How long does your combat typically last (IRL)?

[Douche]

Obviously each group has different dynamics, but I'm wondering how long an average encounter should last in real time?

The other day it took one of my groups about 2 hours to kill 3 enemies in a normal encounter, but another group of mine has finished off like 8 enemies in a hard encounter where all the enemies were spamming darkness, and it took less than an hour.

More succinctly, both those games play from 6-10 PM on weekdays. The first game I mentioned has only done 1 encounter each time we play, whereas the second game gets in 2-3 fights a night... Not saying the first game is worse - we actually spend a lot more time roleplaying, so combat isn't a huge deal for me, but we also have 3/4 players (myself included) who haven't been playing long, so I expect that we'll be able to speed up the fights soon.

[Madeiner]

For me, combat in 5e lasts:

- less than half the time it would take in pathfinder
- still too much time

2 hours to kill 3 enemies is absurd.

I suggest that you cut short the encounter once it's no longer exciting.
Once a winning party is established, there's no need to continue to play by the round. Remove a couple spell slots from PCs if important, then call it a win.

I mostly play very hard encounters, and they seldom last 1 hour. Other, simpler encounters last 20 minutes, but that's mostly because my PCs can usually figure out a winning tactic quickly.

[Know(Nothing)]

This has varied wildly depending on the terrain and party mood. A straight fight with a room full of baddies has gone quicker than an encounter with 4 hit-and-run-and-hide style enemies. Hallway fights often will result in corner-fighting between the tanks, with everyone else choked behind them struggling to be relevant. When the party is low on resources, they play more cautiously, which slows things down. When they smell a trap or a ruse, they slow things down. It seems like 5e is given to more drawn-out battles than I'm used to, but it is still more satisfying than 3.x's one-round rocket tag(that still takes almost as much time.)

Take every step you can, but make sure the players are too. Have them pay attention when it's not their turn. Have them keep their phones away. Make sure casters know how their spells work. Everyone should be thinking 3 turns ahead, or as close to it as they can.

[Fwiffo86]

We have yet to hit a combat where we reached 10 combat rounds. Real life time: 30-40 minutes.

[EvilestWeevil]

Currently at 5th level, a combat with a group of 4 runs anywhere from 15-30 minutes. Less if the wizard uses a 3rd level spell slot. So far I am loving 5e, 4e combat took forever and was a pain to keep track of this interrupt and that reaction along with the monsters having hundreds of HP. 3.x took forever despite PC's being the most powerful they have ever been, and that was usually because of all the unnecessary rules cluttering everything up.

[eastmabl]

In a typical encounter, I don't think that I've broken a half hour as a DM. I have had one encounter last two hours, but that involved players not picking up on a puzzle as part of an encounter.

As a player, I've seen some fights last up to an hour, but that DM tends to throw waves of enemies in making one or two really hard fights instead of multiple smaller encounters.

[cobaltstarfire]

Most of my IRL games had 2-3 fights squeezed into as many hours, so each fight was probably no more than 30 minutes each, probably more about 15-20. Our games were only 3 PC's and a DMPC with most fights being fairly challenging.

We did have one fight that dragged on for something like 4 hours, but it was a big climatic boss battle that for that night turned almost into a war game (we each had our character and about 20ish units split up between the three of us). It was fun for most of it, though we were glad to be finished.

[Zman]

With some new players I don't think any particular encounters have run more than a half hour, though some rapid fire multiple encounters have taken up to an hour and a half, but that is like 3-4 encounters.

[Slipperychicken]

Haven't timed it, but it's less than an hour (20-45min) for a normal fight. Longer if people don't know what they're doing, or if it's a huge fight.

Only way I can see 3 enemies taking 2 hours is if you spend most of that time checking rules and debating your actions.

[Mr.Moron]

10-20 minutes depending on the encounter. We had one that took an hour once but that was several encounters strung into one long set piece.

[Kane0]

For my group:
A small or easy fight usually lasts around 15-20 mins, shenanigans notwithstanding.
A regular or challenging fight lasts about 30-45 mins if its straightforward. Added complexity usually brings it up to an hour or so.
A BBEG or other tough fight typically lasts 2 hours or so. These will always have something special or extra going on, it's never 2 hours of wailing on some dude.

The first one shot I ran contained a mini-dungeon to acclimate the resident 3.X players with the rule changes, and had 6 encounters (2 easy, 3 normal, 1 hard). It took a total of 2.5 out of my 3.5 hours available to get through it all, with one players handbook between the 5 of us and me explaining combat mechanics. The other hour was almost all character generation and introduction.
After so much time with these guys playing PF, the speeding up of things was an absolute godsend.

[Douche]

Haven't timed it, but it's less than an hour (20-45min) for a normal fight. Longer if people don't know what they're doing, or if it's a huge fight.

Only way I can see 3 enemies taking 2 hours is if you spend most of that time checking rules and debating your actions.

We didn't spend much time checking rules. Although I'm new, I've been playing RPGs (including Baldurs Gate n such) my whole life so I have a pretty firm grasp on the rules already, and the DM knows what he's doing. Between the two of us (and a third guy hasnt played 5e but was into 3.5) we don't have many questions of rules.

The two girls we play with like to be non-lethal and avoid combat though, and like to try to tackle objectives (like finding the artifact or whatever) during the fight itself, instead of killing everything and then sorting it out. The other dude at the table was kinda doing silliness as well - the fight was on a dock and the docked ship next to it, he tried hanging from the ship and dragging the mooks off to throw them in the water instead.

Anyway, I guess I should have asked in the OP but what are some ways that I can suggest streamlining combat and making it not take up such a large chunk of time, without being a douche about it and telling them to stop roleplaying so much? Again, I do enjoy the roleplaying aspect more than combat (but still like challenging fights), but I'd like combat to happen faster so we can get more encounters in per session, and simultaneously have more time to flesh out an actual story instead of "my dude jumps on a boat!"

[bulbaquil]

From what I've observed:

- 5e: About 3 fights comprising about 10 combat rounds total in a 3-hour session with considerably more time roleplaying/exploring/generally not fighting.

- Pathfinder: About 2 fights comprising about 5 combat rounds total in a 3-hour session with very little time roleplaying/exploring/generally not fighting.

This is with the same group.

[SpawnOfMorbo]

Way too long, longer than 4e but shorter than 3e.

I'm thinking of experimenting with some rules from 13th Age (or just switching primary systems) as that system has, from what I've seen, very quick battles.

[Cybren]

4E combat was definitely more time consuming than 3e and 5e from my experience. I find combat only drags if there's a lot of participant. But you can shorten it by having win conditions other than outright murder. Opponents that flee, surrender, or just behave in a way that isn't just an automata with HP and an attack or two

[SpawnOfMorbo]

4E combat was definitely more time consuming than 3e and 5e from my experience. I find combat only drags if there's a lot of participant. But you can shorten it by having win conditions other than outright murder. Opponents that flee, surrender, or just behave in a way that isn't just an automata with HP and an attack or two

No. Just no. Maybe at very low levels but not at mid or high levels.

3.5 D&D (3e for short) had so much crazy combination and free reign multiclassing that was expected to be allowed by players that you would have everyone using every action, move action, swift action, and whatever else type of action that it slowed play down even at lower levels. Its even worst when the players wasn't good at what they were doing. The special monsters were essentially players themselves and had all the actions that they needed to keep up with the players... Yeah...

4e could be slowed down and the first monster manual had a monster HP problem... But that was easily homebrewed fixed AND they fixed it in Monster Vault. The simplified action economy went a long way to helping players be able to go faster. The game was streamlined and could go a lot faster than 3e.

The biggest problem with the 5e system is that the CR system is whack. They did a poor job at determining what will be a challenge to a party. They seem to believe that a martial is equal to a caster when they work completely different. This can speed up the battle in a horrible way (cakewalk) whereas it can also slow down the game or make a game over.

[Malifice]

We have yet to hit a combat where we reached 10 combat rounds. Real life time: 30-40 minutes.

Yep. I find 5-6 rounds to be about average.

With 4 PCs (6th level) it's never more than 20-30 minutes on average.

1 minute per turn is plenty. If I can't resolve a PCs turn inside of 1 minute I'm doing something very wrong.

[Slipperychicken]

We didn't spend much time checking rules. Although I'm new, I've been playing RPGs (including Baldurs Gate n such) my whole life so I have a pretty firm grasp on the rules already, and the DM knows what he's doing. Between the two of us (and a third guy hasnt played 5e but was into 3.5) we don't have many questions of rules.

The two girls we play with like to be non-lethal and avoid combat though, and like to try to tackle objectives (like finding the artifact or whatever) during the fight itself, instead of killing everything and then sorting it out. The other dude at the table was kinda doing silliness as well - the fight was on a dock and the docked ship next to it, he tried hanging from the ship and dragging the mooks off to throw them in the water instead.

Anyway, I guess I should have asked in the OP but what are some ways that I can suggest streamlining combat and making it not take up such a large chunk of time, without being a douche about it and telling them to stop roleplaying so much? Again, I do enjoy the roleplaying aspect more than combat (but still like challenging fights), but I'd like combat to happen faster so we can get more encounters in per session, and simultaneously have more time to flesh out an actual story instead of "my dude jumps on a boat!"

It sounds like combat is being extended because players are using the initiative order to do a lot of things that aren't fighting. Going through the turn order to resolve exploration tasks (searching, non-tactical movement) can be really time-consuming, and that's why that's not the default. If you want to encourage players to focus on fighting during combat, one way to do that is by using more difficult fights to put pressure on them.


It's not a question of whether roleplaying should happen in combat. RP absolutely should continue even while the protagonists are hammering their enemies, especially then. Characters' emotions shouldn't shut off when they draw weapons. Life-or-death crisis situations are places for character growth and expression. You won't recite a coherent three-page monologue while your teeth are getting punched in, but any decision or indecision in those crucial moments can betray deep parts of a person's character. A mortal struggle means dealing with a lot of important ideas all at once, like a person's response to violent opposition, priorities, willingness to take risks to defuse the situation, resolve in the face of crisis, the value a person places on his own life in relation to those of others', emotional capacity to harm and destroy another person, response to real-life violence and gore, and so on. It can be a great opportunity if it's recognized and treated as more than a disconnected action sequence or minigame.

[Estrillian]

We have yet to hit a combat where we reached 10 combat rounds. Real life time: 30-40 minutes.

I had a 20+ round combat last night. There were 6 Draugr (2 re-skinned Knights and 4 re-skinned Berserker) against a party of 4 (Wizard, Fighter, Rogue and Cleric) all Level 5 except the Fighter (Level 4). The 2 Knight/Draugr were turned on the first round and spent 10 rounds cowering while the rest fought the 4 Berserker/Dragur. The Rogue left (he was under the effects of a suggestion and didn't think the fight was interesting), in round 2. After 10 rounds the first 4 were dead but the turning ended and they had to fight the other two (one of which had a stolen Staff of Defence). That took another 10 rounds (since the one with the Staff kept shielding).

It was pretty epic (apart from the Rogue leaving). The Wizard used all her spells, the Fighter went down twice, and the the Cleric used all but a couple of 1st level slots.

[Vogonjeltz]

Obviously each group has different dynamics, but I'm wondering how long an average encounter should last in real time?

The other day it took one of my groups about 2 hours to kill 3 enemies in a normal encounter, but another group of mine has finished off like 8 enemies in a hard encounter where all the enemies were spamming darkness, and it took less than an hour.

More succinctly, both those games play from 6-10 PM on weekdays. The first game I mentioned has only done 1 encounter each time we play, whereas the second game gets in 2-3 fights a night... Not saying the first game is worse - we actually spend a lot more time roleplaying, so combat isn't a huge deal for me, but we also have 3/4 players (myself included) who haven't been playing long, so I expect that we'll be able to speed up the fights soon.

Playing experience and comfort with ones character tends to speed up the process.

If you can recall, or observe for next time, what things are players in group 1 lingering on to cause the slow down that they aren't doing for group 2?

A few suggestions that may be useful:

1) Ask each player to determine (more or less) what they are going to do when it's not their turn. If they're a spellcaster (and thus probably going to cast a spell) make them look those spells up ahead of time. They shouldn't be using everyone's game time looking up spells on their own turn.

People are of course free to change their minds depending on what else occurs in the combat, but when I am playing I typically queue up 3-4 possible options:
A) What do I do if nothing significant changes?
B) If my current target(s) die or I can no longer harm it?
C) If I sustain severe damage/am in trouble?
D) If a party member is in trouble?

Those four contingencies should cover almost all possibilities and minimize wasted time during their turn.

2) Consider imposing a time limit: If you have a player who dithers unnecessarily, actually put down a clock and let them know they have a decision making limit of 10 seconds to actually move/use an ability. The timer resets and is put on hold so long as they actually are 'doing' the thing (i.e. rolling dice or whatever). This should eliminate sitting around for 5 minutes while someone reads over all their abilities or tries to plot the perfect location for a spell to target hitting the most enemies, etc...

[Madbox]

It depends. It might be 15-20 minutes, but it might be an hour if we have that one party member who wants to argue with the DM and tries to do unnecessary cool stuff (ie rather than walk around an enemy, demands the DM let them do an acrobatics check to do a flip over the enemy).

So, really dependent on what the players are like.

[Tanarii]

No. Just no. Maybe at very low levels but not at mid or high levels.it must change drastically after level 8(ish) then. I ran many 3e/3.5 and 4e games up to about that level. 4e combat usually took about twice as long to resolve, for the same number of participants and skill level.

[endur]

My group typically has 1 combat encounter per evening, with the combat encounter lasting 30 to 90 minutes (average is under 60 minutes). 4 players or so. Actual number of rounds in combat: almost always under 10.

[endur]

it must change drastically after level 8(ish) then. I ran many 3e/3.5 and 4e games up to about that level. 4e combat usually took about twice as long to resolve, for the same number of participants and skill level.

Late 3.5e had 4e actions (swift actions, interrupts?, etc.). 3e and early 3.5e didn't have swift actions and interrupts. Swift actions and interrupts added time to each round. 5e has sort of continued this with bonus actions, reactions, and action surges.