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I like 4e and Pathfinder
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<blockquote data-quote="malkav666" data-source="post: 5649466" data-attributes="member: 70565"><p>I play both (kind of).</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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. </p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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. </p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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..</p><p></p><p>love,</p><p></p><p>malkav</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="malkav666, post: 5649466, member: 70565"] 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 [/QUOTE]
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