D&D 4E Is Pathfinder Combat As Slow as 4e?

[Friend of the Dork]

I let the players participate in game during someone else's turn. Reasonable advice, tactical planning and similar.
That's why, even if combat drags from time to time (see example below), almost no one gets bored.

Last session encounter lasted 3 hours. It consisted mostly out of dealing with several separate challenges simultaneously.

Dramatis Personae:
- hundreds of undead springing from the ground
- 25 zombie hill giants plowing steadily toward ruined tower (where PCs and NPC allies barricaded themselves)
- PCs (group of 6)
- NPC allies (1 professor [hu nec8/exp2], 8 students [hu nec1], 4 servants [hu com2])
- 2 erinyes devils (snipers)
- 2 greater barghests (invisibility, mass strength buffs)
- 3 bearded devils (+3 summoned bearded devils)
- a foppish guy in porcelain mask (lich - human male wizard 11)
- something wicked... not coming this way yet

Challenges:
- save the students (managed to save 4 - servants, leftover students and professor died from maximized fireball)
- defend tower
- stop the tide of zombie giants
- get out of the trap (lich, contracted devil melee and sniper opponents) while facing attacks from all sides
- deal with unholy aura

Regards,
Ruemere

This isn't a normal D&D combat, it's a freaking battle! I don't even think 3 hours was bad, as this was certainly the biggest event that evening. How did it work out?

If I had to do something like that I would only roll dice for the creatures the PCs engage and simply describe the flow of battle for everything else.

 

[Rawhide]

I played a lot of 4e, and only gave it up fairly recently. We found fights went very, very slowly, but I suspect that's going to vary by group. for example, my group hated the fact there were 3 or 4 different bonuses being generated every round in 4e. When the cleric sets up a foe so the first person to hit him gets healing, the ranger grants bonus damage to anyone next to him, the fighter gives bonus AC to anyone next to her and the warlord causes one foe to grant combat advantage to the theif (but no one else), and some beholder is creating a set of difficult terrain, or slowing the cleric, or whatever, and that whole list changes every round, we got bogged down.

At first, we thought we just weren't used to how the new system worked. But after more than a year of play, it didn't get any better. In fact, the constant influx of new powers, with new conditions, made it worse. And the online character generator was so useful, no DM wanted to forbid characters made with it, so we always ended up allowing in all WotC content.

For us, it is much, much easier to deal with a bless spell, a bardic performance, and a bull's strength for the fighter. We note those down, keep track of durations, and don't have new statuses popped up several times a round. Fights take us half as long, and even less when someone does something clever and bypasses a foe (which never seemed to happen in 4e, because the numbers always made sure every encounter was a balanced challenge, no matter what the players did).

But again, I suspect another group might find per-round bonuses faster than we did, and maybe even the broader changes Pathfinder spells can bring to be slower.

 

[IronWolf]

I don't see how that would be possible. We're talking about a character with a full action of seven regular attacks, each dealing up to an additional 8d6 damage (IIRC) of varying types (it's a lasher, carried over from the 3.0 beginnings of the campaign). Unless he's using a literal bucket of dice, that would not work.

In this case possibly splitting the attacks in two groups or even into thirds will still greatly reduce the time needed. Even with my ranger that had a large number of arrows in any given round and arrows that did various amounts of damage I could roll through one of my attack rounds pretty quickly.

I think you get the point I am after though - prepared players speed things up. Even if it just means having their attack damage dice ready to roll and knowing what damage they will be doing when they hit.

But the characters taking the longest for their turns are typically the psion and the wizard.

Yeah, totally agree. It helps to have the spellcaster played by an experienced, played player if long combats bother the group. I've seen wizards go quickly, know what their spell does and ready to help adjudicate effects and I've seen wizards making heavy reference of the spell in the rulebook as they cast their spell.

 

[IronWolf]

Last session encounter lasted 3 hours. It consisted mostly out of dealing with several separate challenges simultaneously.

Dramatis Personae:
- hundreds of undead springing from the ground
- 25 zombie hill giants plowing steadily toward ruined tower (where PCs and NPC allies barricaded themselves)
- PCs (group of 6)
- NPC allies (1 professor [hu nec8/exp2], 8 students [hu nec1], 4 servants [hu com2])
- 2 erinyes devils (snipers)
- 2 greater barghests (invisibility, mass strength buffs)
- 3 bearded devils (+3 summoned bearded devils)
- a foppish guy in porcelain mask (lich - human male wizard 11)
- something wicked... not coming this way yet

Challenges:
- save the students (managed to save 4 - servants, leftover students and professor died from maximized fireball)
- defend tower
- stop the tide of zombie giants
- get out of the trap (lich, contracted devil melee and sniper opponents) while facing attacks from all sides
- deal with unholy aura

This sounds full of awesome!

 

[ancientvaults]

I come from the oldschool (B/X and 1E) and usually run lighter systems, like the aforementioned retro-clones and games like Barbarians of Lemuria and Mini Six. However, I also love Pathfinder and I use the following to try to speed up combat:
No battlemats, slower x.p. progression, and make sure the players know their characters, which is the hardest part sometimes. While these have been mentioned and are all excellent ways of handling combat, I do use them all and I make sure the players are doing a lot of things besides just combat. For this I have taken a hint from Lord of the Rings Online, in which your character does a lot of different things besides combat (although there is plenty of that) Give those non-combat skills some usage too! Encourage your players to make things to sell when the coins run low in their coffers, don't just have them run out and kill things and take their stuff (although that is fun too!).

 

[Stan Shinn]

No battlemats, slower x.p. progression, and make sure the players know their characters...

Thanks for this advice.

One question: I've used battlemats in more of a marker-board-esque fashion, where I'm drawing out the dungeon map (in a very rough way) and we have miniatures for PCs and pogs for monsters. But, I just use the miniatures for relative positioning -- we don't use the movement rules or do any math on distances, and we use GM fiat to determine if there are any bonuses for flanking, etc.

Do you think that battlemats used for relative positioning (as described above) still slow down the game? Or is it battlemats when used for 'chess moves' (where players calculate movement ad nauseum) the thing that slows down the game?

 

[Dark Mistress]

I don't think if you just do a rough sketch on the battle map and toss out mini's to show locations and then not move stuff. In that case i don;t think it would be slower or much slower than the hand drawn map on paper like I suggested or the just explain things. If you are comfortable with that I don't think the time saved to change would likely make enough of a difference.

But you could try doing it each way a few times and see which one seems faster and or works better for you.

 

[JacktheRabbit]

We do this as well. We do not break out the minis and battlemats for all combat encounters. It does help keep things moving when setting up minis and getting them positioned could take longer than just running the combat. It works well for our group.

I have found that PF works fairly well with a 5 second rule. Players should be considering their move and working it out in their head when its not their turn. Unless something drastic changes, like their target dying, it shouldnt take long for the player to explain their action and move their mini.

What slows things down is long conversations between players over the best action and the counting of spaces, most often by spellcasters, to make sure the lines of the fireball happen to get those 12 orcs while just falling short of the fighter, cleric, and rogue.

What I cannot say is what happens in 4E if you enforce the same rule. If a player has 5 seconds to announce what they are going to do then move their mini to actually do it will 4E suffer?

 

[JacktheRabbit]

I played a lot of 4e, and only gave it up fairly recently. We found fights went very, very slowly, but I suspect that's going to vary by group. for example, my group hated the fact there were 3 or 4 different bonuses being generated every round in 4e. When the cleric sets up a foe so the first person to hit him gets healing, the ranger grants bonus damage to anyone next to him, the fighter gives bonus AC to anyone next to her and the warlord causes one foe to grant combat advantage to the theif (but no one else), and some beholder is creating a set of difficult terrain, or slowing the cleric, or whatever, and that whole list changes every round, we got bogged down.

Reading this my mind screams that you are trying to play a computer game with pen and paper. All these constantly changing short duration bonuses being created by friend and foe can be easily tracked in the background by a computer, the same cannot be said for people playing this on paper.

Makes me wonder how well the system would work in a MMORPG style format.

 

[Celtavian]

My experience

I've played both Pathfinder and 4E and all other versions of D&D.

Pathfinder is easier than 4E, but longer than 1E or 2E because of advanced options.

I DM Pathfinder right now. I run it very quickly most of the battles.

What it comes down to run Pathfinder quickly:

1. Rules familiarity: If the DM and/or players are always looking rules up, the game takes far longer. You should not have to look rules up as much with the new CMD/CMB system. It slowed the game down because many of the maneuvers in 3.5 had rule subsets you had to look up, whereas Pathfinder uses CMB/CMD which makes the use of maneuvers easier on the DM. As long as the DM knows the base effect, he doesn't have to figure out the roll for each maneuver used. It is all handled by the CMB/CMD mechanic.

This greatly increased the speed of the game for my group and myself as DM.

2. Do not overuse the battlemat: If you're fighting weak, easily slain monsters. Don't even bother drawing out an individual map. Just toss the minis on the battlemat some reasonable distance apart and let the two sides fight. Characters can whack out yard trash like movies or books in Pathfinder. It is long and drawn out like 4E for every combat.

3. The lack of powers and ongoing conditions make combat faster: Pathfinder doesn't give every player a plethora of choices they don't need over half the time. Melee types whack stuff with weapons rarely needing more than that to win battles. Casters drop some damaging spells. Every fight doesn't require you to look up some stupid power and use it for that encounter because you feel like you must because you have the power per encounter.

The DM doesn't have to make sure to track each ongoing condition with colored coded markers to designate marked, slowed, combat advantage, or any of the numerous round to round conditions that 4E grants from powers.

That aspect that slows down 4E combat isn't there.

Pathfinder characters kill stuff by the most effective and quickest means in their arsenal. Easy enemies die quickly, tougher enemies make for the epic fights. You focus on those when they happen. And even then a lucky crit or missed save can bring down that epic enemy much quicker than in 4E or any other version of D&D.

4. Get rid of 'that guy': We used to have one player who almost always did useless things and did them slowly. Every character he played moved into combat slowly and cautiously. So he didn't do any damage while everyone else was engaged for a few rounds. He took forever to decide what he was going to do.

When he played the wizard or cleric, he took forever to make a spell choice and move into range to do it. He didn't grasp movement well. He didn't bother to read the rules the majority of the time. He spent his downtime between turns surfing the Internet. Then when his turn came around he hemmed and hawed and took his time and asked rules questions he should know.

Without 'that guy' there, the game sped up.