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.
[RPG] , or should be, the average time length of combat in each tier in real time
combatdnd-4etime
Related Solutions
4e is modeled on approximately 10 encounters/level. So if you are playing 2 encounters/session then you will level approximately once every 2.5 months.
The experience point numbers in the game are built so that characters complete eight to ten encounters for every level they gain. In practice, that’s six to eight encounters, one major quest, and one minor quest per character in the party. (DMG 121)
That means that yes it will take you a bit over 2 years to get to L10 playing twice a month and probably longer to reach higher levels as paragon and epic encounters may take longer (higher XP budgets, PC damage doesn't scale as well with monster health at epic etc)
This has been borne out in my experience. My group meets weekly for about 4 hours. We usually get through two combat encounters in a session (or 1 combat and a social encounter or similar). We have been playing for a bit over a year and are nearly at L10.
Theoretically if this math continues (I don't think it scales quite the same way) and you can continue to finish 2 encounters in a session it will take aproximately 150 sessions to get to L30. at 26 sessions/year it will take a bit over 5 and a half years to level all the way to epic.
Addendum:
Here is a breakdown of time taken to Level from 1-30 assuming 2 encounter/session 26 sessions/year at 6, 8, and 10 encounter/level:
- 10 encounter/level -> 300 encounters -> 150 sessions -> 5.76 years
- 8 encounters/level -> 240 encounters -> 120 sessions -> 4.61 years
- 6 encounters/level -> 180 encounter -> 90 sessions -> 3.46 years
This gives you an idea at least of potential different rates at which you can level depending on how challenging your adventuring becomes.
It depends
It heavily depends on the number of players and enemies (a CR +0 encounter for 4 characters takes significantly less than a CR +0 encounter for a party of 8, and a CR +0 encounter for the same party could be composed of many weaker monsters or a single boss), on the availability of save-or-die spells and whether they land or not, on the complexity of rules involved in your PCs and NPCs (sometimes, finding the rules to grapple in D&D 3.5 greatly slowed the game. I'm pretty sure there are equivalent situations in Pathfinder too), on the players being attentive or not and, on the increasing number of options for high level monsters and PCs and, in general, on lots of independent factors that's impossible to predict in advance.
(I had gaming sessions with 5 encounters easily solved in the same 3-hour game night and in the following encounter the same time was used to play the first turn and a half of a combat, just because of a silence spell forcing the casters to be creative.)
I've come to the conclusion it's downright impossible to pre-determine the duration of an encounter before playing it, unless you fiddle with monster's HP on the run, having your enemies last longer or die faster as needed... which is probably not the game experience you were looking for and feels a little like cheating them to me, not letting their expertise or luck shorten an encounter and ultimately preventing theem from actually influencing the outputs of (that part of) your narration.
However, I feel there still is something you can do to prevent that feeling of sloppiness.
Have your encounters be meaningful. No more filler encounters, random goblins in a side-room. If you don't want to skip that room because it makes sense in the dungeon, consider having the monsters in there really weak and skip the actual combato, or even better offer your players to spend some resources ("...You lose 30 hp and 3 levels of spells and you win. Is this ok or do you want to play it?")
This means shorter dungeons and less time spent in useless goblin-mashing, which should make dungeons more interesting.
On this page, the dungeon's lenght should be tied to what the dungeon is in the game world (are they exploring some dwarven mines? That could be huge) but if you want to go for a less realistic but more gamey perspective, a dungeon should be clearable without going to rest. This usually means 4-6 encounters in my book, to be played over 2 or 3 gaming sessions. Your Mileage May Vary.
Another option is googling for some 5-room-dungeons. These are a series of 5 "rooms" (true, they are called dungeons, but the same structure is often used to describe any string of different places) following an identical structure:
- Room One: Entrance And Guardian
- Room Two: Puzzle Or Roleplaying Challenge
- Room Three: Trick or Setback
- Room Four: Climax, Big Battle Or Conflict
- Room Five: Reward, Revelation, Plot Twist
Five rooms, one to three combat encounters (in rooms 1, 3 and 4) feels like a popular choice.
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.