Time is an essential concept in Dungeons and Dragons. Having a good estimation of how long actions, dialogue, and combat takes, makes the game better in a bunch of different ways.
That’s why it’s important that you understand how time works when first starting to play DnD. So, how does time work in DnD?
Time is sorted by narrative time and combat time. Time when fighting is divided into rounds in which every character involved has one turn each round. Turns consist of 6 seconds in-game time, which means that one minute of time in combat is 10 turns. How you calculate time outside combat depends on the environment and characters’ activities.
Now that you’re aware of the basic principles of time, let’s be thorough. Read more to find out all you need to know about time in DnD!
How Does Time Work In DnD?
As I mentioned earlier, time in combat is divided into rounds and turns. Rounds invariably take a maximum of 6 seconds each. It doesn’t matter the situation or how many creatures are fighting.
It’s important to note that every character’s actions happen at approximately the same time, which means that a turn is approximately 6 seconds long as well (since rounds resolve after 6 seconds).
Now, the time between combat is “calculated” differently depending on what characters are up to. For example, short and long rests take time, and attuning items takes time.
Also, the environments in which players are also affect how DMs calculate time. For example, when exploring dungeons, time is calculated in a matter of minutes.
Walking down hallways might take about a minute while exploring an entire room and looting treasure might take ten minutes. Of course, DMs use their judgment while deciding these things.
Exploration in cities and villages is oftentimes measured on the hour scale as opposed to the minute scale. This is because activities are slow-paced and just naturally take longer compared to dungeon exploring.
It’s common to track time in 10-minute increments when exploring. When traveling, it’s more common to measure time in day increments instead. You see, travel is usually measured in days instead of hours/minutes. As you can tell, it’s not particularly complicated once you get down to it.
Now, some DMs keep sheets or calendars to keep track of the time. In these calendars, DMs note down players’ actions. This helps them keep track of when actions were performed and furthermore take notes on possible future events.
Using Time As a DC Measurement
One of the practical things that you can use time management for is to decide the DC (difficulty class) of different tasks. For example, if players want to search a room for secrets or disarm a trap, they can tell the DM how much time they want to spend on it.
After doing this, the DM can more accurately set the appropriate difficulty class for the task. If players are in a stressful situation where they need to solve a situation quickly, then the DC can be adjusted accordingly.
Rounds vs. Turns in DnD
If you are confused about how time works when it comes to rounds and turns in DnD, I’ll try to explain it further below.
Turns of characters happen almost simultaneously, and every character has one turn in a round. That means that turns and rounds are approximately the same length.
I mentioned earlier that rounds are, at the most, 6 seconds long. This means that they can be shorter than that, depending on what characters do during their turns.
Ultimately, it’s important to remember that the rules of combat in DnD are abstractions, very much unlike a video game. The order of actions that characters do during combat in DnD isn’t set in stone. The closest thing to measuring this is initiative.
The 1.10 Rule for Combat in DnD
Rounds are, as mentioned previously, 6 seconds long. Some people find it a bit immersion-breaking that they themselves can spend several minutes coming up with the appropriate action to take for their character.
This is where the 1.10 rule comes in. The 1.10 rule is a fancy way of saying that players get 60 seconds to make a decision about what to do during their turn.
In other words, they get 10 times the time their in-game character gets to decide what to do. This is provided that they have all the necessary information that they need about making a decision.
If something is unclear, the DM should clear that up and not take that out of a player’s round time, since it’s the DM’s responsibility to describe the world.
The 1.10 rule can break the door down for more fast-paced, less optimized play, which can be a lot of fun. The moves that your character does during combat will more often than not be decisions based on seconds, and the 1.10 rule is there to reflect that for players themselves.