Our 3.5E campaign ended in early 2010. After that, we play-tested both Pathfinder and 4E and we ended up going with 4E because I was the DM and 3.5E was a huge burden for me as DM to prepare challenging, interesting and unique encounters since most of the high level foes the players were going against were evil clerics and wizards. Plus, I had a big group of 7/8 players that needed big challenges in order for them to feel threatened.
Pathfinder, in my eyes, took an already complex system and added more complexity to the base classes, so my head was spinning with thoughts of building level 18 wziards and clerics and selecting 100 spells, a dozen feats and filling in a zillion skill points... but, also making sure they're different enough from the level 16 wizard and/or cleric they faced a few sessions back that it's not repetitive.
The 4E online tools made encounter building a whiz for me - I was able to spend 5% of the time I did in 3.5E building encounters, and spent the extra time enhancing the story and creating better NPCs to fill it out - so we actually had more role playing opportunities with 4E than we did with 3.5E.
That said, I don't like a lot about 4E - it seems to have lost a lot of flavor, IMO, and I found it a lot harder to build a big challenging encounter where the players going in would say, "we're all going to die!" and then pull through by the skin of their teeth like I was always able to do with 3.5E (and 2E and 1E).
For me as a DM, it was always the most satisfying when the players were all down to the end of their hit points, out of their big spells/powers and just barely pull through because of a cool move or big hit at the end. And, my bad guys had thrown a ton of huge punches at them and knocked them down, beaten them up and thrashed them all over, using every spell, power and evil magic item they have at their disposal.
so, now that I've moved and I'm looking for a new game or group, I may give Pathfinder a whirl, but try to keep it more to the core books so I don't have 2,000 spells to choose and 500 prestige classes to choose from like 3.5E.
Pathfinder, in my eyes, took an already complex system and added more complexity to the base classes, so my head was spinning with thoughts of building level 18 wziards and clerics and selecting 100 spells, a dozen feats and filling in a zillion skill points... but, also making sure they're different enough from the level 16 wizard and/or cleric they faced a few sessions back that it's not repetitive.
The 4E online tools made encounter building a whiz for me - I was able to spend 5% of the time I did in 3.5E building encounters, and spent the extra time enhancing the story and creating better NPCs to fill it out - so we actually had more role playing opportunities with 4E than we did with 3.5E.
That said, I don't like a lot about 4E - it seems to have lost a lot of flavor, IMO, and I found it a lot harder to build a big challenging encounter where the players going in would say, "we're all going to die!" and then pull through by the skin of their teeth like I was always able to do with 3.5E (and 2E and 1E).
For me as a DM, it was always the most satisfying when the players were all down to the end of their hit points, out of their big spells/powers and just barely pull through because of a cool move or big hit at the end. And, my bad guys had thrown a ton of huge punches at them and knocked them down, beaten them up and thrashed them all over, using every spell, power and evil magic item they have at their disposal.
so, now that I've moved and I'm looking for a new game or group, I may give Pathfinder a whirl, but try to keep it more to the core books so I don't have 2,000 spells to choose and 500 prestige classes to choose from like 3.5E.
