[RPG] , or should be, the average time length of combat in each tier in real time

combatdnd-4etime

As per title, what is or should be the average time length in real time of one combat encounter in each tier of a DnD 4E game? I've noticed between heroic and paragon tier combat length starts to increase a lot. I have not reached epic tier with any group but am curious about it's length as well. I'm not sure if this is just our group taking a longer time or if it's something else so figured I'd try to get a gauge of what should be normal combat time.

Best Answer

This really depends on the pacing of your group. Our heroic tier group of 6 PCs usually gets through 2-3 encounters per session (about 3 hours). However, our combats are usually fairly quick affairs rarely lasting more than 2-3 rounds. We have experimented with a 2 minute turn timer but it hasn't had much effect on play speed, we usually do without it as we rarely had to call players on their turns.

I can't speak to paragon and epic tier combats, but I can imagine that they would take longer (both time and rounds) as monster HP seems to scale up quite a bit faster than player damage does, thus requiring more rounds per combat making combats longer.