Pretty much as the title asks. When it comes to your average encounter, how long do you feel it should last to demonstrate any real challenge to the players? I believe the current design philosophy is 2 to 3 rounds. For myself, that implies a quick victory to the players with little if no resources expended, while losing initiative costs a bit more in terms of hit points and spells used, etc. In my own experience on the combats I've enjoyed, both as a Player and a DM, I think my sweet spot is more like 4 to 5 rounds, and even as many as 6. Boss or Adventure Capstone Encounters can last as long as 9 rounds, maybe 10. So I'm curious about both your own experience to be posted here, as well as your vote.
Obviously, if my understanding of the current design philosophy for both monster and encounter challenge is not reflective of the reality, please let me know so I can either fix the poll and thread, or perhaps just start a new one as needed. Thanks in advance everyone. (BTW, I created this thread a minute ago but screwed up in a good set of options, so hopefully this one is better)
Also, if you generally think the Average Encounter Strength should be higher than Medium to Hard, feel free to vote accordingly for that, and I'll include it as a second Poll as it hadn't occurred to me at first.
Edit: Also, if I screwed up in something like formatting the Poll, please let me know. I honestly don't normally do Polls so I would always appreciate helpful criticism.
I design my encounters to last on average 3 to 4 rounds with the understanding that for every round beyond 3 the partys odds for survival drop exponentially.
I'm going to say 3-4. 2 isn't meaty enough to be worth the hassle of starting while 5+ tends to drag on. This is assuming we're talking about padding for the adventure, standard fights, not narratively important ones or boss fights, which can and should be longer.
I find anything below "massively beyond Deadly" to be a bit of a bop for the players, and not very exciting.
I do think there should be variations in difficulty, it's just that my definition of "medium" is Wizard's definition of "deadly".
I think their idea is that you fight 6-8 of them with only one short rest somewhere in between them, and they add up to a medium day. Which isn't really explained at all. I was always confused because we were steamrolling encounters that were worth multiples of Deadly.
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If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
I think their idea is that you fight 6-8 of them with only one short rest somewhere in between them, and they add up to a medium day. Which isn't really explained at all. I was always confused because we were steamrolling encounters that were worth multiples of Deadly.
It's explained, just poorly. The way it works is: you have a daily budget that you want to use up. The budget for a medium encounter is 1/6 to 1/8 of that daily budget.
The problem is, of course, that it's actually quite hard to come up with an adventure flow that results in 6-8 combats. It's way easier to come up with a flow that results in 2-3, and if you keep the same daily budget, you wind up with all your encounters being Deadly.
While it depends of an encounter context and purpose, the average encounter tend to be 4-5 rounds medium to hard, with shorter lenght sometimes when i run random or easy encounter and longer for deadly and more complex encounter.
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Pretty much as the title asks. When it comes to your average encounter, how long do you feel it should last to demonstrate any real challenge to the players? I believe the current design philosophy is 2 to 3 rounds. For myself, that implies a quick victory to the players with little if no resources expended, while losing initiative costs a bit more in terms of hit points and spells used, etc. In my own experience on the combats I've enjoyed, both as a Player and a DM, I think my sweet spot is more like 4 to 5 rounds, and even as many as 6. Boss or Adventure Capstone Encounters can last as long as 9 rounds, maybe 10. So I'm curious about both your own experience to be posted here, as well as your vote.
Obviously, if my understanding of the current design philosophy for both monster and encounter challenge is not reflective of the reality, please let me know so I can either fix the poll and thread, or perhaps just start a new one as needed. Thanks in advance everyone. (BTW, I created this thread a minute ago but screwed up in a good set of options, so hopefully this one is better)
Also, if you generally think the Average Encounter Strength should be higher than Medium to Hard, feel free to vote accordingly for that, and I'll include it as a second Poll as it hadn't occurred to me at first.
Edit: Also, if I screwed up in something like formatting the Poll, please let me know. I honestly don't normally do Polls so I would always appreciate helpful criticism.
I find anything below "massively beyond Deadly" to be a bit of a bop for the players, and not very exciting.
I design my encounters to last on average 3 to 4 rounds with the understanding that for every round beyond 3 the partys odds for survival drop exponentially.
I do think there should be variations in difficulty, it's just that my definition of "medium" is Wizard's definition of "deadly".
I'm going to say 3-4. 2 isn't meaty enough to be worth the hassle of starting while 5+ tends to drag on. This is assuming we're talking about padding for the adventure, standard fights, not narratively important ones or boss fights, which can and should be longer.
I think their idea is that you fight 6-8 of them with only one short rest somewhere in between them, and they add up to a medium day. Which isn't really explained at all. I was always confused because we were steamrolling encounters that were worth multiples of Deadly.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
It's explained, just poorly. The way it works is: you have a daily budget that you want to use up. The budget for a medium encounter is 1/6 to 1/8 of that daily budget.
The problem is, of course, that it's actually quite hard to come up with an adventure flow that results in 6-8 combats. It's way easier to come up with a flow that results in 2-3, and if you keep the same daily budget, you wind up with all your encounters being Deadly.
4X 3 hours sessions?
While it depends of an encounter context and purpose, the average encounter tend to be 4-5 rounds medium to hard, with shorter lenght sometimes when i run random or easy encounter and longer for deadly and more complex encounter.