How many combats per session do you find most enjoyable?

[KorvinStarmast]

In Star Trek RPG we have had three combats in the last two sessions.
The GM is the only person with anything close to systems mastery. (We are all kind of new to the game, less than a year).

Combat resolution is a two step process with a bunch of strings attached. (Complications, specials, etc, avoidances).
If more of the players, like me, had bothered to actually get into the pdfs to get a grip in the sequences and basics, combat would not take so long.

Last night, fortunately, only three players showed up so play was a little faster (we each controlled two of the characters who'd been left hanging as the session ended).

A lot of Star Trek RPG is skill checks; which is good. Few battles is good, based on the low effort players and the combat system's layered approach.

[Quertus]

The GM is the only person with anything close to systems mastery. (We are all kind of new to the game, less than a year).
If more of the players, like me, had bothered to actually get into the pdfs to get a grip in the sequences and basics, combat would not take so long.

Sorry for your luck. I’ve played with literal 7-year-olds who I’d expect to grok the mechanics for any RPGs I’ve played with them after around 4 sessions, if not before. Having played with both ends of the spectrum, and plenty in between, I find such definitely preferable over adults who are still clueless months or years in.

If you figure out the trick to convert one type of player to the other type, or even help make progress on that spectrum, let us know!

[Anonymouswizard]

In D&D -- I've played 2E, 4E and PF 1e but never run them, and have both played and GMed 3.0, 3.5 and 5E -- three is the maximum number, and usually I want one. At my tables, usually a quarter to a third of a session is combat time, maybe up to half with a particularly challenging obstacle or major antagonist battle. 5E published adventures are absolutely loaded with 'it takes 10 days to walk from here to there, roll three times on this chart every day, everything on the chart is a battle against 1-3 goblins in an open field' and I hate it. I, and my normal group, would much prefer the normal routine to involve one battle that's extremely challenging at maximum resources rather than attriting away resources three kobold crossbow shots at a time.

I think part of the issue is that random encounters existed for a different type of module than today's adventure paths. If the point is to explore an area than these random encounters are the primary things stopping you from getting to the reward, and I believe tended to be both quite varied and avoidable ('the bandits are at longbow range and may not have spotted you, what do you do?').

Then you get to the dungeon and random encounters exist to discourage resting and novaing.

The modern D&D adventure path really needs to be closer to '3 combat encounters per long rest, we tell you when the PCs have the opportunity to rest'.

In other systems like Gumshoe, which I've played in Night's Black Agents and am preparing to run in Delta Green, maybe one? Or zero? Ideally zero? Combat mechanics aren't the strong point of Gumshoe. I think they're more fun as a thing that happens rarely when the company has no other choice rather than as a core piece of the group's problemsolving.

Games where combat is either a punishment or just another type of activity are becoming more common, and it's pretty great. I honestly think there's a lot to be said for 'you can get by these guards with a successful Fight roll, but if you're unlucky you'll come out battered, do you want to consider another approach'.

Sorry for your luck. I’ve played with literal 7-year-olds who I’d expect to grok the mechanics for any RPGs I’ve played with them after around 4 sessions, if not before. Having played with both, I find such definitely preferable over adults who are still clueless months or years in.

If you figure out the trick to convert one type of player to the other type, let us know!

My working theory is that most adults who play TTRPGs aren't there to interact with them as a game as much as a social/storytelling experience, which combined with a tendency for at least one player to know The Rules^TM means they offload system knowledge onto those who already have it.

This is, honestly, generally fine if it's at the level of 'I don't want to deal with point buy character creation, but I can remember which dice to roll for what', it's the people asking 'what die do I roll again' every single roll that get on my nerves.

[gbaji]

5E published adventures are absolutely loaded with 'it takes 10 days to walk from here to there, roll three times on this chart every day, everything on the chart is a battle against 1-3 goblins in an open field' and I hate it.

Yikkes! If that's the way the encounters are done, then that would generate lots of hate for them. I get the whole need to make travel feel like it took time, was risky, etc, but IMO there are better ways to do that. I think I stated in the last thread on random encounters that we had that I have a strong dislike for rolling encounters. Especially on a table. And triply so if it's some sort of generic "encounters in X terrain" type tables.

I think part of the issue is that random encounters existed for a different type of module than today's adventure paths. If the point is to explore an area than these random encounters are the primary things stopping you from getting to the reward, and I believe tended to be both quite varied and avoidable ('the bandits are at longbow range and may not have spotted you, what do you do?').

Then you get to the dungeon and random encounters exist to discourage resting and novaing.

The modern D&D adventure path really needs to be closer to '3 combat encounters per long rest, we tell you when the PCs have the opportunity to rest'.

Right. I think the problem is that on the one hand, the module writers want the players to feel that there is an accomplishment in just "getting there". But where the really annoying encounters come in, I suspect, is out of a desire to be "more realistic". If every encounter is level appropriate and a challenge, then that seems too contrived, right? So let's mix it up with a bunch of random small nuisance encounteres instead! Yeah... that's not annoying at all.

I do think that a lot of these problems (especially in D&D) stem from the encounter math in the game itself. There's a significant gap between what characters can do while using zero "per rest" abilities, versus using them. Encounters that don't require the use of these resources are viewed as nuisance encounters and waste everyone's time. But there are only a certain number of "non nuisance" encounters you can run per rest period before the party becomes tapped out. And that number tends to be "more than you're reasonably going to run into randomly while travelling" but "less than what you would reasonably expect to be sufficient to clear an entire area in a dungeon/fort/lair/etc".

Which, historically, leads us to "find places to rest" as the solution. But, if they can do that, then they can go full force on the next 2-5 encounters, and then rinse/repeat. But if they can't, then hard math creates a wall in front of them, success wise. Which... is where the whole "There are places to rest, but the DM will have random encounters occur if you overuse them, so as to push you closer to your resource limits". But if those random encounters are actually random, then you run the risk of TPW by total accident and more or less unavoidable by the players. But if you don't, then the DM is basically gaming the system for/against the players. So... depending on the philosopy of running the game, these factors can result in some pretty strange/ugly outcomes IMO.

It's one of the reasons I tend to really enjoy RuneQuest as a game system. The game technically has "per day" resources (magic points), but those are very very flexible, and rarely actually come into play much (aside from very beginning level characters maybe). What magic/buffs you have going when in an encounter has almost nothing to do with resources available, but how much prep time you had before the encounter. Characters can sustain an almost unreasonable number of encounters this way before worrying about running out of actual resources to continue fighting (it's more or less just "what we can do all the time" sort of stuff). The real resources are Runespells, which are pre-defined and limited in number. but those are very slow to recover resources. You are typically using those in small bits, perioidically, through the course of the entire adventure. It takes a day of prayer to get a single point of those spells back, so barring sitting somewhere for like a month or more, those aren't just going to be usable again.

So in RQ it tends to be less about "how many level appropriate encounters per day", and more "how many really really tough fights are in the entire adventure?". You can run as many other encounters as you want, pretty much as often as you want, and not have a lot of problems. So GMs don't feel any pressure at all to "make more random encounters to challenge the party", or "have them encounter random stuff while resting to reduce their resources". That's just not a thing. If I put a random encounter in, it's because I decided that this encounter fits into wherever they are, and that it's a fun and interesting encounter, and I want to play it out. There is pretty much zero resource math pushing me one way or the other.

[emulord]

Depends on the session:
exploration / adventure with one big fight at the end = 1/session
Intrigue, figuring out the bad guy, finding the lost macguffin = 0-1/session
Dungeoncrawling = At least 3/session, and I have had as many as 7

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

I think part of the issue is that random encounters existed for a different type of module than today's adventure paths. If the point is to explore an area than these random encounters are the primary things stopping you from getting to the reward, and I believe tended to be both quite varied and avoidable ('the bandits are at longbow range and may not have spotted you, what do you do?').

Then you get to the dungeon and random encounters exist to discourage resting and novaing.

The modern D&D adventure path really needs to be closer to '3 combat encounters per long rest, we tell you when the PCs have the opportunity to rest'.

I think the issue is that 5E's developers don't have very good technical skills. Random encounter tables are there because they don't really know what else to do in the exploration pillar, just like adventure pathing often boils down to putting an NPC somewhere and having them tell the party where to go next, whether as part of a railroaded structure or as a literal fetch quest -- go here, get this, come back. Random encounters are a substitute for putting things in the world-space. There's a place for them, certainly, but they have to be used intelligently. Often the adventure designs have players walking back and forth across a space looking for the next plot hook because hooks are strung together in sequence rather than in a flexible web; the players can't find Clue Y until they've found Clue X. So they have to walk across the Vale to the location of Clue X, then walk back to the location of Clue Y even though Y is closer, and that means what should be 15 days of travel turns into 26 days of travel, and they're rolling three times a day and then there's a note in the adventure saying 'if your players get frustrated, you can reduce the number of random encounters a little bit'. If you have to have that note, your adventure relies too much on random encounters to fill time. In a properly-sequenced adventure, finding Clue Y should give them enough information to find Clue X, and the two combined can lead to Z or even further up the chain to A! But that's a whole bigger issue.

Games where combat is either a punishment or just another type of activity are becoming more common, and it's pretty great. I honestly think there's a lot to be said for 'you can get by these guards with a successful Fight roll, but if you're unlucky you'll come out battered, do you want to consider another approach'.

It depends on the setting and the system and their interactions, you know? I like D&D-style combat generally, and it fits in a High Fantasy, uh, fantasy. I want a big system of magic and sword-swinging and jumping from here to there and shooting arrows and throwing axes. It's great when the guy casts wall of fire to block the door so the orcs can't get into the room while the other player is climbing up the thing to get to the guy who's shooting at them. But that's not what I'm looking for in a game where I'm playing a burned spy on the run from a secret vampire cult. When I get in my car and the car bomb goes off, I should die, not take 4d8 damage. (Gumshoe's problem, at least in NBA, is basically a math-design one. You should either use all of your resources or none of them. It means there aren't that many meaningful decisions to make in combat.)

[AMFV]

It is a simple question.

How many combats per session you find the ideal, and which system are you playing?

It can vary completely depending on what system I'm playing or running and the complexity of the combat. One super complex combat is usually sufficient, but that might count as several. Sometimes no combats can be ideal. it just depends.