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View Full Version : Encounter lengths



Accountant
2007-10-23, 09:13 PM
So, on average, how long should an encounter last? Not like a BBEG fight or anything, just any ol' random encounter.

The reason I ask is because often in our sessions, whenever someone DMs they'll spend a few nice long hours trying to flesh out a really cool storyline or put in some railroading or something, but as of late we've been spending what seems to me like far too much time on individual encounters. I'm not sure how much time that is, but...

...Just a standard MonsterCR = PartyCR type of thing.

Anxe
2007-10-23, 09:18 PM
30 minutes to an hour I'd say.

Azerian Kelimon
2007-10-23, 09:31 PM
An ENCOUNTER? NO WAY. I'd say up to 5 rounds, or 15 mins, max.

Accountant
2007-10-23, 10:00 PM
@Anxe, yeah, I think that's what we've been getting, but @Kelimon, that's more what we were thinking.

heh.

Nonah_Me
2007-10-23, 10:06 PM
How many players do you have? Combat with more than 4 players (sometimes even with just 4) can take a long time.

I have a simular problem with my players sometimes. People will go get a coke and ask how many rounds have happened since they left. I plan on setting up an egg timer, each player getting anywhere from 45 seconds to a minute to decide their course of action.

Even then, however, it can take a while.

The VP
2007-10-24, 02:44 AM
I've started encouraging my players, particularly those playing casters and the multi-attack fighter types, to start determining their actions, or the results of them, prior to their round to keep the encounter moving faster. When doing so, a standard mook fight will usually take between five and twenty minutes, with the BBEG fight lasting upwards of an hour or more. Part of this could be due to each player essentially having two characters: their PC, and a PCNPC (eg. cohort).

Kellus
2007-10-24, 02:49 AM
We get distracted very easily, and usually only get through maybe 2 encounters a session, each of which is generally longer than an hour. Of course, it's a group of seven, so it takes longer than when we've played with fewer.

It doesn't help that practically every encounter is a CR 3 or more above our actual ECL. Funny how that works. :smalltongue:

Skjaldbakka
2007-10-24, 03:02 AM
I have, on occasion, staged epic battles that have taken the entire session to resolve. That is not generally the rule, however.

some tips to make things move faster:

Players:
-Either roll to-hit for all of your attacks at once (designating which d20 is which attack ahead of time, of course), or roll to-hit and damage simultaneously. If you have different colored sets of dice, you could even do both.
-Look up rules for actions you intend to take while you are waiting for your turn, not while others are waiting for you to finish your turn.


DMs:
-use tokens to represent the locations of things relative to other things. You don't necessarily need to use figurines, or even a grid- pennies on a table are sufficient. You will save time spent answering questions about where things are, whether moving somewhere will provoke AoO, whether a fireball/entangle/etc will hit PCs, etc.

-Keep a cheat sheet with all the party member's AC, saves, and reactive skill checks (such as spot/listen, etc.).

-If you trust your players, use the players roll all the dice variant from UA. It saves time spent on you rolling dice, and it helps to hold the attention of players even when it is not their turn. It is generally faster to say (everyone make a two defence rolls as the goblins shoot at you, if they hit take 1d6+3dmg), then to roll all those attacks yourself.

Belial_the_Leveler
2007-10-24, 04:04 AM
Generally speaking, a 5-round encounter should not take more than 15 minutes and most encounters shouldn't last more than 5 rounds anyway.

That said, I've never had problems thinking my actions for more than 20 seconds in my round then the rest of the minute spent on rolling. That's mainly due to playing way too many RPGs and learning to think fast-esp since when 4 people play, you have your own minute plus 4-5 more minutes to think things (3 for the other players, 2-3 for the DM)

Nikolai_II
2007-10-24, 04:09 AM
Well.. I had to stop DnD when we got upwards to level 10-12.

My players (one in particular) would agonize over the perfect spell to use forever and ever, or worry about which square would be the best to go to, etc etc. A single action from the worst culprit could take 4-5 minutes.

Mad Mask
2007-10-24, 05:52 AM
I've had a little encounter with three zombies and a Dreadlock last an full 2 hours.

And my PCs were level 6.:smalleek:

Curmudgeon
2007-10-24, 06:15 AM
8 players at about level 20? About 2 hours per encounter.

raygungothic
2007-10-24, 06:45 AM
Getting bogged down in combat can be a real pain. Mechanical slowdown is particularly irritating because it's unavoidable; if players want to do something fancy with game mechanics, they had better have a really good idea how it works before their initiative slot comes round. Deliberation slowdown seems to be a worse problem; though I have developed a method that sort-of-works, it still takes work.

When I DM, I tend to get pretty shouty to keep everything moving. Once I point at someone and declare "You! What are you doing now?" my internal clock starts counting down. They're allowed one or two quick questions about what their character perceives (detailed study of their surroundings eats a whole round) or can do in a round (if they suggest something horrendously complex, unlikely or mechanical that would require reference I tend to spot-rule it or call it from memory - reference is the enemy of dramatic tension), then they MUST make a quick decision. If they deliberate, I silently count down at them by pointing at them with all fingers and thumbs and then closing my hand, pointing at them with four fingers and closing my hand, pointing with three fingers and closing... when I run out of fingers, if they've still not acted, I'll make a "cut" gesture and declare "So-and-so looks around in confusion, not sure how to react. (to next player): You! Actions?". (I don't want to count out loud, as I want to be hearing them not me!)

So players have five seconds of deliberation once they're on the spot. If they're not planning while everyone else is acting, what on earth are they doing? Allowing for description and resolution it takes a couple of minutes to get through the whole party, a little less for the NPCs. I aim for five to fifteen minutes for a basic encounter and try to keep bigger battles under half an hour, though there are always overruns. I think my last epic bossfight took about 45 minutes; that had a lot of complicating factors, though it was in a much lighter ruleset than d20.

I've been in games where half an hour to an hour was common; the threshold of bearability seems to be somewhere in the middle, so maybe half an hour should be a sort of target maximum time for a basic encounter.

On the other extreme, I once ran a game in loosely-d20-inspired mechanics in which the entire party were thieves in a fairly gritty, low-powered world. Combats usually lasted one or two rounds and no more than five minutes. One round: a quick, efficient victory, now where can we hide the bodies? Two rounds: an epic botchup that made way too much noise and caused the rest of the session to be one frenzied action sequence of trying to escape with hides intact. That was fun, and I want to do it again.

Galathir
2007-10-24, 10:56 AM
I was in a campaign this spring with five players and a average encounter could easily take forty-five minutes to an hour. We used tons of complicated tactics, and as we were fairly high level (10-14) there were lots of options to choose from.

I am currently running a campaign with only two players and it is a very rules-light campaign. We don't even use a battle mat for combat so there is a lot more emphasis on story telling then on rolling dice. Sure we use dice and the regular D&D combat rules, but they are there to help make combat less arbitrary, and not the focus of combat. Some encounters are very short, only a few minutes but some are much longer. I don't like devoting an hour of game play on a random encounter but I have no trouble make a major encounter with the BBEG something to remember.

Ultimately, it's up to the players and DM and what your group finds fun. Some people just like to roll dice and kill things and that's fine. I prefer a more descriptive story based combat but that's not for everyone. Combat should not, however, last so long that the players (or DM) lose interest in it. Once that happens the game becomes a job or task instead of fun.