The Gaming Den

How many turns do you like a combat to last when facing typical opposition (of course, ambushes and mook fights are quicker)? Would you prefer this to change as you level up?

I suppose a lot depends on the speed of a player's turn resolution, which can drag at higher levels.

In a party of four, I myself like to see a character get off four rounds of (preferably different) actions per combat, regardless of level.

3 rounds for me. 4 would be okay. 10 rounds probably annoying unless the fight is rather epic and has back and forth.

1 round fights can be good, but not all the time. It's like playing spin the bottle but you kill whichever monster comes up from the monster manual and go again.

It varies for me, but my experience is atypical because lately, I've been playing or running one-on-one games with a friend. Solo games have the issue of Team Player having fewer actions available. So, even things like mook fights tend to take longer.

The last character I seriously played was a druid who primarily used a lot of crowd control and damage-over-time type spells. So, combats would tend to drag out, but I was frequently dancing around various AoE spells trying to keep the various monsters from hurting me. I did one-shot a dragon with Baleful Polymorph once, but I could see how it took the steam out of the DM's sails, so we just kind of came to a gentleman's agreement that I wouldn't use SoDs (and he wouldn't either). That also made things take longer.

Although, at 9th level, Quicken Spell really helped with things. Mooks would go down fast in a Quickened Entangle and Vortex of Teeth in a single round.

Anyway, a typical combat would last close to 10 rounds with that PC. My record was about 35 rounds when I was fighting an obscure golem and I didn't think to prepare any SR: No spells. That was primarily me keeping the NPC with the adamantine weapon alive and stepping in to take a few hits here and there. It was slow and painful.

The number of "rounds" is the wrong question. The question is the number of minutes, which in turn is a factor of the number of choices compounded by how difficult those choices are, extended by how fiddly the system is to resolve those.

3 rounds of Diplomacy takes longer to resolve than 6 rounds of Go Fish.

-Username17

That's true. I'd say for me, around 3 rounds, with each round having a 3E D&D level of complexity. So more like 6 rounds with 4E complexity.
By "complexity" I'm meaning basically number of choices. Reducing fiddlyness would be great, but most implementations of that I've seen also reduce choices.

I'm not sure how it translates into minutes, because that will vary a lot by how experienced the group is, how fast people can do math, and how quickly they can make decisions.

FrankTrollman wrote:The number of "rounds" is the wrong question. The question is the number of minutes, which in turn is a factor of the number of choices compounded by how difficult those choices are, extended by how fiddly the system is to resolve those.

...And how many people you have to resolve them for.

I measure combat in terms of my desire to keep playing - and that usually translates more often into minutes than rounds. If it's a really cool battle and there are only one or two players, I can deal with a combat session that's around 15 minutes long (maybe 20 on the outside). If there are three or more players, my desire to hash out combat lasts about 30 minutes. If the story/description is exciting, I will be willing to draw it out a bit longer, but for the most part, I want to get on with the whole plot, not nitpick about what five foot square my character's in and how much cover the bad guy has.

The number of "rounds" is the wrong question. The question is the number of minutes,

I don't think I'm in complete agreement here.

Yeah, I think realtime matters a whole heckuvalot more than in-game-time; and I think a lot of all tabletop RPGs have issues with the amount of realtime it takes to resolve combat. BUT I don't think that "rounds" is meaningless - as the number of decisions a player makes during that realtime block is a major factor in maintaining engagement and interest.

I think minutes per round is probably a valid metric. I suspect that it's probably a big deal in terms of player engagement than total combat length (whether we measure that length in realtime or game-scale-time)

I tend to cut down the decision making problem by just slapping a time limit of 1 minute on everyone's turn. Since I DM most of the time, I know what I'm going to do on my bad guy's turns so its hardly ever an issue in real time. Making snap decisions is a part of combat. The only time its slowed is if there is a newer person at the table. I'd say 3 to 4 rounds, longer on a boss battle. There's no real way to calculate the variable time it takes a given person to make a decision. People are way too different on that front.

FrankTrollman wrote:The number of "rounds" is the wrong question. The question is the number of minutes, which in turn is a factor of the number of choices compounded by how difficult those choices are, extended by how fiddly the system is to resolve those.

3 rounds of Diplomacy takes longer to resolve than 6 rounds of Go Fish.

-Username17

You're missing information in your analysis.

How many in-game actions people can take per combat does matter, as does how much real time it takes to resolve those actions.

In terms of minutes, the combats in those one-on-one games take quite a while. Even a simple encounter will take 20 - 30 minutes.

A lot of this is due to the DM not having a lot of stuff memorized, so he constantly has to look stuff up. Part of it is also him being indecisive or changing stuff in the middle of the game. For instance, if I'm blowing the socks off the encounter, he will likely add something else to it to make it harder, which will add time to the encounter.

He also sometimes has me fighting hoards of mooks, sometimes made worse by me having hoards of NPC mooks on my side, which results in me sitting there for five minutes waiting to see how many of these dicks hit each other for 1d8 damage. It can tell an interesting story, but it's not fun to mechanically run or sit though in combat.

I also have a tendency to stall things when running a caster, especially if something big changes between my turns. I may have picked out my spell, only to realize that I need to size up the situation again. That takes time.

FrankTrollman wrote:The number of "rounds" is the wrong question.

No, the number of rounds matters, too. A 4E combat that takes 15 rounds to finish is tedious, even if those rounds whiz by because everyone is spamming the same fucking At Will power over and over again.

Oh, as for number of minutes per combat, 2-5 minutes is good for me and is the norm for my group.

Only with boss battles does my group get into 30 minute fights.

I remember with the final boss of an epic level game, it took a couple hours to get to the real fight and run through 8 turns as everyone went super saiyan after winning initiative. A player even happened by at the end of our turn to A) appear suddenly B) go super saiyan to be level appropriate (used to be a level 12 character IIRC) and C) finish off the last 1000 hp of the final boss' 14,000 hp.

But it was awesome, tense, and a fitting end to a long campaign. 30 minutes would not have done it justice. If it were any other fight, 2 hours would have been waaaay too long.

hogarth wrote:

FrankTrollman wrote:The number of "rounds" is the wrong question.

No, the number of rounds matters, too. A 4E combat that takes 15 rounds to finish is tedious, even if those rounds whiz by because everyone is spamming the same fucking At Will power over and over again.

Only in that you only take 3-5 unique actions during the combat, and generally one action type is repeated every round starting starting between round 3 and 6.

The tedium is because you're declaring the same action twelve times in a row, not because the battle is split into 15 rounds. A game of Magic is often 15 rounds, but is a pretty decent game regardless because you are doing different stuff every round.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:

hogarth wrote:

FrankTrollman wrote:The number of "rounds" is the wrong question.

No, the number of rounds matters, too. A 4E combat that takes 15 rounds to finish is tedious, even if those rounds whiz by because everyone is spamming the same fucking At Will power over and over again.

Only in that you only take 3-5 unique actions during the combat, and generally one action type is repeated every round starting starting between round 3 and 6.

The tedium is because you're declaring the same action twelve times in a row, not because the battle is split into 15 rounds. A game of Magic is often 15 rounds, but is a pretty decent game regardless because you are doing different stuff every round.

-Username17

Yes. The number of rounds should be enough so that:

• the PCs and the BBEG are able to use at least a few different gimmicks
• if the PCs or the BBEG get hosed by an attack on the first round (e.g. stunned or something like that), they should be theoretically able to recover and contribute to the fight

but not so long that:

• your gimmicks start to get "excessively" repetitive
• you start to forget which round you're on, for effects that have a time duration

How long that is depends on the game, as you noted. But it's a separate issue from how many minutes it takes to resolve (although that's important as well, of course).

FrankTrollman wrote:The number of "rounds" is the wrong question. The question is the number of minutes, which in turn is a factor of the number of choices compounded by how difficult those choices are, extended by how fiddly the system is to resolve those.

3 rounds of Diplomacy takes longer to resolve than 6 rounds of Go Fish.

-Username17

Excellent point. Combat on average seems satisfying if it lasts about 15 minutes per fight, including the aftermath (healing up, looting, etc). I've found that if I'm DM'ing aggressively, I can fit 10+ rounds into that 15 minutes if I push my players and run with the "10 seconds to declare your action or your character is frozen in indecision" rule of thumb. They're frantic, and rarely if ever optimal, but that seems to be more fun to my players than 45 minutes to take out a handful of mooks.

The *outside* is about 30 minutes per combat, if it's a big or epic or involved combat. If it's boring or if the mage can't make his fucking mind up, it turns into pulling teeth.

10 rounds in 15 minutes?!?!?

I know my usual group is on the slow end, for a variety of reasons, but the times folks are posting prompts me to ask:
So, am I the only one on this forum who has a group that uses minis and terrain for combat?

Josh_Kablack wrote:10 rounds in 15 minutes?!?!?

I know my usual group is on the slow end, for a variety of reasons, but the times folks are posting prompts me to ask:
So, am I the only one on this forum who has a group that uses minis and terrain for combat?

Yeah, I have no idea what these guys are babbling about. You can't even set up a positionally defined combat system in 2 minutes, let alone complete a combat in one of these fucking systems.

A game of WH40k takes about 2 hours. It lasts four fucking rounds. You can put less minis on the map and proceed quicker, but the times people are quoting in this thread are not credible.

-Username17

I feel lucky if we get a round off an hour. :P

-Crissa

Set up times are being considered as part of combat length now?

Please note that the times I gave were for my attention span, not the reality of a combat session.



We did some serious streamlining of the combat process after one session with three players lasted nearly four hours. The streamlining included making players more prepared for their actions by rewriting the character sheets and including more information, and skimming through mook battles by giving a strategy to the DM and resolving it with a bit of magic tea party so we didn't have to get into the nitty gritty of full-on combat.

In our large group (6 players), combat lasts about an hour on average, and half of the players are new to the game.

The combats that Frank ran that lasted more than an hour or so were generally like a string of encounters than any one combat.

-Crissa

Josh_Kablack wrote:10 rounds in 15 minutes?!?!?

I know my usual group is on the slow end, for a variety of reasons, but the times folks are posting prompts me to ask:
So, am I the only one on this forum who has a group that uses minis and terrain for combat?

You're not alone. Every group I've gamed with since 3.0's release has used minis and terrain for combats. And, as the groups tend to be large (6+ players), the combats tend to take a while.

Setup is usually not much of a factor though, as most everyone has pre-printed maps, dungeon tiles, or has been sketching the area out on the grid already.

Well I have a guy who has recently realized that he can fund his trips to gaming cons by teaching terrain building workshops, and has an attic full of his creations and donations from friends who gave up on 40k and stuff.

So we can have fairly lengthy setups sometimes, but that's generally not a problem, as it's generally him, the DM and maybe one other player doing setups for 5-15 minutes while everyone else takes a pre-combat break for potty/smoke/beer run/updating charsheet/etc

But the issue is that just having minis and terrain slows things down:

• You have to physically move around the table, navigating past other players and trying not to spill mountain dew (because the laser pointer always disappears into the piles of stored terrain) and that takes time.
• You have to be clear on which minis are friend and foe (not always easy trivial in new games nor in fights where you have NPC allies/new henchment/etc - we have recently taken to painting the PC fig bases all one color in sustained games) and that takes time "Who's this guy again"? Even with somewhere over 3,000 minis in the room, there's never a perfect representation of the monsters on the board (this black bear is really an owlbear, this large-based blue dragon is really a wyvern,etc) let alone characters.
• You have to check LOS/cover. We generally ignore the crazy official "archer in a box with the corner folded in" cover rules of D&D to save time and headache, instead we just line up eyeballs or the prodigal laser pointer here - but that still takes many seconds.
• You have to check ranges and AoEs. And finding and deploying one of the tape measures adds time. Often this involves a double check as the player will go back to the rulebook/character sheet (at their seat) to confirm what the range is after measuring on the map. (not always by their seat)

And given those constraints, I could see my group functioning at "1 minute to declare general action, 1 minute to resolve, and you gotta help each other by moving the minis nearest you" in systems where they have a good degree of mastery. It would play like Speed Chess in terms of confusion and minis would get Grabowski'ed and beer would get spilled, but it would at least be possible in low level 3e and most of 4e and we could never have new-to-the system players or Eric in any games, and out-of-turn actions just wouldn't happen - but it would at least be technically possible.

Faster than that seems not merely insane, but actually impossible, in any system robust enough to have rules for movement, ranges and positioning.


And within that "2 minutes per player" paradigm, a group of 4 players and a DM is still looking at 10-16 minutes per round (4 players at 2 min each, 1 DM with 2 to 8 minutes). If that's on the low side and combat goes just 4 rounds, that's 45 minutes with quick setup/quick breakdown. If it's on the high side, and combat goes with the 4e paradigm of "hit 50% of the time, it takes 4 hits to KO a matched opponent" you're looking at 128 minutes PLUS terrain setup and the inevitable digression, joking and the inevitable potty / smoke breaks that someone is going to need (probably right before his turn too)

Josh_Kablack wrote:[*] You have to physically move around the table, navigating past other players and trying not to spill mountain dew (because the laser pointer always disappears into the piles of stored terrain) and that takes time.

Our DM generally moves the pieces so that people don't have to be sitting close to the battlemat - which means people only have to sit as close to the battlemat as their eyes require (which means drinks and stuff are generally not anywhere near the battlemat). We also use wet erase markers instead of actual terrain chunks... Call it low budget gaming.

[*] You have to be clear on which minis are friend and foe (not always easy trivial in new games nor in fights where you have NPC allies/new henchment/etc - we have recently taken to painting the PC fig bases all one color in sustained games) and that takes time "Who's this guy again"? Even with somewhere over 3,000 minis in the room, there's never a perfect representation of the monsters on the board (this black bear is really an owlbear, this large-based blue dragon is really a wyvern,etc) let alone characters.

This problem was solved (and it was a HUGE problem) when we couldn't find the minis to bring to a game, so we brought my box of Lego people parts instead. The PCs got to make their own characters (which was hella cool), and enemies were represented by different sizes of dice.

Yeah, the setup wasn't as "realistic," but it was so much easier that we tried it in all of our groups, and all chose to stick with it.

Josh_Kablack wrote:10 rounds in 15 minutes?!?!?

I know my usual group is on the slow end, for a variety of reasons, but the times folks are posting prompts me to ask:
So, am I the only one on this forum who has a group that uses minis and terrain for combat?

Fair enough, 10 rounds might be rare (though I did run a 10 round ravenloft combat with 5 players in 15 minutes. It was... brutal...), but generally most small or medium sized combats take place in 15 minutes or so. I prep before the game even starts and my players rarely suffer decision paralysis. Also, I play that any strategy about how to fight the bad guys is done "in character", so whatever you say the bad guys can hear (and might understand if they're intelligent). This has led to interesting options... Telepathic psionics to set up a communications network, code phrases & battle language, and so on. But mostly it means that I don't let them have 10 minute discussions with the rest of the PCs to discuss perfect strategy. I originally came up with it to prevent the one or two dominating players from dictating what other, less aggressive players would do. It had the side result of really speeding up combat.