Remember, Combat in D&D Takes a Long Time (Though Not Lorewise)

I just felt the need to post that I just ran a session in my D&D campaign in which the party fought a group of ten Taheen (a humanoid race I borrowed from the Dark Tower series by Stephen King) and the fight took I think six hours.

Which is funny, because in the story of the game, a fight like that takes less than two minutes.

The party: two wizards, a fighter, a paladin, a rogue, and an NPC bard. One of the wizards wasn't there, however, and so she was "dealing with food poisoning" and couldn't fight.

The monsters: One Hexblade Warlock, three Gladiators, three modified Archers (with automatic rifles as described in the DMG.)

The situation: the party returned to a town where they had burned down the shrine to an eldritch abomination of a deity, not realizing that the Taheen, which in my setting are natives of the Shadowlands (my equivalent of the Shadowfell, where the town is) are sort of inquisitors who were sent to punish the town for their heresy. The Taheen there are executing civilians and had killed the crazed but harmless priest of the monstrous deity, labeling him a "martyr."

The party had a truck (that was already messed up from an earlier crash) that they pulled up to the town and when they realized what was going on, they decided to free the town.

The wizard (the one who was there tonight) sent his familiar to scout out the town, but the Taheen saw it and one of them shot the familiar down, and they started organizing a defense.

Two of the riflemen approached their truck, and the party attacked them, killing them. The wizard and rogue went to the rooftop of the inn to scope things out, while the fighter had gotten the keys to the truck and drove the bard and paladin through an alley, toward the gathered crowd.

The wizard summoned a bunch of mephits, but this drew the attention of the warlock, causing him to hit the wizard and rogue with a spell that dropped concentration on the summoning spell.

I ruled that this meant the mephits did their death explosion, obscuring the alleyway where four riflemen had prepared to fire on the oncoming truck. Now blinded, the fighter drove the truck through the alley, hitting the four riflemen and knocking them prone.

The fighter fought three gladiators while the wizard and rogue focused their attacks on the warlock, and the paladin and bard fought the injured riflemen.

Eventually, two of the gladiators went around to try to get on top of the inn, but the paladin and bard went up too. The bard charmed on of the gladiators, sending him away, while the fighter attempted to hit the warlock with his truck after fending off the last gladiator for a bit.

Then, the wizard, rogue, and bard were holed up on the roof while the paladin had to go and heal the fighter.

Everyone except the paladin went unconscious during the fight at least once. I think every spell slot was used and nearly every healing potion they had.

That was the most epic combat encounter we've had yet, and that's after last session when they had to use oil of etherealness to make the paladin a death ninja to kill fleeing Night Hags.