How many rounds should a combat run?

[jjordan]

How many rounds should a combat run?

Ideally I want each player to have a least three turns in a combat so they have a chance to make a significant contribution. I don't want to go beyond 9 turns, though, because most combats that go that long turn into a slog of attrition that gets boring as the players have tended to expend their best tools early on.

Thoughts?

[Cheesegear]

How many rounds should a combat run?

Against a single creature? Three, I believe. I think I read it in the DMG. But it could be in Xanathar's. Not sure.
...When you think about it, a 'Boss Level' monster dying in less than 20 seconds feels very anti-climactic. But hey, that's how it works.

Against multiple creatures? ...Depends how many, and what.

Multi-stage encounters can go for as much as you want them to.

I don't want to go beyond 9 turns, though [...] the players have tended to expend their best tools early on.

That's why multi-stage encounters are a challenge. Most players will use their best abilities on chaff, without realising that there's a second stage to the fight, or extra hostiles coming in down the line. Sometimes, forcing the players to drain their own resources is the challenge of the encounter.

[Eldariel]

The big issue is a combat that doesn't change. A 10 round combat with factors beyond just dropping enemy HP to zero makes it more interesting. Like if the enemy is regenerating or there's a risk of defeat even towards the end keeps it tense. If the enemy escaping at 1 HP is as bad as escaping at full HP, the tactical consideration of not letting the enemy retreat suddenly become very relevant as well as spacing out the abilities so that your get maximal value out of your limited resources without giving enemy too many turns - it's an optimisation problem that can appeal to some players. Also, 4e-style enemy getting extra abilities at HP thresholds or e.g. growing stronger or opening up "limit break"-style abilities as it takes damage (you can fluff this as a huge adrenaline burst for completely mundane enemies) makes longer fights more interesting.

I've had a 15 round combat that was thrilling all the way to the end. Admittedly, that was on very high level (Tier 4 to be precise) and with very defensive play on both sides, but the tension is very real when you know you can't afford to use abilities poorly or you'll run out of stuff to do before the fight ends. In general, some defeat conditions beyond the party going down make long slogs more engaging.

[Catullus64]

I think combats should generally have a length that is proportional to their narrative weight. A random encounter or monster patrol should never take more than four rounds.

Now, as to the problem of long combats feeling like a slog, there are ways to inject dynamism into them that can make them actually fun. I'll describe two combats that I ran recently, both of which went into the 10+ rounds territory. One was a slog, and one was a blast.

In the first, people were in a large room with a boss and continuously re-animating Skeletons. The combat was a long process of beating down skeletons who kept getting back up, while slowly chipping away at the boss's health.

In the other, the players were fighting their way through a castle after unleashing an imprisoned demon to serve as a distraction. The player characters were sprinting through the castle courtyard, as small groups of guards emerged in confusion from this building or that one. They ran through the main keep, the uncontrollable demon hot on their heels, not distinguishing its liberators from its captors. They had to climb towers, break down locked doors, dodge traps, all while fending off guards. Eventually a three-way battle broke out between the players, the demon, and the castle's wizard, in which the demon slew the wizard, and nearly finished the players before one player managed to re-scribe the magic circle to bind it.

See the difference? The players in the latter instance hardly noticed that the combat went on and on for so long (all on one initiative), because the fight was continuously evolving, moving, having new elements thrown in.

[BloodSnake'sCha]

It depends on the combat and the feeling you want it to create.

Some can be as short as a single round and some can even be 20 or more.

Encounter lange is a tool to be used.

[Stangler]

As a player I am not a fan of short and usually somewhat meaningless encounters. 3 rounds of combat over and over again that slowly drains resources is pretty boring and it pushes players towards builds that are all about upfront damage. This changes the value of certain spells and depending on how the party built their characters could really annoy some of them. Any concentration spell that takes an action for example.

The issue is more about how to make long combat fun and interesting for players which comes down to engagement and choice. Engagement can happen in a lot of ways but the most obvious is to have a bad guy that talks. Another important consideration is that the fight has stakes that feel meaningful and personal to the player. Obviously this can be established when the villain speaks.

Choice is the other consideration. When designing a fight think about what choices the players have in terms of where they can move. Limitations to their movement can make a fight more challenging but options can make it more fun. Make them pick a poison or try and find ways to gain some sort of benefit from the terrain. Have the enemies do the same. Moral choice and personal choice also matters. It can be hard to do this without it coming off as contrived like an old school Batman fight but it is still worth trying.

Lastly, one of the hardest parts of D&D and tension building is that it is very hard to have the heroes lose but survive. Most stories involve a second act where the heroes take it on the chin. Think Empire Strikes Back or Avengers Infinity War where the heroes fight and lose but set up their eventual victory in the third act. Find a way to do that effectively and you will be in a good spot. One possible way for the team to lose is to have the villain get the McGuffin.

[J-H]

3 to 7.
Big boss fights typically run 3-6. Dracula (two forms) lasted 3 1/2 rounds against a party of 12th level characters.
The last dragon battle I did (CR 21-22 vs 14th level party) went about 5 rounds.

If a fight lasts less than 2 rounds it's usually something you could have handwaved away.

[noob]

3 to 7.
Big boss fights typically run 3-6. Dracula (two forms) lasted 3 1/2 rounds against a party of 12th level characters.
The last dragon battle I did (CR 21-22 vs 14th level party) went about 5 rounds.

If a fight lasts less than 2 rounds it's usually something you could have handwaved away.

so if the monsters beats the adventurers in two rounds because all of them failed all their saves due to bad luck then you assume that it means that it should have been skipped and replaced by a "you all got caught/killed restart/escape"
Due to save or lose effects fights can possibly have their results deducible very quickly if a lot of bad luck with the rolls and re-rolls happens.

[da newt]

From a player perspective, it all depends on if I have real agency in the outcome - if the various decisions actually matter. I've enjoyed some 10+ round combats and despised others (especially if it becomes clear that my actions are irrelevant).

For a normal encounter, I like to aim for 4 rounds. For the more epic battles, 7 rounds is a nice goal (preferably with a significant change of something along the way - environment, enemies, something).

[Cheesegear]

If a fight lasts less than 2 rounds it's usually something you could have handwaved away.

The dice tell the story better than you do.

1st Example - the unlikely kind;
The players get extremely lucky; The Paladin and Rogue both get crits and do ****-tons of damage in the first Round. The Bard follows up with a Hideous Laughter, the hostile who has Advantage on the saving throw fails the save by accident which can't be planned for. The hostile who is Incapacitated does nothing, fails its Hideous Laughter save again at the end of its turn.

The Paladin on Round 2 makes a melee attack against a Prone hostile, rolls a crit again, and burns a second Smite, that's game.

Uhh...Three crits in a row, and two failed saves that really shouldn't have been failed. That's game.

2nd Example - much more common;
You throw a roadblock at your party. Not exceptionally difficult. It's there more for narrative reasons and verisimilitude. It's not an important combat. But it's there. Maybe the 'leader' has important loot that the party has to get. Maybe you design the encounter so that the party kills one or two of them, and the rest capitulate and tell the party everything.

Spellcaster says "**** this." and burns a high-level spell slot that they absolutely didn't need to for a relatively small and unimportant combat like this. The spellcaster doesn't really know what's about to happen, and a lucky crit might kill a party member. Maybe the spellcaster identified something in the room as a bigger threat than it actually was. Whatever the reason, the spellcaster unloads a higher-level slot to end the encounter quickly and safely...Got a little bit lucky, and everyone in the room sucked or died - or both. That's definitely not what you - the DM - planned. But it happened.

Sure, the encounter lasted less than 2 Rounds (Less than a single round, even). But the spellcaster burned a higher-level spell slot - and that matters.


You shouldn't design encounters to be less than two rounds. No.
But it happens, and if it does happen, that's part of the story.

[KorvinStarmast]

How many rounds should a combat run?

As long as it takes. Two to seven rounds covers nearly all of the combats I've seen in six+ years, with a few outliers that lasted beyond seven, and a handful (less than 5 I think) that lasted 10 or more.

[Sorinth]

This is going to very much depend on the table. Some will like long drawn out tactical battles others find them long and boring.

You can estimate how long a specific battle will take using DPR. But even that is a more a general guideline since players using spells or not can drastically change it.

[Kvess]

One way to make combat last longer, and lead to more exciting encounters, is to embrace hit-and-run tactics. Have your kobolds attack and then duck into small tunnels that medium-sized creatures need to crawl into. Make your ghosts flee through walls between rounds and ambush the party as they emerge into the next room. Have your boss encounter use their legendary actions for offence and use their turn to retreat further into their stronghold.

Instead of taking turns hitting eachother, you can make your players navigate obstacles, solve puzzles and bypass traps in order to take down their enemy.

[Kurt Kurageous]

The typical 5e balanced encounter is pretty much decided (as in we know who's gonna win/lose) by the end of the third round. Beyond that point, it tends to become a grind/slog.

I agree with those who have said it depends on the narrative significance of the combat.

I don't worry about "balancing" my encounters by CR because if I did, the players can rightly expect to dominate every time. I just compare HP totals, dividing the monster HP by the party's expected damage output (which can be derived by level) to determine how long the monsters will last.

But this completely misses the point of the OP. Mindless monsters aside, attackers attack only when they expect to win or if they have no other choice.

When the attackers find the fight is not going their way, they try to disengage before they get completely annihilated. So how many rounds? As many as it takes until the monsters know they are losing. Your house rules mileage will vary.

[MrStabby]

Encounter length is a crucial DM tool for balancing campaigns between players. A few pointers:

You want parity between the player that cast Haste and who cast fireball. Given Haste takes concentration you probably want encounters long enough that it creaps ahead of fireball in terms.of effectiveness.

Ok, it's a specific example but in general you want players to not feel bad about closing to focus their character on buffing, control or direct damage. They should feel balanced.

It is also a tool to somewhat balance casters and martials. Casters are better when using resources and matials better at other times. As a rule, casters using cantrips/at will actions as many times per day as they have spell slots is a pretty good start...

[Asisreo1]

Random fights of medium/easy difficulty, I try to keep within the 2-4 round range, 3 being the happy mode. Boss fights, I try to get them to last 4-6 rounds, leaning heavily on 4.

Any fight that lasts more than 6 rounds has outlived its stay a long time ago.

Any fight that lasts only one round could have probably been run better, imo.

[Man_Over_Game]

Random fights of medium/easy difficulty, I try to keep within the 2-4 round range, 3 being the happy mode. Boss fights, I try to get them to last 4-6 rounds, leaning heavily on 4.

Any fight that lasts more than 6 rounds has outlived its stay a long time ago.

Any fight that lasts only one round could have probably been run better, imo.

This is probably the best advice I've seen so far. Concise with no need for outliers. Experienced players may enjoy a 5-round combat, but most 5e players have short attention spans and don't run through a round in 60 seconds.

Say you have 4 hour sessions, and you don't want more than 25% of your session to be in combat. So you have 1 hour for combat to spend.

You got 4 players and a DM. Assuming the DM takes twice as long as a player does, (due to the number of enemies and moving parts), that's 10 minutes per each player.

Say you want two encounters (30 minutes each), so that's 5 minutes per player per encounter. So divide that by how much you expect your players to take. At 1.5 minutes per turn (which is pretty common with inexperienced players when adding in DM descriptions or corrections), you're looking at 3-4 rounds of combat each encounter.


It's also worth noting that monsters are balanced around the expectation of a 3-round combat (calculated from the long-term value of spells and abilities, like regeneration or Concentration). For instance, if an enemy has a Regeneration feature, that enemy is assumed to have additional HP equal to 3 rounds of Regeneration.

[Protolisk]

Random fights of medium/easy difficulty, I try to keep within the 2-4 round range, 3 being the happy mode. Boss fights, I try to get them to last 4-6 rounds, leaning heavily on 4.

Any fight that lasts more than 6 rounds has outlived its stay a long time ago.

Any fight that lasts only one round could have probably been run better, imo.

I second, or I suppose third this.

Overall, a combat should take as long as it needs to to feel challenging. The easier the challenge, the shorter it could be. But if it only lasts 1 round, some players might not even get to do anything, and even with 2 rounds an interesting monster with multiple action types only got to show off one. But longer than 5 or 6 tends to just be a slog, even if the mechanics can get interesting.

[verbatim]

I think this vastly depends on how fast a DM and their players can do a round of combat.

If you're using a VTT with a significant amount of automation it is feasible to fit 10-20 turns into a reasonable amount of time, whereas you're going to want to aim closer to 3-4 with newer players or more experienced players/dm's who are very descriptive and flavorful with narrating their actions.

[Man_Over_Game]

Yeesh!!! Ten minutes for each player?!!? Maybe in 3.5...

Ten minutes to represent six seconds of real time? If you don't know what to do on your turn, the DM should skip you and assign you the dodge action. A DM only has to do that once and everyone gets the message.

To help speed up DM, I use a sheet of 100 prerolled random D20s (done by excel). This pays HUUGELY when having to roll multiple saving rolls or multiattacks for the monsters AAAND I have the roll in writing, so if the player says something like, "Oh yeah, I forgot I'm +1 or something", I can quickly retcon it.

I also use a player management sheet that lists all skills, AC, HP, attack mods, spell save DCs, etc. SO I don't have to even ASK what the save is on that fireball, or ask for perception rolls which go off the rails when the players start thinking, "What did we miss?

That's 10 minutes per the whole session, cut in half if you want two encounters. Even if your players are fast and are ending their turns with only a minute apiece (including DM talk), that's still capping it at 5 rounds per encounter for 30 minute encounters.

[Kurt Kurageous]

[QUOTE=Man_Over_Game;25042917]

That's 10 minutes per the whole session, cut in half if you want two encounters.

Oh, completely misunderstood! Thanks for the clarification.

[Sorinth]

Random fights of medium/easy difficulty, I try to keep within the 2-4 round range, 3 being the happy mode. Boss fights, I try to get them to last 4-6 rounds, leaning heavily on 4.

Any fight that lasts more than 6 rounds has outlived its stay a long time ago.

Any fight that lasts only one round could have probably been run better, imo.

Not sure I agree with this advice. If a fight is boring whether it's 2 rounds or 6 it's still boring. If it's an interesting fight then 6 rounds might seem short.

On top of that it's also a question of how long players are taking their turns, if each player is taking 5min for their turn and you've got 6 PCs then a 6 round fight is going to be a slog and it's tough for everyone to stay engaged. But if each player takes less then 1min for their turn then it's easy to stay engaged.

[Damon_Tor]

How many rounds should a combat run?

Ideally I want each player to have a least three turns in a combat so they have a chance to make a significant contribution. I don't want to go beyond 9 turns, though, because most combats that go that long turn into a slog of attrition that gets boring as the players have tended to expend their best tools early on.

Thoughts?

Three is good. If something isn't dead by round three, it at least knows it's losing the fight and will attempt to flee or surrender.

[MrStabby]

I second, or I suppose third this.

Overall, a combat should take as long as it needs to to feel challenging. The easier the challenge, the shorter it could be. But if it only lasts 1 round, some players might not even get to do anything, and even with 2 rounds an interesting monster with multiple action types only got to show off one. But longer than 5 or 6 tends to just be a slog, even if the mechanics can get interesting.

Yeah, 1 round basically can mean if you roll well for initiative you get to do vastly more than someone who rolled poorly. At best it can still feel like it was all decided by the time the last player gets to go and they are contributing nothing meaningful to the fight, just mopping up afterwards.

I guess a fight should be as succinct as you can make it whilst still ensuring everyone gets good value out of their abilities and everyone is meaningfully contributing to the outcome. In my experience usually about 4 to 5 rounds.

[cZak]

<4 rounds, I'm feeling my buff spells (Heroism, Bless, etc...) are not getting their potential

but I enjoy the tactical exploitation/considerations of combat; terrain, positioning, de/buff, etc...
it's fun/good play for me to have combat be a rather memorable moment. Speed bumps (2 to 3 rounds) of mooks on the way to the Boss is a prime example of this if there's a tension to the time frame (spell durations)

...the players were fighting their way through a castle after unleashing an imprisoned demon to serve as a distraction. The player characters were sprinting through the castle courtyard, as small groups of guards emerged in confusion from this building or that one. They ran through the main keep, the uncontrollable demon hot on their heels, not distinguishing its liberators from its captors. They had to climb towers, break down locked doors, dodge traps, all while fending off guards. Eventually a three-way battle broke out between the players, the demon, and the castle's wizard, in which the demon slew the wizard, and nearly finished the players before one player managed to re-scribe the magic circle to bind it.

THIS is my idea of a epic/memorable encounter.
I understand not all can be this, but when it happens I imagine groups talk about it long after

[Sigreid]

Until one side wins

[heavyfuel]

"Should"? Anywhere from 0 to 100.

Zero rounds for combats that either shouldn't exist (random encounters that are just a waste of everyone's time) or that are avoided entirely (diplomacy, stealth, etc)

One or two rounds for If the party is prepared and manages to ambush a group during Surprise, there's a good the chance the combat is all but over by the time round 2 rolls in. This is rewarding for players who play smart and manage to ambush people

It can go to 3-4 rounds for a average combat that moves the plot forward (remember, random encounters shouldn't exist) and "bosses" should really come with an entourage so that combat feels epic.

[Necrosnoop110]

the party's expected damage output (which can be derived by level)

Can you walk me through the calcs for that?

[Kane0]

I generally aim for 3-5 rounds, past that generally falls into ‘cleanup’ or ‘bug out’ territory

[RSP]

Depends on what’s trying to be accomplished. In my opinion, every encounter should serve a purpose.

If that purpose is “whittle down resources”, well how well do you know your Players? Will they be conservative with their abilities or are they too eager to use them?

So I don’t think there’s a set length, though obviously you don’t want to go past the attention span of the Players.