How many combats per session do you find most enjoyable?

[Jonjonjon4]

It is a simple question.

How many combats per session you find the ideal, and which system are you playing?

[KorvinStarmast]

It is a simple question.

How many combats per session you find the ideal, and which system are you playing?

Three to five in a session where the table knows what they are doing.

Two to three when the players or GM/DM can't keep focused.

Some games the combat is quicker (Blades in the Dark) and in some games it can really slow down (Star Trek RPG) since the back and forth between player and (everyone else) in a six player game can eat up time.

The degree of systems mastery/systems comfort is a major variable.

[Darth Credence]

I play D&D 5e, and my ideal is 0-2, almost always having 1. We run four-hour sessions, of which about half an hour is taken up with the initial meetup small talk, and another half hour of game time is some joking around, leaving us with about 3 hours of playtime. A fun combat session for us can take anywhere from twenty minutes to an hour and a half. We like a lot of roleplaying and exploration, with RP in general taking close to half of all session time.

[icefractal]

In most games, 1-2, for similar reasons as Darth Credence. If combats are fast, there could be more, as it's really about "% of time spent on combat". But even then, I'd rather have one exciting combat than five meh ones.

[RedMage125]

I'd say at least 2, with the caveat that major fights that last longer, like ones with mechanical and narrative significance (i.e. "boss fights") counting as 2.

But I like combat.

[Tarmor]

Preferred "combats per session" depends on the game played. Some games I've played (Paranoia, Call of Cthulhu) don't need to have any combat, though ONE is probably expected in a session.
If it's D&D (3.x, PF, or 5th, or another RPG based on these rules), Gamma World, MERP, Shadowrun... I'm happy with 1-3, though some of my players would probably like more. Regardless of game, I hate any combat that takes 30min+ to resolve, which I primarily see in later versions of D&D, particularly when I have most of my 6 player group available. (In these cases I wish we were still playing AD&D.)

[JusticeZero]

We've been at about 0.25 for the past couple years. Pathfinder 1, Epic-6.

[Leon]

Depends which game it is and how experienced all participants are with the system or how many people are paying attention (because you can have experienced people but if they are not on the ball its going to dragon no matter)

[Mastikator]

I like to present 3-4 encounters that may result in combats if the players initiate it, which results in 2-4. For shorter sessions it'll be less.

[stoutstien]

Depends on where the table is at as far as the pacing/tension cycle goes. There some give and take but generally i like to build up to the final scene with more decisive encounters.

I also tend to view it by potential turns rather than encounters.

[Catullus64]

Vastly system-dependent question. In 5e D&D, my ideal would be one to three fairly 'simple' fights (not very challenging, low stakes, there to burn a few resources and to build tension) with one or maybe two 'centerpiece' fights (more dangerous, more tactically involved and complex, higher stakes).

For my current favorite system of choice, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, the formula is different. Combat is brutal, takes longer in terms of overall number of turns, and there's almost no such thing as a 'low-stakes' fight; a scrap with a small goblin patrol can be a life-or-death affair, and injuries are hard to recover from. With combat being so involved and high-tension, and more emphasis on non-combat sequences than D&D, one combat per session is plenty, more than two starts to be too many. That said, combat is still sufficiently central to the system that less than one fight for every two or three sessions is too few.

On the even more extreme end, something like Call of Cthulhu might well involve as few as two or three fights in an entire campaign. That's a game system where combat is almost more of a failure state than an intended piece of gameplay.

[gbaji]

Typically, one or two actual combats. Lots of encounters, but most aren't going to involve combat. My game tends to focus more on the PCs interacting with all of the places/people around them, talking, getting information, traveling, encountering people along the way, etc. I like to give the players as many opportunities to make RP and action decisions as possible, so providing them with lots of information, choices, and potential interactions maximizes that.

That's not to say that I don't toss in some "random encounter" type stuff as well, some of which may certainly involve combat. For the most part though, those are going to be pretty minor/quick combats and don't take up much time. Usually, there may be one or none of these in a typical game sesssion.

The bigger combats are generally plot focused, and something that represents an objective the party has, and an action/choice that leads them there. They decide to raid the local bandit hideout. Or they've found the location of the evil baron's keep, and attack. Or they track the Orc raiders to their warcamp, and attack. There are never more than one of these, and they tend to take up a large portion of the session when they happen.

So there's usually a bit of ebb and flow to the game sessions. Some will have minor or random encounters "on the way" to something bigger (and a whole lot of information gathering and social stuff), then we deal with a major combat. And given the game system, and the complexity/difficulty of some of those fights, it may actually not be resolvable in a single session. We do, occasionally, have to stop mid fight (just gets too late), and then resume in the next session. I think our record was four sessions for one really massive fight (yeah. That one was crazy).


But yeah. I'm just not a fan of "random encounter for the sake of a random encounter", so I use them only occasionally. And just the time to explore, discuss, decide, and then encounter something "planned", tends to limit those to one per game session. Exceptions to that limit tend to be when the party is having a series of related encounters/combats (say, they are assaulting someone's keep/lair). It may not be uncommon to have a very short fight against a couple enemies guarding an entrance, then a couple more quick small to medium sized fights as they encounter various minions wherever they might have happened to be when the party initated the attack, and then likely one "enemies organize their defenses and fight you" fight (which is usually larger), and then finally the "party breaches into the main chamber and fights the top dog" type fight. An assault like that would probably take 3 game sessions to manage (gotta include time for exploring, descrbing the rooms, making decisions about which way to go once inside, dealing with barracades, etc).

[Pex]

I don't care about quantity. I care about quality.

Players' side: Know what your character can do, teamwork, tactics

DMs' side: Let the players rest already, not a fan of using waves of enemies, don't stack the deck overwhelming the party with debuffs (plural) & 75% hit point loss in the "surprise" round as a means to make it "challenging"

[Jay R]

It depends tremendously on the kind of adventure, and how the PCs are approaching it. But it can't be calculated "per session" when some sessions take place over lunchtime and others are twelve or more hours.

I'd say on average about one serious combat ever two hours seems normal. But that ignores quick, easy fights that are really just the introduction of some plot element – a quick tavern brawl with locals, or a single pickpocket trying to steal from a PC.

But some dungeon crawls have one every half hour and some political sessions might have only one or two – or none. [I've had a very enjoyable ten-hour session without a single combat, or even a die roll. And it was wonderful. But that's an exceptional session, and must be treated as an exception.]

[Pauly]

Depends on
- Genre, both system and campaign
- Consequences of combat (games like WFRP or Cyberpunk even the most mundane of combat carry the risk of death or serious injury)
- Time to resolve combat/how much fun is combat
- system mastery
- metagame considerations (eg resource management in D&D)
- other avenues for interesting encounters such as investigation, social, exploration, puzzle solving or chases. This depends both on the campaign setting and the tools available in the system.
- tone of the campaign. Serious or realistic campaigns tend to have fewer combats than heroic or beer’n’pretzels campaigns.
- other methods availablrpe to resolve an encounter - eg social, stealth, running away and looking for a different path, creating distractions.

I’ve been playing Traveller and Cyberpunk the most recently and on average I would say there have been 5 or 6 opportunities for combat in a 3 hour session, with 0 to 1 actual combats in most sessions, sometimes 2 and 3 rarely.

[Psyren]

I like 1-3. (Keep in mind of course that combats per session and combats per adventuring day can differ, sometimes significantly.)

[Trask]

If D&D, as many as possible. That's only slightly sarcasm. In D&D I think oftentimes quantity > quality when it comes to combat, because generally combat means progress. If we're our Quest is to rescue Princess Buttercup and we have...

A random encounter with dryads in the wilderness
Fight worg mounted goblins at the entrance
Sleepy/dumb ogres guarding a treasure room
A rival adventuring party who wants to take the princess near the underground sea cave
A giant octopus while trying to take the makeshift raft out to surf with the princess

That is a lot more fun to me than one huge fight where we

Walk into the cave and fight a huge epic encounter 1 big guy with a mountain of HP, legendary actions, special reactions, lair actions, summoning minions with a bonus action, a transformation once he reaches 20% health....and then grab the princess. And it takes an hour and a half.

Maybe I'm like this because in my experience as a player, 90% of the time combat ends in PC victory. So what's the point of a big "interesting" battle? I'm not saying it doesn't have its place in the DM's repertoire, but I'd rather have 3 different fights in dramatic locales against different NPCs in each case than just 1. When a D&D session ends, I get retroactive feelings of fun and excitement when I can look back and say "Wow, we did a lot today!".

Maybe I just don't appreciate tactics as much as some others, but to me a long combat in D&D is akin to getting flavor fatigue. I just want to eat something else man! I'm tired of eating this, I want to eat something else already. Its part of the reason why as a DM I generally have no problem whatsoever with PC's getting lucky and killing someone faster than I expected them to.

[Eldan]

Very system dependent. D&D 3.5, where one combat can be several hours? One. Never more than one. Spire, which I'm playing right now, where the shortest possible combat is one roll of the Fight skill and even a boss fight won't be that long? As many as it takes.

Generally, I'd say 25-33% of the time. I might be convinced to do 50% if the fight system is very interesting.

Also, as a DM, I'm very fond of having enemies surrender or run away once the fight is clearly decided.

[gbaji]

But some dungeon crawls have one every half hour and some political sessions might have only one or two – or none. [I've had a very enjoyable ten-hour session without a single combat, or even a die roll. And it was wonderful. But that's an exceptional session, and must be treated as an exception.]

I'm two 3-4 hour sessions into the current adventure I'm running, and they have yet to get into any sort of combat. Lots of decisions being made, information being discovered and discussed, inter-pc and pc2npc interaction, etc, but so far.... no actual combat. And the players seem perfectly interested and engaged. Now. I totally had some NPCs made up, just in case they decided to wander off and go find some trouble along the way. But the party is "on a mission", and mostly decided to stay on the ship while stopping in ports along the way. At least at the really dangerous ones (we have a variant of Sanctuary, from Thieves World, in our game. And the boxed set with full maps and whatnot *right there* on a bookshelf next to the gaming table, so... they could totally go ashore and "see what happens". What could go wrong?). I'm always willing to come up with something in response to whatever they decide to do. But it's up to them. And in this case, they chose "avoid unnecessary entanglements", so that's what they got.

I expect session 3 will have some combat. The've arrived at the location where the first bit of info they need is located, and it's extremly unlikely they'll be able to get it without some sort of fight happening. Now... who they fight and why is still up in the air.

IMO, it helps that we're playing a skill based game, so even non-combat sessions are quite useful to the PCs. Making spots, and searches, and listens, and whatnot, all allow them to get better at these things. So these kinds of sessions are a bit of a bonus. They get the RP stuff *and* still get some character improvement. All good IMO.

[Mastikator]

Also, as a DM, I'm very fond of having enemies surrender or run away once the fight is clearly decided.

I think this is a is very important thing to do as a DM because it can add a dimension to combat. It gives a chance for the players to talk to NPCs they otherwise wouldn't have, it makes the NPCs feel more personable and therefore the world more immersive, it gives the players a another opportunity to roleplay and make character based choices.
I too am fond of it and it makes me happy to see other DMs do this too!

[Eldan]

The roleplay opportunities too, of course, but mainly, I have enemies run away or surrender once the fight gets boring. I.e. you've killed half the goblins and survived their ambush and the traps. The rest of them scurry back in their holes, so we don't need to play another five rounds of everyone using their most expendable abilities to mop up.

[Easy e]

Typically we have 3 hour sessions, and no matter the game we tend to have 0-2 per session. So, it averages to about 1 per every 3 hours of gameplay or so.

[Vegan Squirrel]

This will vary a lot depending on where the characters are, and I do like that mix, but on average I think I'd say about 2–3 combats in a 2–3 hour session (so a combat per hour of play). We're currently playing D&D 5e; I think maybe combat was slightly more common back when we played 3.5.

In dungeons, there can be more; in town, there can be none (and both of those can be subverted, by the DM or the players). There are a lot of blurred lines, where even a hostile encounter ends up getting resolved without any actual combat. And I think some of our most memorable sessions have been entirely free of combat.

In the end, whatever feels right in the fiction.

[gbaji]

Responding to the set of "end fights early" posts here, and not just yours.

The roleplay opportunities too, of course, but mainly, I have enemies run away or surrender once the fight gets boring. I.e. you've killed half the goblins and survived their ambush and the traps. The rest of them scurry back in their holes, so we don't need to play another five rounds of everyone using their most expendable abilities to mop up.

I do this as well, mostly when the end of the combat is unambigous. I do have one minor caveat though: The actual result needs to be unambigous, not just "who wins". Having enemies surrender works well (very well, in fact, for the reasons mentioned previously). I'm always a bit concerned over the "have the NPCs run away" bit, though. This makes sense from a realistic pov (would they just stay in a fight they are doomed to lose?). However, it still needs to be something the PCs can't prevent, if that's what they want to do, and I will continue to play out the encounter if the players want, for this exact reason.

Sometimes (quite often, in fact), the PCs don't want any of the NPCs to escape. Escape may mean they run off to warn the rest of their group, maybe. It can also be frustrating for players if the main leaders always escape every fight. So, as a minor modification, I'd caution about just handwaving the conclusion with regard to NPCs running away, unless it's actually the case that they can run away and the PCs can't stop them (ie: the conclusion is not in doubt). What you don't want to do is run a couple rounds of combat, then declare "Ok. You guys are easily defeating the NPCs, so I'll just say you win, but some of them get away". Sometimes, that's fine. But sometimes, the players want to do more, so you should let them play it out.


I suppose it's also a point to make if the objective of the fight itself is resource depletion. If the party is attacking an area with enemies, and this is one group of such enemies out of possibly many that need to be defeated, and it's a dynamic environment (so the NPCs become aware of the party and will response in kind), you really do want to play things out all the way to the point of "there are no more resources needed to reach the conclusion". This gives the PCs options like "do we use our default combat stuff, knowthing that half of this group of enemies will get away and warn their friends, but have more resources for the fights to come?" or "do we use some of our more powerful but limited resources, and make sure no one escapes to tell the tale?". Sometimes, ending a fight early may remove those choices from the players, and IMO, those are valid and significant choices for them to make.

[Ionathus]

My (5e) players are at level 14 now, so it's hard to come up with encounters that don't fall into the dichotomy of:

• So easy that they're really just roleplay encounters with an initiative tracker
• Convoluted session-long ordeals against high-powered opponents with plenty of traps, minions, and special abilities

That said, my answer is probably somewhere around 0.8. My players like talking, exploring, and resolving disputes with diplomacy/creative thinking, but they usually get to fight something significant most weeks.

[KorvinStarmast]

I play D&D 5e

What's it like, at your table?
There is a reason that I am asking this.

[Anonymouswizard]

As others have said it depends on the system. If the system has a dedicated combat system my ideal is for the average to not exceed 1/session, because combat just takes upn a LOT of time and for some characters can devolve into 'I do the same thing over and over'. The more detailed combat gets the less I want to spend actually doing it, if I have to track hp by body part I'm putting all my skill points into 'Athletics' and 'Hooting like Daffy Duck'.

If the game doesn't have a dedicated combat system? No real need to have an average, and the ideal will depend on 'did anybody take smashing heads as their thing'. Combat no longer slows the game to a crawl, so it just becomes one more tool to solve a problem.

In D&D if I punch an NPC we lose at minimu half an hour to the fight. In Monsterhearts if I punch a guy one roll determines if I win or lose the fight (and if it cost me any social capital). That means that combat can pop up a lot more organically, and is going to feel bloody and short compared to the indepth tactical analysis D&D and GURPS tend to devolve into. Weirdly while this means I like the idea of Star Trek Adventures having detailed combat: it's thematic for fights to be avoided until the last possible minute unless you've gone for a Klingon game.

[Kane0]

One combat per 2 hours of play, so like 1/3 of my play-time spent in combat

[Quertus]

Top 3 answers:

#3) 10-15. The players know what they’re doing, the party is making clear progress.

#2) 1. Spend the whole session strategizing for one final showdown. Epic.

#1) 0. Conversions, intrigue, Exploration, puzzles, and a group that enjoys such. Priceless.

EDIT: my 3rd choice of 10-15 is for D&D and similar, or anything that can manage such rates; my other options of 0 and 1 are presumably System-agnostic.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

In D&D -- I've played 2E, 4E and PF 1e but never run them, and have both played and GMed 3.0, 3.5 and 5E -- three is the maximum number, and usually I want one. At my tables, usually a quarter to a third of a session is combat time, maybe up to half with a particularly challenging obstacle or major antagonist battle. 5E published adventures are absolutely loaded with 'it takes 10 days to walk from here to there, roll three times on this chart every day, everything on the chart is a battle against 1-3 goblins in an open field' and I hate it. I, and my normal group, would much prefer the normal routine to involve one battle that's extremely challenging at maximum resources rather than attriting away resources three kobold crossbow shots at a time.

In other systems like Gumshoe, which I've played in Night's Black Agents and am preparing to run in Delta Green, maybe one? Or zero? Ideally zero? Combat mechanics aren't the strong point of Gumshoe. I think they're more fun as a thing that happens rarely when the company has no other choice rather than as a core piece of the group's problemsolving.