Encounter Length?


4th Edition

The Exchange

I have not played 4E for about 9 months now, mainly because the rest of my group have moved to Pathfinder. However a friend of mine who lives too far away to play with regularly has said that he is tired of 4E because of the lengths of the combats and the inability of the GM to even threaten the lives of the PC's. He says that their combat encounters take a minimum of 90 minutes, but usually run 2 1/2 hours. (They are currently playing at level 20)

I am curious, because I'm interested in starting a campaign with my daughter and a couple of her friends, is this typical or are they just not properly synergizing their characters?

I'm trying to decide if I should use 4E or Pathfinder for their campaign. There ages are 8, 9, and 10.

Thanks.


That's hard to answer without details like how many people are in the group, what sorts of characters that they're using, what sort of encounters are they having, are they messing around in combat or planning when it's not thier turn, etc.

Overall, from what I've seen - and that's been limited on the actual tabletop - 4e is not, by it's nature, slower then 3.5. I'd call it faster, in fact, since there is so little long term status to track. But, if encounters are not well designed, then, yes, it can drag.

My own kids prefer messing with 4e to 3.5, though CB and the monster builder might factor in there.


My experience is that 4e overall has faster combats, but much of it depends on play style. A 20th level encounter in 3e could be a lot longer than 2 1/2 hours, perhaps taking up an entire game. While encounters do tend to take longer as one goes up in level in 4e, I believe they are comparably shorter than 3e encounters.

I chose to play 4e because I found it less involved rules-wise and less complex than 3e. If were going to introduce kids to D&D, I'd definitely go 4e.

But like I said, much depends on play style. You could easily play a simplified version of 3e with kids and be perfectly happy.

EDIT: FYI, I have not played Pathfinder, although I've looked over the rules. I did play 3e for a long time before switching over to 4e.


I agree with Whimsy Chris. 2 1/2 hours does sound about right but its simply not 'long' compared to a 3.5 encounter from 15th level and up. Now I have to say that if one does want to simulate high power special effects style encounters 3.5 really is the bomb. Its really is capable of simulating the kind of magical nuclear warfare that is a tougher 15th level+ encounter and does an extremely good job of it but your watching this phenomenal duel unfold very much in slow motion. By this point each side is really unleashing truly awesome effects on each players or monsters turn and, in turn, everyone is throwing up counters as fast as they can to mitigate the Armageddon that each side is trying to unleash on the other.

2 1/2 hours is very fast for a 3.5 encounter of this level, in part because you really need to be paying close attention to the rules at this point since almost every action is interacting a a whole bunch of other effects, including a plethora of magical defenses and other potent magical effects that are already acting on the battlefield. By this point in my 3.5 campaign we always had two players handbooks open at any given time and usually some splat books as well.

Players would be discerning the exact wording on an interrupt that would allow some deeply endangered characters to pop out of existence, into a demi-plane, for a few precious seconds before they popped out again, in order to avoid some massive magical devastation that the baddies had just unleashed. Meanwhile both sides are whipping around dispel type effects like mad trying to peel each others magical defenses down so that some one would finally be able to make something really stick. The wording of the rules and a strong understanding of how various rules and effects interact with each other was definitely critical by this point in the game. Understanding what just happened and to who required a great deal of pretty technical knowledge, helpful rule lawyer type players a very useful at this point in order to keep the game moving as fast as possible and even this does not oblivate the need to have the spell actually open because you definitely need to understand what key words its operating under - that is important information.

As for death and dying - I do have some issues in that regards in 4E...but I'd not have an issue if I was playing with 8-10 year olds. I mean just how often do you plan to kill their cherished characters? Not very often I should hope. I mean if a string of bad luck means it happens once in the entire campaign...well that's probably about right in terms of the lethality your looking for.

My problem is I don't think its about right for the lethality of a combat heavy game with adults where I think a dead character every 2 or 3 levels is closer to what I'm looking for, maybe 5-7 dead characters over the course of a campaign.


I've played a lot of 4E and a lot of 3E. I've found that combats are pretty comparable in terms of how long they take at my table. However, I generally used several monsters in 3E as well, so my encounter design philosophy was similar to 4E when I was running 3E.

Say in 3E you have a 6th level party of 4 PCs and you put them up against 2 trolls (CR 5 monsters) for a CR 7 encounter, well your encounter would probably go a little faster than a 4E encounter where you faced 4 level 6 PCs against 4 level 6 monsters (a 6th level encounter), but I didn't run many 3E encounters like the one I described above. The problem I had with 3E was that unless I ran encounters several levels above the party's level, they usually weren't challenging for the players, so my encounters usually were bigger and badder with more nasties, and as a result took longer to play than a typical 3E encounter might have.

Right now in my 4E game we usually have about 2 major combats a 4 hour session. There is probably about 2-3 hours in a session devoted to combat and the rest of the time devoted to story, skill challenges, rping, etc... Most of the fights I run with my regular group are 2+ levels above the party level and are pretty intense. The players are fairly focused. They know their characters well and usually have their actions ready to go.

I also run a lunch time games group at the school I teach at for a group of 6 grade 5 students. We game for about 45 minutes. Their sessions are pretty hack and slash. With them I usually run fights closer to their party level because they aren't as competent in using their characters effectively in battle. I can't usually quite finish a fight in a session. It generally takes about an hour to run a combat with them.


1 1/2 or 2 1/2 hours is about average for a 4th edition game in my experience. The average is a tad faster at lower levels and a tad long longer at higher levels, but overall it doesn't change as much as the length of 3.5 or Pathfinder encounters.

Pathfinder encounters on average at lower levels are faster that 4e encounters, at mid-levels they are the same as 4e encounters, and at high levels they are longer than 4e encounters.

Since you are talking about a group with no one older than 10, then I guess they will not be playing 14th+ level characters anytime soon. In the case of lower level characters, 4th edition encounters* are going to be slower.

*But 4th edition encounters usually have more monsters than 3.5 combats, I recall a conversion suggestion that suggested one should combine several 3.5 encounters and areas into one larger encounter. But this still means less breaks between battles so I would say that it might still feel longer because it is one one big burst rather than smaller chunks.

====

If I had to choose to teach a random group of 8-12 year olds (again), I would pick 4th edition. Even though classes have different rules, it is still is much easier than explaining to the fighter player how attacks work, the cleric player how they prepare spells, the wizard player how they prepare spells, and how the rogue player's sneak attack works.

Aside from that, I think that both are reasonable choices for the game. Either one, I would suggesting doing a bit of prep work so that they don't have to look through the books for what their actions do.

Good luck!


For my group, it tends to vary quite a bit. Many encounters will be closer to an hour in length, but the key boss battles could well go 2 1/2 hours. We've got 6 players at level 25, so there is a lot of things going on - but yeah, definitely not as bad as it was with the same group playing in 3.5, at level 15 or so, where a single round of combat could take 1-2 hours.


Blazej wrote:

Pathfinder encounters on average at lower levels are faster that 4e encounters, at mid-levels they are the same as 4e encounters, and at high levels they are longer than 4e encounters.

Seems about right though I think its actually a slightly more complex relation.

At very low levels 3.5 is probably slightly faster but 4E is still pretty basic. 4E gets more complex faster for a period. All characters are fundamentally sorcerers and the number of new powers complicate things somewhat. There are also more very low level interrupts. Somewhere around 5th-7th level that reverses. 4Es complexity continues to rise but 3.5 starts to rise faster. Spell casters are becoming much more complex - they know start to really have access to a lot more spells then a 4E character has powers. The non spell casters begin to come into their own as well with feat chains now beginning to turn into abilities that or more complicated and more potent. Somewhere around here party buffs really start to become a very big part of entering combat and it becomes increasingly important to try and get the drop on the enemy or at least not to have them get the drop on you so scouting, especially magical scouting, becomes significant because, if you know that a combat is coming up you can layer on the buffs.

This process continues along until around 10th level when the style of the game takes a pretty dramatic shift. Spells go from being potent to being truly awesome around this point and the monsters shift from being mostly bags of hps to being creatures layered with defences and using potent abilities of their own. Characters, by this point are not usually in as much danger from hp loss (though damage can be very impressive) and instead are now usually in more danger from detrimental spell like effects and debuffs.

The game eases into more and more a match of trying to locate the enemies weak point and then exploit that and the warrior types become decked out with things that help them exploit enemy weak points and also counter dangerous enemy spell like effects.

By 15th its magical thermal nuclear war and it just ramps up from there until, by 18th level, each side is throwing wishes at each other.

Blazej wrote:


*But 4th edition encounters usually have more monsters than 3.5 combats, I recall a conversion suggestion that suggested one should combine several 3.5 encounters and areas into one larger encounter. But this still means less breaks between battles so I would say that it might still feel longer because it is one one big burst rather than smaller chunks.

True.

Though its worth noting that this means less actual time in this part of the adventure, if for no other reason then your not redoing things like initiative. A longer individual fight to be sure but less time to complete the actual adventure.


Jeremy Mac Donald wrote:

Seems about right though I think its actually a slightly more complex relation.

...

It looks like a fair appraisal, although I there are some parts that I have different experiences. Possibly because of the different groups I have played with.

Jeremy Mac Donald wrote:

True.

Though its worth noting that this means less actual time in this part of the adventure, if for no other reason then your not redoing things like initiative. A longer individual fight to be sure but less time to complete the actual adventure.

Yep, but it does largely depend on how the adventure is designed or converted. I believe some adventures would just increase the size of each encounter rather than combining several would have a, more or less, equal number encounters no matter what system is used.


I think Jeremy's summary of how 3E combat changes as the levels increase is quite accurate. It's pretty much exactly what I experienced when I ran my 3E group through the Savage Tide campaign.

Certainly in 3E at higher levels a lot more time gets sucked up prior to combat with tactical preparations such as spell buffs. I've only played up to 16th level in 4E, but I didn't notice that to be an issue with the 4E system. Yes combat gets more complex in 4E as you level up, but not anywhere near the way 3E does.

Jeremy Mac Donald wrote:
Blazej wrote:

Pathfinder encounters on average at lower levels are faster that 4e encounters, at mid-levels they are the same as 4e encounters, and at high levels they are longer than 4e encounters.

Seems about right though I think its actually a slightly more complex relation.

At very low levels 3.5 is probably slightly faster but 4E is still pretty basic. 4E gets more complex faster for a period. All characters are fundamentally sorcerers and the number of new powers complicate things somewhat. There are also more very low level interrupts. Somewhere around 5th-7th level that reverses. 4Es complexity continues to rise but 3.5 starts to rise faster. Spell casters are becoming much more complex - they know start to really have access to a lot more spells then a 4E character has powers. The non spell casters begin to come into their own as well with feat chains now beginning to turn into abilities that or more complicated and more potent. Somewhere around here party buffs really start to become a very big part of entering combat and it becomes increasingly important to try and get the drop on the enemy or at least not to have them get the drop on you so scouting, especially magical scouting, becomes significant because, if you know that a combat is coming up you can layer on the buffs.

This process continues along until around 10th level when the style of the game takes a pretty dramatic shift. Spells go from being potent to being truly awesome around this point and the monsters shift from being mostly bags of hps to being creatures layered with defences and using potent abilities of their own. Characters, by this point are not usually in as much danger from hp loss (though damage can be very impressive) and instead are now usually in more danger from detrimental spell like effects and debuffs.

The game eases into more and more a match of trying to locate the enemies weak point and then exploit that and the warrior types become decked out with things that help them exploit...

The Exchange

Thanks everyone for the calm and intellectual discussion. I appreciate the different opinions and the breakdowns. I have not played anything above 10th level in 4E, so I didn't know what to expect.

Thanks


And in the end, so many games fail or continue based on the DM, because 3E or 4E you are able to threaten or even kill the PC, but you must understand the pitfalls of both systems to avoid your players steam rolling the encounter.

I would expect the abuses in 4E to be free actions, daze, stunned, or other affects that allow creatures to be locked down or taken down quickly.

But I am only starting Paragon tier, so I can only offer theory.

I have often found it to be rewarding and challenging to the players when you create a NPC generated via the character generator, and throw it directly at the party. Definitely more powers and choices to mix things up.

I wish there was an interface between the character generator and the monster builder.

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