This strategy will signal end of retries when the elapsed time from the first error occurrence surpasses the configurable max duration, 30 seconds by default.

 import ratpack.exec.ExecResult;
 import ratpack.exec.Promise;
 import ratpack.exec.util.retry.DurationRetryPolicy;
 import ratpack.exec.util.retry.RetryPolicy;
 import ratpack.exec.util.retry.FixedDelay;
 import ratpack.test.exec.ExecHarness;
 import ratpack.test.internal.time.FixedWindableClock;

 import java.time.Duration;
 import java.time.Instant;
 import java.time.ZoneOffset;
 import java.util.Arrays;
 import java.util.LinkedList;
 import java.util.List;
 import java.util.concurrent.atomic.AtomicInteger;

 import static org.junit.jupiter.api.Assertions.assertEquals;

 public class Example {
   private static final List<String> LOG = new LinkedList<>();

   public static void main(String... args) throws Exception {
     AtomicInteger source = new AtomicInteger();
     FixedWindableClock clock = new FixedWindableClock(Instant.now(), ZoneOffset.UTC);

     RetryPolicy retryPolicy = DurationRetryPolicy.of(b -> b
       .delay(FixedDelay.of(Duration.ofMillis(500)))
       .maxDuration(Duration.ofSeconds(10))
       .clock(clock));

     RuntimeException e = new RuntimeException("!");

     Throwable result = ExecHarness.yieldSingle(exec ->
       Promise.sync(source::incrementAndGet)
         .mapIf(i -> i == 3, i -> {
           clock.windClock(Duration.ofMinutes(5));
           return i;
          })
         .map(i -> { throw new IllegalStateException(); })
         .retry(retryPolicy, (i, t) -> LOG.add("retry attempt: " + i))
     ).getThrowable();

     assertEquals("java.lang.IllegalStateException", result.getClass().getCanonicalName());
     assertEquals(Arrays.asList("retry attempt: 1", "retry attempt: 2"), LOG);
   }
 }