I'm currently writing a oneshot for my current group, in which they all play 20th level evil characters, and was wondering how many combat encounters I could fit into a single session without them feeling rushed or the session going overly long. In our normal campaign, where we're 6th level, it takes us ~an hour to finish a standard encounter where we have good odds of winning.
My current thinking is two encounters + pvp at the end, budgeting an extra hour for some RP/non-combat encounters. Our usual sessions go for about 4 hours, but I could see up to 6 being feasible if I can get people excited.
Level 20 is tricky, especially if it's a one shot and the players haven't actually played their characters to 20. I would advise against it unless they have a lot of knowledge of how to play a tier 4 character. I played my lvl 20 with a table of 20's during the ToA final battle at a convention and it lasted a few hours for just the last singular BBEG fight. The fights leading up to it were pretty trivial as we were all seasoned. A lot of the other tables came to watch us and we were very efficient and knew our characters inside and out so every round we knew what we wanted to do when our turn came up.... and it still took hours. Lots of dice, lots of saves, lots of actions, just lots lol. Character level is a big part of scaling an encounter, but equally so is experience with that character. They may have an idea of what a lvl 20 abjuration wizard is supposed to play like, I know I did when I started, but when I finally got there it was a bit different mechanically than I expected and I would have failed miserably if I did a one shot without the experience.
So basically if they have tier 4 experience, you can expect a few hours with an epic BBEG. If they have never reached that high a tier, expect a wipe if the encounter is scaled to true lvl 20 characters.
High level can be tough to gauge. Often there is a long stalemate at the start, but once that is broken the pace picks up. One thing I do sometimes is a rolling fight. Set in a place where reinforcements are likely to come in. I can pace the fight then. If things are good and everyone is engaged and having a good time, let it continue. If some of the players are getting squeezed out for whatever reason, bring in the reinforcements a round early (or late). I don't pace the fight for the outcome, just the feel. So long way of saying, I would probably schedule on full on fight encounter with a 2 or 3 round combat scattered here or there for flavor. And you mentioned some PvP in there so not sure where that will go.
To give you an idea of length I just ran a lvl 20 1 shot last night with 4 level 20 players and It took us about 4.5 hours to get through about 8 rounds of combat.
I had them up against 4 creatures that were mostly straight forward.
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I'm currently writing a oneshot for my current group, in which they all play 20th level evil characters, and was wondering how many combat encounters I could fit into a single session without them feeling rushed or the session going overly long. In our normal campaign, where we're 6th level, it takes us ~an hour to finish a standard encounter where we have good odds of winning.
My current thinking is two encounters + pvp at the end, budgeting an extra hour for some RP/non-combat encounters. Our usual sessions go for about 4 hours, but I could see up to 6 being feasible if I can get people excited.
Level 20 is tricky, especially if it's a one shot and the players haven't actually played their characters to 20. I would advise against it unless they have a lot of knowledge of how to play a tier 4 character. I played my lvl 20 with a table of 20's during the ToA final battle at a convention and it lasted a few hours for just the last singular BBEG fight. The fights leading up to it were pretty trivial as we were all seasoned. A lot of the other tables came to watch us and we were very efficient and knew our characters inside and out so every round we knew what we wanted to do when our turn came up.... and it still took hours. Lots of dice, lots of saves, lots of actions, just lots lol. Character level is a big part of scaling an encounter, but equally so is experience with that character. They may have an idea of what a lvl 20 abjuration wizard is supposed to play like, I know I did when I started, but when I finally got there it was a bit different mechanically than I expected and I would have failed miserably if I did a one shot without the experience.
So basically if they have tier 4 experience, you can expect a few hours with an epic BBEG. If they have never reached that high a tier, expect a wipe if the encounter is scaled to true lvl 20 characters.
High level can be tough to gauge. Often there is a long stalemate at the start, but once that is broken the pace picks up. One thing I do sometimes is a rolling fight. Set in a place where reinforcements are likely to come in. I can pace the fight then. If things are good and everyone is engaged and having a good time, let it continue. If some of the players are getting squeezed out for whatever reason, bring in the reinforcements a round early (or late). I don't pace the fight for the outcome, just the feel. So long way of saying, I would probably schedule on full on fight encounter with a 2 or 3 round combat scattered here or there for flavor. And you mentioned some PvP in there so not sure where that will go.
Everyone is the main character of their story
To give you an idea of length I just ran a lvl 20 1 shot last night with 4 level 20 players and It took us about 4.5 hours to get through about 8 rounds of combat.
I had them up against 4 creatures that were mostly straight forward.