NewbieDM poll: Combat Length

Posted on May 10, 2009 by newbiedm

Let me know what you think, I’m of the belief that they are going to address it somehow.

Tagged: 4e D&D, Gaming, poll

Posted in: 4e D&D, Gaming

7 Responses “NewbieDM poll: Combat Length” →

kaeosdad

May 10, 2009

I vote no. They have already cited that they are not looking for house rules for either the dungeon or dragon magazines, and if they were to create house rules that fixed combat length the rules lawyers, power gamers, and munchkins would go craaaazy. They would have to do a 4.5 to properly address the combat length issue.

There are however many good approaches around the net on how to reduce combat time.

This seems as good a place as any to pimp my own blog where I posted the house rules I use to shorten combat time: http://symptomsofmadness.blogspot.com/2009/04/brutality-update.html

Brutality works awesome for keeping combat length at ‘Juuuuust right’.
Ameron

May 10, 2009

My group hasn’t had any real issues with combat taking too long. We use these tips for Speeding Up Your Game and it’s helped keep things form getting too slow or too boring.

However, we have only had limited experience playing character above 11th level, but even when we did the game flowed as expected and didn’t feel slow or that it was taking too long.
mike

May 10, 2009

spending an hour on combat is fine with me and my group. if i find it getting longer than that, then i just go with the +5 rule, that is, everything is +5 more damage.
xero

May 10, 2009

When we first started 4E, our combats took 4 hours. We’ve sped that up a little bit (I think it’s at 2 hours now), but we still have a bit of an issue with combat length. Luckily no one in my group seems to mind overmuch. Still, some tips to speed things up without affecting balance would probably come in handy.
Stuart

May 10, 2009

I guess it depends on what % of your game session you want to spend in combat. We found 1-1.5 hours for 4e combat was just too much and we’re looking at different ways to cut that down considerably.
Mike

May 10, 2009

I think we will see designs in future products that reduce combat length or offer alternatives. I think the DMG2 will have some of this, I think we’ve seen some of it in the MM2 previews, and I think we’ll see other articles on how to reduce combat.
Swordgleam

May 11, 2009

I answered “what problem?” With my beloved but thoroughly incompetent group (only player takes two turns worth of time just to add up numbers), combat takes about as long as it has in any other system and our 4e party is twice as large as either the tri-stat or Iron Heroes group and only a little smaller than the Star Wars d6 group. With the more capable group I’m playing with online, time flies, but it seems like combat goes very quickly since everyone knows what they’re doing.