A Brief History of Time

How do you track time in D&D? I thought I knew. It turns out I was wrong.

When I presented my lock-picking proposal to my group, I discovered my understanding of time was out of date. So I thought it worth digging through to find how the different editions view (or viewed) time.

The revelation

My lockpicking proposal as presented to my group included:

• The first attempt takes d4+1 rounds
• The second attempt takes d4+1 minutes (or the rest of the turn)
• The third attempt takes a full turn

One of my players then came back with:

Can you clarify your terminology here? My understanding for 5e is that a round is an individual character’s time to act within a turn. But then second attempt mentions “d4+1 minutes (or the rest of the turn)” but usually a minute is = to 10 turns. So what do you mean by turn and rounds here.

Oops!

Old and new

When I started, with the BECMI boxed sets, we had the following definitions:

Time in D&D is usually kept track of in turns of 10 minutes in “game time”. … During encounters and combat, the DM uses rounds of 10 seconds of “game time”, instead of turns, and each character can perform only one action during a round.”

It’s amazing what you miss when you think you know something. I have just assumed that fifth edition followed the same, but my player forced me to go back to the rulebooks, and I find that in 5e:

A typical combat encounter is a clash between two sides, a flurry of weapon swings, feints, parries, footwork, and spellcasting. The game organises the chaos of combat into a cycle of rounds and turns. A round represents about 6 seconds in the game world. During a round, each participant in a battle takes a turn. (2014 PHB p 189, 2024 PHB p 23)

A turn is now your opportunity to act within a round. There is no equivalent of the adventuring turn. The only remnant which remains is that some spells have a duration up to 10 minutes (see Locate Object, for example). But then, other spells have a duration of a minute (see Mage Hand) or an hour (see Longstrider or Light).

What changed?

This got me wondering when it changed, and how it varies through the editions.

Let’s look at AD&D first.

In adventuring below ground, a turn in the dungeon lasts 10 minutes. In combat the turn is further divided into 10 melee rounds, or simply rounds. Rounds are further subdivided into ten segments. Thus a turn is 10 minutes, a round is 1 minute, and a segment 6 seconds.

Outdoors, time is measured in days, usually subdivided into daylight (movement) and night (rest) periods.

Trust Gary to add an extra level of complexity! Segments of 6 seconds, rounds of 1 minute and turns of 10 minutes.

All that is gone by the time we reach 3.5 edition:

Each round represents 6 seconds in the game world. At the table, a round present an opportunity for each character involved in a combat situation to take an action. Anything a person could reasonably do in 6 seconds, your character can do in 1 round.

Each round’s activity begins with the character highest initiative result and then proceeds, in order, from there. Each round of a combat uses the same initiative order. When a character’s turn comes up in the initiative sequence, that character performs his entire round’s worth of actions.

For almost all purposes, there is no relevance to the end of a round of the beginning of a round. The term “round” works like the word “month”. A month can mean either a calendar month or a span of time from a day in one month to the same day the next month. In the same way a round can be a segment of game time starting with the first character to act and ending with the last, but it usually means a span of time from one round to the same initiative count in the next round. Effects that last a certain number of rounds end just before the same initiative count that they began on.

So now we’re with the 6 second round and turn within that being when a character acts that we recognise in 5^th edition. Spell times are multiples of rounds, minutes, ten minutes, hours or days.

I don’t (yet) have a copy of the original 3rd edition PHB or the 4^th edition one, and the DMG doesn’t talk about time, so let’s move on to the recent variants.

Fifth edition variants

Level Up! Advanced Fifth Edition says the following:

The most common span of time is a round, which takes place during combat and other situations where time is of the essence. A round lasts 6 seconds.

Minutes are the second most common. Most involved actions take a length of time using minutes. For example, an adventuring party spends roughly a minute proceeding through a dungeon corridor, to find a treasure room which they investigate for 10 minutes to find a hidden chest that the rogue spends roughly a minute checking to discover the deadly poison dart booby trap cunningly hidden in the mechanism.

Hours are appropriate for exploring a city or a limited area of land. A sudden whim by a wizard to visit a particular reagent shop on the other side of the city would take hours just as it may take an hour or so for a druid to lead their party members to a defensible cave in the ominous and quickly darkening woods.

Days are generally used for long periods of time during a journey or adventure. Traveling from one city to another, getting lost in the wilderness, and a journey into the unseen depths of the world are all good examples of using days.

Kobold Press’ Tales of the Valiant is very similar:

During the majority of gameplay, time passes much as it does in our world. Actions and events are measured in MINUTES, HOURS, DAYS and years. Gameplay during encounters is often measured more closely in rounds and turns (see Encounter Gameplay).

Minutes. In tense environments like a dungeon full of patrolling monsters, a GM is likely to track PC progress in a scale of minutes. It might take a minute to creep down a long hallway, another minute to check for traps on the door at the end of the hall, and a good 10 minutes to search the chamber beyond for anything interesting or valuable. Minutes are also used in some dangerous situations, like measuring how long a PC can hold their breath before suffocating. Minutes also factor into spellcasting. Many spell durations are measured in minutes and ritual spells always take 10 minutes or more to cast.

Hours. In less time-sensitive situations like routing a city or exploring a large forest, a scale of hours is more appropriate. Hours also factor into how often PCs need to rest and how much time passes during a short rest versus a long rest. Hours also factor into how much a PC can accomplish by engaging with downtime activities.

Days. For long journeys, a scale of days works best. For example, a journey could take multiple days that are (mostly) uneventful. A GM might roll on a random encounter table once per day to see if anything notable happens during the journey. If it does, the time scale might shift into hours to explore, minutes to investigate, or round to fight! Days also factor into how often PCs can use some abilities or magic items.

Encounter Gameplay

Encounters are often action-packed with many participants clamouring to accomplish their goals. Because all encounters are time-sensitive, most make use of a system called initiative to organize these moments of chaos into a cycle of rounds and turns. Different types of encounters can modify how initiative works, but the core mechanic stays the same.

A ROUND represents about 6 seconds in the game world. During a round, each participant takes a TURN. The order of turns is determined at the beginning of an encounter, when all participants – PCs and monsters alike – roll initiative to determine initiative order. Once everyone has taken a turn, the first continues to the next round if neither side has defeated the other.

So they also follow the fifth edition timescales, although in my opinion they describe it better.

Other derivatives

Troll Lord Games’ “Castles and Crusades” says the following:

When a combat occurs, each participant will want to take action. The most common action will be an attack on a foe, but might also include, for example, drinking a potion or casting a spell. To facilitate when a character or monster can act, combat is broken into a series of time measurements called rounds. Each participant in a combat generally gets one action each combat round.

Each participant acts during the round in an order established by the roll of a d10. This is called initiative. The character with the highest initiative acts first, and each character in turn performs an action until the last character with the lowest initiative roll has acted. If a character attacks during a combat round, the character’s player rolls a d20 to determine if the character hits the opponent. If the resulting number, plus the character’s class bonus to hit, plus any attribute modifiers, is equal to or greater than the opponent’s armor class, the character has successfully hit the opponent. A successful hit results in damage to the opponent. Monsters and non-player characters follow the same procedure and rules as characters, but the Castle Keeper manages their actions. After all participants have acted once in the combat round, a new round begins.

…then later (under “Time”):

In Castles & Crusades, time is represented in two simple equations: a round is 10 seconds and a minute is six rounds. This allows the Castle Keeper a logical solution to the unfolding of events in combat or roleplay. That said, the Castle Keeper should be flexible in interpreting the round. In normal circumstances, actions are pretty simple.

As might be expected from its OSR roots, that’s similar to BECMI, in that a round is ten seconds, although it loses the 10-minute “turn” and instead just talks about a “minute”, i.e. six 10-second rounds.

Pathfinder says the following:

Time in combat is measured in rounds. Each round is 6 seconds long—enough time to move a bit and either swing a weapon or cast a spell. Ten rounds is 1 minute (60 seconds) of game time. The Game Master counts down from the highest initiative roll to the lowest, and when your initiative is called it is your turn. On your turn you get to take all of your actions, and when you’re done the GM counts down to the next creature. Once everyone has had a turn, a new round starts and the GM starts the countdown again. This repeats until the combat is over—usually when all creatures on one side have died, run away, or surrendered.

As to be expected given its roots in 3.5, this is the same as that. And Pathfinder Second Edition continues with this:

When every individual action counts, you enter the encounter mode of play. In this mode, time is divided into rounds, each of which is 6 seconds of time in the game world. Every round, each participant takes a turn in an established order. During your turn, you can use actions, and depending on the details of the encounter, you might have the opportunity to use reactions and free actions on your own turn and on others’ turns.

Draw Steel is rather vaguer:

Combat takes place over a series of rounds. During a round, each creature in the battle takes a turn. Once every creature has taken a turn, a new round begins.

It doesn’t actually appear to put any timescale on a round other than “enough time for everyone to act”.

Conclusion

It appears I’m distinctly outdated, and time terminology changed in the two and half decades I was away from the game.

In all cases there is a single combat time unit, called a round in everything except AD&D (where the round is 1 minute and the individual unit is the “segment”). This was 10 seconds in BECMI, and is 6 seconds in all other editions.

In the editions in the 1980s, there is also the 10-minute “turn”, but this disappears in 3.5 (and probably 3.0) and the “turn” becomes a character’s time to act within a round. After that, the larger unit seems to be simply minutes.

Duly noted. I will stick to modern terminology in future (unless I am explicitly referring to a 1980s rule or situation).