight lasted five rounds.
When my unoptimized party fought some zombies it took four rounds.
This gestalt game I'm in has lasted for a dozen rounds, and is still going; but it's an outlier of a campaign. The battles are complex and tactical.

[Tyger]

This is going to really vary depending on a huge number of factors.

1) Do the PCs optimize? A team of PCs with huge save or die spells, or massive damage dealing capacity will deal with an encounter far faster than one which does not.

2) Is the combat static? What I mean is does the party enter a room, see the 4 monsters and engage them until they are all gone. Or does the party move into the room to fight those 4, only to discover that there are 5 others, plus 6 more enroute through an open door?

3) What tactics are the PCs and the DM using? A rogue going in invisibly to set a trap, or like tactics will draw a combat out hugely.

4) The number of opponents vs. number of PCs is also relatively important. Sure, 4 PCs can likely take out 4 creatures in 5 rounds. But those same 4 PCs against the same CR equivalent encounter with 15 creatures will take much, much longer to mop them all up.

So, short answer, sure, a monster is probably good for 5 rounds or less. But a combat... that's a far more complicated thing to pin down that way.

[jokey665]

If combat takes more than the surprise round, I'm doing something wrong.

[potatocubed]

If you're the one with the surprise round, I'm doing something wrong. :smalltongue:

EDIT: More usefully, I've just done the maths and figured out that the average combat for our 4e group lasts about 12 rounds. I also note that this doesn't change between Heroic and Paragon tiers - an equal-CR fight still takes about 12 rounds for us.

I haven't played 3.5 in long enough to tell you what the average rounds per combat was then.

[Mman497]

In most of my games combat is about three rounds of run in and kill everything that isn't the party.

[Person_Man]

Obviously it varies widely depending upon your group and what level you're playing at. Very low level and very high level combat takes 1 or 2 rounds to decide. (Even if you haven't killed every enemy, you've killed or debuffed enough enemies that they don't have a real chance). At mid levels combat tends to last around 4-6 rounds. So I'd say that the statement is roughly accurate for my group.

[pffh]

About 1-6 rounds seems about right (counting the surprise round as #1).
When the players are close to or even are fully and have a general idea of what they'll be dealing with (big monster, flying monster, arcanist, divine caster etc) they can usually end it in the surprise round.

When they aren't buffed more then their usual day to day dungeon buffs and the encounter either gets the drop on them or they aren't sure what they are about to fight it lasts 2-3 rounds.

When they either aren't buffed at all and/or the monster is used in a way they aren't used to ,like the fact that I had a dragon actually use it's flight in a battle took them by surprise because the last DM usually just had the monsters stand there and get beaten and only using their damaging abilities (great storyteller and rp-er though), the battle lasts about 5-6 rounds.
That is if they don't figure out some simple way to use their stuff and end it in 1-2 rounds anyway, bloody players and their awesome plans that I can't say no to.

If it lasts more then that then it's a TPK.

[theMycon]

It depends:

In a default (non-plot heavy; I.E. the DM didn't give him enough immunities to counter all our normal tricks or the strengths specifically to counter default tactics)- the battle "lasts" three-to-ten rounds, but it's decided by the end of round one.

In a mini-boss (Plot matters, is supposed to be a legitimate threat to kill the whole party; can counter our normal moves but not really worth busting out the big ones he have in reserve)- twelve to fifteen rounds, and it's a real fight 'til the last three. We might even do "hit, run, heal, buff, and come back to hit again" tactics, drawing it out to five minutes game time.

In a true boss situation (Where he's immune to all of our default tricks, a few ones we've discussed in front of the DM but never tried, and is powerful enough to snicker at most normal strategies)- Really, damn long, but it's decided in two rounds at most; 'cause we were saving our really good tricks for a situation just like this and the horde of mooks don't even slow us down.


(The best exception to this was actually my favorite battle last campaign, where it ended with my permanently-blinded, disjunctioned, naked save for his two working pieces of equipment because he was STR damaged to -3 but animated through a bull's strength potion & enlarge person spell, Monk15 in a fist fight with the (also blind, weapon sundered, out of spells above level 4 and out of dispel magics) Cleric19 BBEG. It was a close, unpredicatable fight to the end, I survived largely because she decided I wasn't a threat after disjunction/blind/our cleric dies; and after "winning" one of the spells keeping me moving ran out and I lay paralyzed for three days before dying of dehydration.)

[Tyndmyr]

4) The number of opponents vs. number of PCs is also relatively important. Sure, 4 PCs can likely take out 4 creatures in 5 rounds. But those same 4 PCs against the same CR equivalent encounter with 15 creatures will take much, much longer to mop them all up.

I find that the opposite is true. 4vs 4 seems to result in the longest combats for any given CR. Fighting a single baddie results in him being crushed by action economy, and fighting hordes of weaklings results in AOEs/cleave/etc racking up a huge body count in short order.

[ericgrau]

Ya, that sounds about right. One group I was in with an evoker and TWF ranger/barb managed to end fights in about 2-3 rounds at higher levels, while another DM intentionally extended fights. But the norm has been around 5 rounds.

This is why I have often stressed economy of action. If you get something nice but you spent a round to get it while the other option being compared to it didn't, it may not be as nice as you think. For example if you boost your damage by less than 25%, you'd be better off attacking for 1 more round instead. Even more so since the first round is more important than later rounds. This character with supposedly higher stats is actually worse than one without. Or if you spend a round on a counter to another tactic, guess what, you just lost your action too. And if it's a prevention not a counter, there's a 50:50 chance you also lost your action and the other guy still affected you during the most important 20% of the combat.

[Hallavast]

When Monster Manual V came out in '07 and I read the design article (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dd/20070803a) about it, one of the things that has stuck with me these last couple of years was Noonan's assertion "A typical monster has a lifespan of five rounds."


I found this article rather deficient. It assumes a very specific sytle of encounter, and deliberately throws out regard for any other. This article only provides good advice for designing monster encounters to be one-shot instances or random encounters. I wouldn't use the advice for any other kind of encounter.

[drengnikrafe]

In general, combat doesn't exist at all (I really need to get my hands on a MM). When it does, it generally lasts 2-3 rounds. My party consists of damage dealers, and contains no means of eliminating large quantities of enemies at one time (our old group had me as a PC, and I was the arcane caster almost every time. Now that our old DM left... backstorybackstorybackstory no arcane caster), so I can't, in good conscience, send hordes at them. Therefore, they just cut right through my increasingly powerful monsters.

[Ernir]

In a "you meet baddies on an open field, time to fight" scenario... I'd guess 2-4 rounds is more appropriate in my groups. In terrain-heavy, tactical battles, closer to 5-7. Very rarely 10+, when I bring out the "tough to kill" monsters, or waves of reinforcements.

[Stephen_E]

Probably 5-6 rounds is the medium.
The average would probaly be around 8 rounds.
Can be as low as 2 rounds, or over 20 rounds.

In general the worst combats in my view are the "tough" single monster combats as they tend to either see the monster overwhelmed by mass actions, or the party smashed by the monsters special abilities, massive damage output, invunerabilities. Very hard to get a middle ground. Our GM tends to balance them by having the monster split it's attacks, which works for balance, but is so silly tactically.

Stephen E

[arguskos]

In general the worst combats in my view are the "tough" single monster combats as they tend to either see the monster overwhelmed by mass actions, or the party smashed by the monsters special abilities, massive damage output, invunerabilities. Very hard to get a middle ground. Our GM tends to balance them by having the monster split it's attacks, which works for balance, but is so silly tactically.

Stephen E
Observe, Another_Poet has fixed your issue! Behold, the Solo Monsters (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=6027525) fix! It's a good one indeed.

[harpy]

UPDATE

So I asked this question on five different RPG forums and was able to get plenty of responses.

Averaging everyone's averages together ended up with a result of 5.86 rounds.

From the perspective of the original article I'd cited, this could make some sense. A surprise or first initial round is often going to involve positioning, buffing or other preparations and then when the party really mixed it up with the encounter there is an on average of five rounds in which the creature is going to be functional.

As so many people pointed out, there can be a great deal of variance, with hit and run skirmish tactics, or other evolution of the encounter.

I doubt that any of the editions of the game can really take those kinds of factors into account, so in the design process, in terms of monster stats, it has to really look at roughly five rounds of exchanges between the monster and the party, whether those exchanges are consecutive or spread out in a more dense tactical situation.

[Stephen_E]

I was just reminded of 1 of the "slow" combats.

It was quick at start with people dropping on both sides until it was down to my Driud in Dire Bat form with a cast Call Lightning (no natural spell) and a Construct statue Demigorgon in a underground cavern.

I was down to hoping to kill it before my lightning bolts ran out but the construct got frustrated and climbed onto these huge chandaliers to swing and leap at me. If he managed to hit me AND siccessfully grapple me I was dead (TPK). If he just hit me several times I was probably dead. But at the same time everytime he missed or I won the grapple he fell and took damage.:smallwink:

As it turned out he died with my having 1 lightning bolt left. If he hadn't tried to leap at me repeatedly I would've had to retreat and leave the party to die. :smallbiggrin:

Stephen E

[Eon]

Hmmm I'm guessing 2-6 rounds. We were a level 1-2 party that had no clue how to optimize in 4.0...
Of course combat took half an hour because some people got distracted with music or games. Or just not paying attention. Or taking 5 minutes for the rogue to decide that he is going to Sneak Attack the enemy. 5 MINUTES :smallfurious:

[Dust]

In 3.5, combat usually lasts 6-10 rounds on average.
In other systems, 3-5 rounds seems to be the sweet spot.

[FMArthur]

Usually my combat lasts very rounds due mostly to the fact that my players never stop the enemy from gathering aid and generally try to bite off more than they can chew on a regular basis.

[Bagelz]

it certainly depends:
if the encounter is one hard creature, your looking to 5-12 rounds. if your looking at a group of 6 or more, some are going to die the first two rounds, and some will die later when the party gets around to it, so average 5 rounds of lifespan is about right.

it also depends how many pc's you have. In 3.x edition I always adjusted HP to last just long enough not to be boring. I've killed monsters off just a little early if I dropped a pc, or i've doubled hp for single monsters versus 7 pcs. I've combat last 3 rounds, and combats last 15 rounds.

[Inhuman Bot]

Fairly long.

Warjacks are hardy and armed to the teeth.

PCs are flimsy and armed to the shins.