How long should an average combat last?

[Templarkommando]

Pretty straight forward. I'm curious how many rounds combat lasts for your party at home? In general combat varies a little bit depending on how many players show up, but usually I'm thinking combat ends in the third or fourth round for my home group. Is this normal? Should it be longer/shorter?

[Deimess]

My group's battles have a very large range. I don't think there is really a "normal" length battle. Some battles that I think are going to last a long time last only 3 or 4 rounds because the players expend more resources than I thought they would. Conversely, sometimes battles that I just throw in to spice things up severly cripple the party and can last 7-8 rounds.

The 5 characters in the party are around 13th-14th level and I would say our average battle lasts about 4 rounds.

Every once in awhile there is a 1 round combat or a 10+round combat. These usually happen if I either want them to, or the dice just make it so.

[The Boz]

1d20 rounds.

[Basket Burner]

3-4 is slightly on the long side.

I've seen plenty of groups just shred things in 1-2 rounds. I've seen some slower ones take 2-3. If it takes more than 3, that is almost always a sign that something is going very wrong, as every single time this has happened it's been because the party was put on the defensive quickly and couldn't effectively fight back. In other words, long fights means the party is losing.

[Big Fau]

A rocket tag setup (flat, open field with no difficult terrain, and the enemy is completely unbuffed/caught by surprise/loses init) should last 1 round at most, provided the party is above 5th level or under 3rd level. This goes double if the encounter consists of a singular creature, regardless of CR (although particularly high CRed enemies will invert the outcome). Otherwise, an encounter should last 3-5 rounds.*

If the encounter lasts longer than 5 rounds despite neither side having a favorable advantage, then it means one of a few things:


Time to rethink tactics completely, as this group of enemies is well prepared.
Time to fall back.
The DM has sent in rienforcements, and tactics need to be adjusted to compensate for the extra manpower.


If an encounter lasts longer than 5 rounds even with the odds stacked heavily in one side's favor, it means one of two things:


The party is playing this incredibly defensively, and should either shift to offense and start thinning the number of enemies or try to escape so they can set up a trap.
The DM is cheating in order to make the combat "more exciting", or to avoid his BBEG being killed. This is a very bad thing a majority of the time.




* This assumes the party is optimized to a Tier 3/4 range, and has the bases covered. These numbers will change if the party is geared towards Tier 1, or if the players are inexperienced and do not know how to optimize.

[KillianHawkeye]

The answer depends on a variety of factors and can range from a couple of rounds to 10+ depending on how well the group plays as a team, what kind of characters they're playing, what level they are, how strong they are for their level, their equipment, and what kind of opponents they are facing.

Of these, in my experience the most important factor is your group's in-combat teamwork.

The average in my group is somewhere in the range of 6-10 rounds, but we generally play low-to-mid level and don't get many fights that are supposed to be easy for us.