Yeh, I think this is the criteria we need. I don't care how many rounds a combat takes; I care how long it takes and what the chances are that someone will go play Smash Bros.Voss wrote:Even 2 hours for a single fight seems ridiculously long to me. Perhaps it was growing up with 1st/2nd edition, but big fights should take maybe an 45 minutes to an hour, with standard fights taking no more than half that.
Rocket Launcher Tag vs. Padded Sumo.
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For a casual encounter (ie, not a boss fight)? Sure.Josh_Kablack wrote:23-30 minutes for a fight? Really?Voss wrote:Even 2 hours for a single fight seems ridiculously long to me. Perhaps it was growing up with 1st/2nd edition, but big fights should take maybe an 45 minutes to an hour, with standard fights taking no more than half that.
How many players do you have, and how quickly do they take their turns? Are you using minis/terrain or are you using completely abstract positioning? Is everybody in your group already very familiar with the system and good about knowing their relevant bonuses and how their new maneuvers/powers/spells work? Are you all hardcore focused on the game with zero digressions?
Players, about 4-6, most of whom knew what they were doing. Granted, 1 or 2 idiots slow the game down immensely, but after a couple of sessions they should grasp what they need to do.
Back in the old days we abstracted everything, but even in 3.5 with minis a casual encounter shouldn't take that long. [Unless of course the DM needs to map out a ridiculously complicated battlefield on the spot. Good DMs I've known had them predone, one in particular had about 4 battlemats stacked in layers and just peeled them off when we got to the fights- it save a hell of a lot of time].
Zero digressions? Never, but the various groups I've played with tried not to go off on tangents during the fights. Its one thing for the group at large to stop paying attention when the DM is dealing with one character off on their own, its quite another to interrupt the entire group in the middle of something. Not to say it didn't happen ever, but the fights were the major time everyone got to participate.
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Draco_Argentum
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Flap Rabbit avatar returns!Josh_Kablack wrote:I think that rounds really don't matter so much in and of themselves. The actual amount of realtime devoted to combat in a session is probably the primary consideration for me.
I only partly agree, the number of rounds is a design goal too. Once you know how many rounds and how long total you can calculate the time per action and design a system from there. Theres no point coming up with a complex, interrupt heavy combat system then realising fights have to be half a round long to fit into a 30 minute timeslot.
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Titanium Dragon
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I don't think the number of rounds are even relevant. I think what matters is, as others have said, how long the fight is interesting for.
I personally think that 4th edition has the BASIC length about right for most of the game (at least heroic and most of paragon), it really is only at epic that I've run into actual issues with combat dragging on (and even then, it really depends on how fast you are resolving things and how interesting the monsters are). 1st level combat also has some issues, though I think they're sort of the opposite end - basically PCs have so few options at level 1 (only 1 encounter power and 1 daily power) that it makes combat feel a bit more tedious than it needs to (though, notably, its quite fun to play the monsters).
The real issue is the degree to which combat becomes a repetitive slogfest - even if you are using nothing but at-will powers, if this means that the sides are moving around, using terrain, ect. the fight is still fun. Conversely, even if you're still using limited use powers, its actually rather boring if both sides have basically lined up and are whacking on each other. This is why forced movement powers are actually interesting, and why skirmisher type monsters can be cool and fun - you end up running around fighting the monsters, instead of just standing in one place and taking turns beating on each other.
A combat should last between a 20 minutes and an hour, and only an exceptionally exciting combat would last longer than that, and an average time of about 40 minutes. I've had fun combats which lasted for over an hour, where there was a great deal of tension the whole time... and I've had combats (oddly, mostly in 3.x, not 4e) where the combat just drug on and on and on as all the uber kill spells were exhausted and both sides just kept healing over and over and refusing to freaking die. Oh NPC clerics. But I digress.
I think the real point is to make the combat interesting for a long enough period of time. This means people need to be doing interesting things almost every turn, and that things should be moving around almost every turn. Not every individual, but at least half of each side should be moving in order to gain some real positional advantage or to prevent the other side from doing so.
Having interesting locales is pretty essential. Having a fight in a standard dungeon room realy isn't that interesting. But if there are tables and chairs, maybe a firepit or two, and similar things which can be meaningfully interacted with (even if it is just moving so you can't be flanked, or jumping up on the table/crawling under it/pushing people into the fire) combat is much more acceptable. When you fight on floating rubble, or while plummeting to the center of the planet, combat can last longer because things are more interesting and there's more to see and do. Now, some will complain that it sucks to have to set this sort of thing up for every encounter, but I feel that it makes every encounter better, and if you aren't going to bother, then is the encounter any more than slapping a few monsters together? Having some premade random maps also helps such things, so if you do randomly decide they get attacked by bandits, or they fight some people you weren't expected, you can pull out a generic forest/village/whatever which is interesting to fight in. You don't need to reinvent the wheel personally every combat.
I think this is what the 4th edition designers had in mind, and when you put characters in this sort of environment fights become much more dynamic, especially if you have highly mobile monsters.
Rocket tag really is annoying, both as a DM and as a player, because firstly, you often don't get the time to shine (because the combat is over so fast, you don't really get to do all that much which is interesting) and secondly the fights tend to be highly anticlimactic. While things coming down to one roll from time to time is very exciting, when it often (or worse still, always) does so it loses a lot of its charm.
I think that the deviation from the ideal mean is what is important. If a combat only lasts a couple of minutes, it is about as unsatisfying as if it lasts an hour but the last twenty minutes are boring - while in the latter case, you've wasted a lot of time, in the former case you often come to feel that being there in the first place is a waste of time. Or at least, I do.
So really, how long should combat last? If I were to say that the average player takes a minute per turn, and the DM takes two minutes for all their side, in a four person group that'd put the average combat at about six rounds long, with a long one being ten rounds and a short one being three. What if it often takes longer than a minute per turn? Then I think the game is too complicated (or the player is too slow).
Ten minutes between turns bores a lot of people; the longer you have to wait between turns, the worse things are, and if you have, say, three or four minute turns often, then you'll turn a lot of people off (including me). Conversely, if you don't do much on your turn, things don't feel very satisfying. Thus I think the TRUE thing you want to optimize is the stuff:time ratio; the more stuff you do per unit time, the happier you'll be, and you want your combat to last exactly as long as that ratio is reasonable.
I personally think that 4th edition has the BASIC length about right for most of the game (at least heroic and most of paragon), it really is only at epic that I've run into actual issues with combat dragging on (and even then, it really depends on how fast you are resolving things and how interesting the monsters are). 1st level combat also has some issues, though I think they're sort of the opposite end - basically PCs have so few options at level 1 (only 1 encounter power and 1 daily power) that it makes combat feel a bit more tedious than it needs to (though, notably, its quite fun to play the monsters).
The real issue is the degree to which combat becomes a repetitive slogfest - even if you are using nothing but at-will powers, if this means that the sides are moving around, using terrain, ect. the fight is still fun. Conversely, even if you're still using limited use powers, its actually rather boring if both sides have basically lined up and are whacking on each other. This is why forced movement powers are actually interesting, and why skirmisher type monsters can be cool and fun - you end up running around fighting the monsters, instead of just standing in one place and taking turns beating on each other.
A combat should last between a 20 minutes and an hour, and only an exceptionally exciting combat would last longer than that, and an average time of about 40 minutes. I've had fun combats which lasted for over an hour, where there was a great deal of tension the whole time... and I've had combats (oddly, mostly in 3.x, not 4e) where the combat just drug on and on and on as all the uber kill spells were exhausted and both sides just kept healing over and over and refusing to freaking die. Oh NPC clerics. But I digress.
I think the real point is to make the combat interesting for a long enough period of time. This means people need to be doing interesting things almost every turn, and that things should be moving around almost every turn. Not every individual, but at least half of each side should be moving in order to gain some real positional advantage or to prevent the other side from doing so.
Having interesting locales is pretty essential. Having a fight in a standard dungeon room realy isn't that interesting. But if there are tables and chairs, maybe a firepit or two, and similar things which can be meaningfully interacted with (even if it is just moving so you can't be flanked, or jumping up on the table/crawling under it/pushing people into the fire) combat is much more acceptable. When you fight on floating rubble, or while plummeting to the center of the planet, combat can last longer because things are more interesting and there's more to see and do. Now, some will complain that it sucks to have to set this sort of thing up for every encounter, but I feel that it makes every encounter better, and if you aren't going to bother, then is the encounter any more than slapping a few monsters together? Having some premade random maps also helps such things, so if you do randomly decide they get attacked by bandits, or they fight some people you weren't expected, you can pull out a generic forest/village/whatever which is interesting to fight in. You don't need to reinvent the wheel personally every combat.
I think this is what the 4th edition designers had in mind, and when you put characters in this sort of environment fights become much more dynamic, especially if you have highly mobile monsters.
Rocket tag really is annoying, both as a DM and as a player, because firstly, you often don't get the time to shine (because the combat is over so fast, you don't really get to do all that much which is interesting) and secondly the fights tend to be highly anticlimactic. While things coming down to one roll from time to time is very exciting, when it often (or worse still, always) does so it loses a lot of its charm.
I think that the deviation from the ideal mean is what is important. If a combat only lasts a couple of minutes, it is about as unsatisfying as if it lasts an hour but the last twenty minutes are boring - while in the latter case, you've wasted a lot of time, in the former case you often come to feel that being there in the first place is a waste of time. Or at least, I do.
So really, how long should combat last? If I were to say that the average player takes a minute per turn, and the DM takes two minutes for all their side, in a four person group that'd put the average combat at about six rounds long, with a long one being ten rounds and a short one being three. What if it often takes longer than a minute per turn? Then I think the game is too complicated (or the player is too slow).
Ten minutes between turns bores a lot of people; the longer you have to wait between turns, the worse things are, and if you have, say, three or four minute turns often, then you'll turn a lot of people off (including me). Conversely, if you don't do much on your turn, things don't feel very satisfying. Thus I think the TRUE thing you want to optimize is the stuff:time ratio; the more stuff you do per unit time, the happier you'll be, and you want your combat to last exactly as long as that ratio is reasonable.
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Absentminded_Wizard
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So the ability to search for treasure is the reward for succeeding in combat. And I'm pretty sure the original obsession with mapping was added by the logistics-addicted Gygax after he got hold of Arneson's game. I was fortunate enough never to have played under the assumption that I would get lost if I couldn't describe the way out of the dungeon in exact detail.tzor wrote: While it is no doubt that D&D became a combat oriented game it is not clear that it was originally intended to be so. Non combat encounters were a major part of the initial feel of the game; going through wilderness, searching for stuff, etc. Combat was the most “detailed” because it was the most potentially complex with the other parts easily done with simple rules. Remember the original AD&D rules had weapons vs. armor class tables, facing rules, a percentile system for non weapon combat, etc. While there wasn’t an over arching story line most combats ended with searching and mapping and then more exploration.
Doom314's satirical 4e power wrote:Complete AnnihilationWar-metawarrior 1
An awesome bolt of multicolored light fires from your eyes and strikes your foe, disintegrating him into a fine dust in a nonmagical way.
At-will: Martial, Weapon
Standard Action Melee Weapon ("sword", range 10/20)
Target: One Creature
Attack: Con vs AC
Hit: [W] + Con, and the target is slowed.
Not exactly, you know the old joke about “Monty Hall” dungeons? Well that was the basic design of most dungeons. What was behind door #1, door #2 or that curtain where the statue of Carol Merril is strangely pointing to? It could be a trap, it could be an encounter, and it could be treasure. Combat is therefore a feature of the 1E dungeon but not the pivotal feature.Absentminded_Wizard wrote:So the ability to search for treasure is the reward for succeeding in combat. And I'm pretty sure the original obsession with mapping was added by the logistics-addicted Gygax after he got hold of Arneson's game. I was fortunate enough never to have played under the assumption that I would get lost if I couldn't describe the way out of the dungeon in exact detail.
Given the general nature of the game, (and the fact that the 1E DMG had a random dungeon generator) one of the most interesting things to do offline was the creation of dungeon maps. (Those with real art skill made outdoor maps.) Graph paper was your friend. (Considering that I started playing in college, graph paper was easily available in the campus bookstore.) Sure the walls were as thick as the width of a no 2 pencil but we didn’t care at the time. Like people who stretch out rubber bands to draw on them (what you never did that as a kid) we filled the whole page with all sorts of rooms, traps, secret places and so forth. The purpose of mapping was never really to “get out” but rather, “Hey what’s this large 200’ square blank in the middle of the map?” (Or when we were really crazy, “what’s this small 5’ blank in the map, I think there’s treasure in there!”
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Kobajagrande
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I'll go the other way - combats should last for about 15 minutes playing time, maybe 30 when you account the reduced pace of the game.
Reason? Honestly, main reason is the time. Personally, I feel that 4-5 hours is the duration of an average roleplaying session. After that comes the loss of concentration and mental exhaustion.
With that in mind, how much time should be dedicated to combat roleplaying as opposed to non-combat roleplaying? If you ask people playing around, you'll get answers like "0%" (lying) or more realistic "25%-50%-75%" range.
So, if you make a combat last an hour each, even the group which plays the most combat-heavy game will manage only 3-4 combats per session. That's actually... I mean, 3-4 combats? Does that sound like a grand adventure? Doesn't sound so to me.
However, if you make an average combat last 15 minutes, well... You can just achieve so much more during a session. The number of combats a combat-roleplaying-heavy group can play out during a session suddenly jumps up to 12-16. There you go - PCs can now clean out an entire Orc stronghold in one session.
Now I'm not saying there shouldn't be an hour-long climatic combats once in a while. But even then, I'd say 15min should be some basis for it. Make stuff happen every 15 mins that will change the situation in the battle in some way, so that it stays fresh for the participants and make them use some different stuff.
Reason? Honestly, main reason is the time. Personally, I feel that 4-5 hours is the duration of an average roleplaying session. After that comes the loss of concentration and mental exhaustion.
With that in mind, how much time should be dedicated to combat roleplaying as opposed to non-combat roleplaying? If you ask people playing around, you'll get answers like "0%" (lying) or more realistic "25%-50%-75%" range.
So, if you make a combat last an hour each, even the group which plays the most combat-heavy game will manage only 3-4 combats per session. That's actually... I mean, 3-4 combats? Does that sound like a grand adventure? Doesn't sound so to me.
However, if you make an average combat last 15 minutes, well... You can just achieve so much more during a session. The number of combats a combat-roleplaying-heavy group can play out during a session suddenly jumps up to 12-16. There you go - PCs can now clean out an entire Orc stronghold in one session.
Now I'm not saying there shouldn't be an hour-long climatic combats once in a while. But even then, I'd say 15min should be some basis for it. Make stuff happen every 15 mins that will change the situation in the battle in some way, so that it stays fresh for the participants and make them use some different stuff.
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PoliteNewb
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This.Kobajagrande wrote:I'll go the other way - combats should last for about 15 minutes playing time, maybe 30 when you account the reduced pace of the game.
Reason? Honestly, main reason is the time. Personally, I feel that 4-5 hours is the duration of an average roleplaying session. After that comes the loss of concentration and mental exhaustion.
(plus, now that I have a wife, kids, and a job, I find I have less time I can surrender in large chunks to play games. The days when I can stay up all night chugging Mountain Dew and gaming for 10-12 hours straight are long gone.)
I'd say fight duration should vary, but in general I like combat to play out like this:
--fights against mooks (goblins at low levels, zombies at any level, ogres at mid-high levels): these should be over in 10 minutes or so, depending on numbers. They should go down like chumps, 1-3 shots each.
--fights against "guards", which could be elite troops or more powerful undead or trained guard beasts like a hydra or something: these should be 20 minutes, and they should take a little more effort; either a longer grind, or really sharp tactics to bring down more quickly.
--fights against mixed groups (usually a minor leader with some mooks and a heavy or 2) should be 30 minutes, maybe a little more.
--fights against bosses (dragons, liches, whatever) can be longer, but not longer than 45 minutes, an hour TOPS. These are also the fights where I care most about using a variety of options (vs. spamming) and interesting terrain/environments.
Note that I don't give a crap what the enemy's battlefield role is; I care about how much effort it should take to beat it.
General rules that I favor:
--PCs should be encouraged to deal with situations in one sitting (as much as feasible), not do the 15-minute workday.
--I agree vigorously with Lago's point that very few monsters should fight to the death. Monsters should flee, retreat to a stronger position, surrender, negotiate a truce, jump down their escape hatch, whatever.
--Smart monsters should (obviously) be played smart. There is nothing wrong with playing dumb monsters dumb, and IMO, more monsters should be dumb. Not only does this make things easier for DMs (who aren't super-geniuses, and thus can have trouble coming up with plans for the super-genius villain), it makes the PCs look good.
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JonSetanta
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0%K wrote:Yeh, I think this is the criteria we need. I don't care how many rounds a combat takes; I care how long it takes and what the chances are that someone will go play Smash Bros.Voss wrote:Even 2 hours for a single fight seems ridiculously long to me. Perhaps it was growing up with 1st/2nd edition, but big fights should take maybe an 45 minutes to an hour, with standard fights taking no more than half that.
I ganked the fucking adapter.
ADHD kids get one chance. If they bail on a 1-minute turn, I shut down the game and we do a Brawl tournament, making mental note not to RPG with them in the future.
This was learned the hard way. I might have seemed angry to a couple of those kids back over a decade ago, but when they stack dice towers and complain of boredom while you make a 30-second description of a room, that's not right.
The Adventurer's Almanac wrote: ↑Fri Oct 01, 2021 10:25 pmNobody gives a flying fuck about Tordek and Regdar.
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Lago PARANOIA
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1) Players actually have to feel like what they're doing in a fight matters. The Bingo experience where players aren't actively engaged except for rare bursts of activity frustrates and bores players if they have to hear a bunch of numbers they don't really care about before they find one that's interesting.
And I think that's one of the things that these combat analysis are missing. A 4-round fight where the PCs miss half of their attacks is more frustrating than a 6-round fight where the PCs hit with everything.
It's been my experience that PCs miss way too often in 4E; while the length of time in combat might be fine, the frustration factor is higher I believe. This is especially true since the game ranks powers by 'most to least exciting'. While theoretically hitting with two At-Wills and missing the Daily should frustrate players less than the other way around, I've found that the opposite is true.
2) The stakes of the fights actually have to matter.
In plots storyline-fights aren't all that common, even in combat-oriented stories like Conan. Honestly, we're just not as interested in watching Conan fight off raiders as we are watching him take on Thulsa Doom, even if the consequences for failure are the same. While we do expect the movie to have more going for it than just the big final encounter, if we have, say, a television series where the only big storyline fight is that and Conan does nothing but fight mooks for the first 13 episodes then you risk losing interest.
I honestly think that the 4-5 encounter workday is just way too goddamn long. It's just too much of a demand on the DM to craft every or even many encounters of this volume so that it matters on a level other than 'if you lose, you die'. Now I understand that this is a dungeon crawling game and some amount of padding is necessary, but I also think that a game that had two or three big encounters for a storyline would hold more interest than a storyline that had four or five medium-interest encounters.
And I think that's one of the things that these combat analysis are missing. A 4-round fight where the PCs miss half of their attacks is more frustrating than a 6-round fight where the PCs hit with everything.
It's been my experience that PCs miss way too often in 4E; while the length of time in combat might be fine, the frustration factor is higher I believe. This is especially true since the game ranks powers by 'most to least exciting'. While theoretically hitting with two At-Wills and missing the Daily should frustrate players less than the other way around, I've found that the opposite is true.
2) The stakes of the fights actually have to matter.
In plots storyline-fights aren't all that common, even in combat-oriented stories like Conan. Honestly, we're just not as interested in watching Conan fight off raiders as we are watching him take on Thulsa Doom, even if the consequences for failure are the same. While we do expect the movie to have more going for it than just the big final encounter, if we have, say, a television series where the only big storyline fight is that and Conan does nothing but fight mooks for the first 13 episodes then you risk losing interest.
I honestly think that the 4-5 encounter workday is just way too goddamn long. It's just too much of a demand on the DM to craft every or even many encounters of this volume so that it matters on a level other than 'if you lose, you die'. Now I understand that this is a dungeon crawling game and some amount of padding is necessary, but I also think that a game that had two or three big encounters for a storyline would hold more interest than a storyline that had four or five medium-interest encounters.
