I like 4e and Pathfinder

[ahayford]

So, I'm one of those RPG guys who loves the idea of playing these games, but doesn't have a whole lot of time to play. I own a fairly large collection of books that I pick up here and there to keep up with the latest and greatest. Of course, when I heard about this big hubub between Pathfinder and 4e I decided I'd pickup both books and see what it was all about.

I found, predictably, that Pathfinder was very familiar 3.5+. They didn't really do anything particularly amazing to me. However, when I jumped to their webpage to check out what other books they had, I was blown away by the amount and quality (based on reviews and product descriptions) of their support content. The adventure path's alone make me want to get in and play in the world of Pathfinder. Awesome content.

Then I went through my 4e stuff. I love what they've done here from a game mechanics standpoint. I was never particularly married to how magic was done in DnD and really liked the change to powers with the frequency cooldowns. I like that all the classes have a wide variety of powers/abilities and that the really neet stuff isn't all limited to the arcane/divine classes. I think 4e's combat engineer is much easier for their designers to add to and balance. However, I'm not a huge fan of 4e's current line of adventures/fluff. A lot of it is kinda uninspiriing.

I know a lot of the arguements against 4e, I just personally am not bothered by a lot of it. A lot of it for me is just going to be if I find the time, what the people I want to play with want to play.

TLDR: 4E has a really cool game engine, Pathfinder has awesome content. Please don't flame me. But I encourage people to list what they like about both games.

 

[Dannager]

I like the 4e game the most, so that's the game I play. I like Pathfinder adventures the most, so those are the ones I run.

I hear there are places on the internet - secret places - where one can find full conversions for running Pathfinder adventures in 4e. Of course, these are probably nothing more than rumors fashioned to lead parties of stouthearted internet explorers to their doom.

 

[amerigoV]

@OP - what are you , Swiss? Pick a side and get your butt back to a trench! This is War!

I have worked hard to avoid Pathfinder - I really do not want to get sucked into buying all their goodies. I have the campaign setting and I have played in a couple of their APs. Great stuff.

 

[ahayford]

@OP - what are you , Swiss? Pick a side and get your butt back to a trench! This is War!

I have worked hard to avoid Pathfinder - I really do not want to get sucked into buying all their goodies. I have the campaign setting and I have played in a couple of their APs. Great stuff.

I know...Their website makes my bank account sob. So much cool stuff I'd buy if I had the disposable cash just sitting around. It makes me wonder why WoTC hasn't tried to adopt their model. I've listened to a few Podcasts with folks from paizo, most notably their recent Gencon presentation. They really seem to have their head in a good place about releasing quality products (and the talent to do so). I think DnD/WoTC has really had this philosophy recently that the adventure modules are really secondary content, where as Paizo has really put their full effort into making adventures that make you want to buy into the game system. Maybe its just because I don't homebrew, but it seems like releasing a video game console without ensuring that you have good games lined up to make people want to buy your console.

 

[amerigoV]

I know...Their website makes my bank account sob. So much cool stuff I'd buy if I had the disposable cash just sitting around. It makes me wonder why WoTC hasn't tried to adopt their model. I've listened to a few Podcasts with folks from paizo, most notably their recent Gencon presentation. They really seem to have their head in a good place about releasing quality products (and the talent to do so). I think DnD/WoTC has really had this philosophy recently that the adventure modules are really secondary content, where as Paizo has really put their full effort into making adventures that make you want to buy into the game system. Maybe its just because I don't homebrew, but it seems like releasing a video game console without ensuring that you have good games lined up to make people want to buy your console.

Probably scale of business model. I have no numbers, but I look at my favorite system, Savage Worlds. They and their associated companies release tons of cool stuff, but most of it is probably something GMs buy, not so much the players. Not many of those people have "quit their day job" from what I have seen. I have heard it said that Wizards just does not make that much off of adventures, so they only release enough to support the game, not as a primary product.

But on the other hand, Mearls posted something in a Google+ stream not long ago that said to the effect "if you want to sell your system, show them with a cool adventure." Not sure if that means anything.

But that is all guesswork and I really do not care anymore. For me, I have branched out genre-wise via Savage Worlds, so those releases are getting my money at the moment. I have tons of fantasy material to draw on, so I can resist the Pathfinder stuff....for now.

 

[malkav666]

I play both (kind of).

My group plays regularly in a few PF campaigns and 1 star wars saga game. We don't actually play 4e as a full blown campaign but we like the adventure system board games so much that several members of the group kind of expanded the rules a bit (converted a few of the 4e powers from various sources over to the board game and made a continuation of the rules to support character advancement to level 4, and made a few new advanced monsters, and scenarios. and one of them is working on making a few new characters in whole for the system) and we get down on that every other month or so for a full gaming session.

I love what 4e did for controlled combat on the tabletop. It plays well in our group and really scratches our boardgame/wargame itch. I find Pathfinder to be a much more robust system in almost every way. That is not saying 4e's systems are bad, they just seem more confined to combat in my group. It is almost as if the 4e rule set is a hybrid between a really well designed boardgame and a decent fantasy video game. Now before I get trashed for saying that I would also like to state that this is my favorite thing about the system. It lends it self very well for our use of the system and is leagues ahead of the pack as far as DM-less dungeon crawl board games go.

PF scratches an entirely different itch for our group. With the amount of control you have over design and the sheer volume of options available from both Paizo and the WOTC 3.x range you can get some rules guidance for making just about anything. Not all of it is good guidance, as there are parts of both of those systems that just don't work as intended and when you open the floodgate of options you sometimes find things that work way too well together for it to be in the same power range as the rest of the group.

So PF does require a different kind of social contract for our gaming group. To put it plainly when we play our 4e boardgame sessions its not about balancing anything, we just pick the powers from a small list and the encounters and layout of the place is random. So its really about turning up the difficulty as much as possible and trying to survive while enjoying very balanced combat (that does not always make sense in a simulation sense but simulation is unnecessary in our crawls) and maybe advance the toon enough to get a new power or two.

When we play PF we sit down and decide how we want to game before we start. Ie: is it a story driven game?, are we going full broke optimizer heaven and making super heroes?, are we ye old schooling and 3d6ing down the line and letting the dice fall where they may? Once we have decided the relative power level of the group we decide party composition and start to tailor a story. The whole process requires a LOT more attention to the other players in the group to make sure everything fits and everyone feels useful and has a good time. Whereas when we play 4e it doesn't really matter what you pick or what anyone else picked its all about how well you work together in combat and there aren't many story driven goals other than completing the scenario.

Now this is just how my group plays. I am by no means attempting to state you cannot have in depth games with the 4e rule set. My group did just that when the system first arrived for over a year. Out group just found PF/3.5 a more robust, easier to tinker with system that ended up filling all the cracks of the world out nicely and 4e to be more rigid in this aspect. So we elected that if we were going to spend time fleshing out a world and play in it for long campaigns we would rather do it with a system that was better suited for the customizations we wanted to make to it.

4e has REALLY fun combat, and we have a blast playing it when we are in combat. I am not so sure how mid to high levels stack up now-a-days with all the new options, but levels 1-5 are a blast when we kill things with it. With dice controlled leveling mechanics and a deck driven event system (not present in the core game but present in the board game) I find that I can play the same character, with the same options, in the same scenario multiple times and have wildly different experiences.

In short, they both shine in different ways for different folks.For our group 4e really shines in gamey combat sessions with immediate results and PF really shines in longer campaign arcs over long periods of time. I suggest you poll the people you intend to game with and get a group consensus on expectations of game play and what they think is fun and go from there. Ultimately you can have fun with any game system if the group is into it and everyone is getting the experience that they envisioned when the social contract to game was discussed and established..

love,

malkav

 

[Aberzanzorax]

I game with 2 groups. One plays 4e (and I've never DMed it), the other plays Pathfinder (we have 2 campaigns, one of which I DM).

I like them both.

I agree with Malkav that they scratch different itches...but also admit that part of that might be the different people and different styles in each of my groups.

 

[Caerin]

I like, and play both Pathfinder and 4E.

I originally started this message with a long explanation about 'em... but really, the statement just stands for itself. ^_^