Pathfinder 1E This is why pathfinder has been successful.

[IronWolf]

On the issue of time.

I've done this before, in another thread, but I'll do it again here. You cannot possibly increase the pace of your groups that time will actually make any real difference over the long run. To go from 1st to 20th level in 3e takes about 260 encounters (give or take). So, the Slow Group, doing 1 encounter/day takes 260 days. The fast group, doing 4 encounters per day, takes 65 days.

The difference, and this is the absolute maximum difference you can get is about 6 months from levels 1 to 20. And the actual difference is going to be a hell of a lot less because the Slow Group dies a whole lot less than the fast group, meaning that it's not losing levels to Raise Dead and the like.

Your campaign world, unless you're running D&D 24 will not change that much in that amount of time. Heck, even going back to Keep on the Borderlands, it takes WEEKS for a cleared out cave to come back to even half population. Spending an extra four or five days clearing a cave? Makes zero difference.

This seems really out of left field to me and seems to indicate you aren't really listening to those of us without 15MAD issues in our games. There are still passages of time in our campaigns - some with encounters some without. I am not sure how you made the leap to needing 4 or 5 encounters every single day of campaign time?

I know in my campaigns we have massive movements of time. My current campaign has many years of time having passed during the course of it.

So I am not really sure where you were going with this the numbers you present are so far off in how actual play works I feel like I must have missed something?

 

[Remus Lupin]

Right, a campaign session might include the following:

1) Gather at tavern, role-play interaction with other bar patrons, proposition saucy barmaid. In game time: Several hours.

2) Receive summons from the high priest of Pelor, alerting them to goblin raids on the outlying villages. Go to priest, get mission, head out of town. In game time: Maybe an hour, maybe more.

3) Talk with guards at gate. Neener neener. In game time: Maybe a few minutes, depending on how much comic relief this might provide.

4) Travel to outlying village. In game time: Maybe an hour to several hours.

5) Encounter wandering monster. In game time: a few minutes maybe.

6) Arrive at village, talk to villagers. In game time: Maybe an hour.

7) Find goblin lair. In game time: A few hours.

8) Fight defeat goblins living in lair. In game time: Maybe 15 minutes to a half an hour, depending on how it's played.

9) Return to village. Gather at Tavern, proposition saucy barmaid. In game time: A few hours.

This could all happen without too much difficulty in a 4 or 5 hour game session. It looks like a pretty full day of adventuring to me. Taking you from your first meal of the day right through your ale at the end of the day, only two combat encounters, but lots and lots of events taking place. Hardly a 15 MAD to me!

 

[billd91]

You seem very condifent that their market research and intuitions this time round are much better than they were last time round.

I think it will be interesting to see.

The way WotC describe the virtues of 4e, it seems to me to lose a lot of what many 4e posters on this board seem to value in the game (ie more than just "the math"). WotC presumably are confident that those posters are not representative of their current 4e market. But presumably, last time around, they were confident that those who were wedded to simulationist mechanics were not representative of their then-current 3E market.

As I said, it will be interesting to see whether they are right or not, but I've got no special reason to think they've become better in this department.

Well, WotC certainly hopes they've gotten better. Any market research and intuition going into 4e apparently didn't lead to the results they wanted. At least in this case, they have a bit more experimental evidence to rely on - the failure of 4e to retain the market share they wanted and the challenge posted by the evolutionary revisions embodied by Pathfinder.

 

[pemerton]

Hardly a 15 MAD to me!

The 15 MAD is a loose phrase rather than a literal description. As Hussar is using it (I think), he's referring to the imbalance of power between classes that occurs if Vancian classes can nova, thereby overshadowing at-will classes. The problem isn't resolved by spreading your nova-ing out over a whole day's adventuring, although - in some circumstances - the fact that the adventuring occurs over a whole day may discourage the nova-ing.

the numbers you present are so far off in how actual play works I feel like I must have missed something?

As I understand it, Hussar's point is that if a party takes steps to reduce the number of encounters per day, and thereby increases its Vancian members' "nova potential", that party is not costing itself very much time. And thus that only a very hectic pace of events in the gameworld would work to disincentivise this nova-ing (= 15 MAD) strategy.

The fact that much time may pass between adventuring days is somewhat orthogonal - because that can happen with either the nova-ing group or the non-nova-ing group - although, as with Remus Lupin's full day of adventure, it may set up a broader dynamic that discourages nova-ing.

I think another factor that Hussar is taking for granted is that a mid-to-high level party with Rope Trick, Teleport and their ilk has a very good capacity to set its own pace - so even if the world goes on around the party, the party is not going to have to interact with any fierce part of the world if it doesn't want to. And hence is still in a position to optimise its "nova potential".

 

[Hezrou]

I have noticed this 15 MAD thing somewhat as well. Recently I started Dming pathfinder and my wizard player tends to love to sleep (I joke that his wizard is fat and lazy lol ) but this was moreso from levels 1-5 he just hit 7th and from 5th onward or so its gotten back to normal to being able to play through several encounters at a time before resting.

I think maybe that its only at the low levels that this seems to occur as much because of well not many spells. Noone wants to be stuck farting crossbow attacks at a +3 bonus or whatever when you can be actually contributing in a meaningful way so I understand why. However I am glad that things have seemed to iron themselves out now as it can be really breaking to the immersion.

Something I like to do as a DM to make life tough on the rip van winkles is defense defense defense. Your first excursion to the lair catch's the occupants by surprise (if played with some stealth) but after your first rest the jig is up, monsters that were apart are now grouping together for tougher battles, traps and alarms have been made and soon hunting parties will start looking for you etc.

They still do it anyways though

 

[Hussar]

This seems really out of left field to me and seems to indicate you aren't really listening to those of us without 15MAD issues in our games. There are still passages of time in our campaigns - some with encounters some without. I am not sure how you made the leap to needing 4 or 5 encounters every single day of campaign time?

I know in my campaigns we have massive movements of time. My current campaign has many years of time having passed during the course of it.

So I am not really sure where you were going with this the numbers you present are so far off in how actual play works I feel like I must have missed something?

Pemerton gets this pretty well. My point is that, regardless of any other time that passes in game - travel time, resting time, faffing around time - the maximum time difference over 20 levels of the game is only about six months.

Considering that a 1-20 campaign is likely going to take several in-game years, adding an extra six months isn't going to make the slightest bit of difference.

Which brings me back to

Originally Posted by TheAuldGrump View Post
And in this your statement is one hundred percent wrong.

Some very important things for a setting, or in the real world, can happen over an amazingly short amount of time.

The PCs may, as an example, find themselves in Sarajevo in time to stop the Black Hand - they are heroes, this is what heroes do.

Does the Arch Duke get assassinated? Are the PCs off hunting boar instead?

But, again, as Pemerton says, is EVERYTHING in your game this time dependent? Or, to ask this another way, do I have to play this way in order to make 3e work? Can I relax the time requirements a bit and still not have to worry about it?

See, this is what I'm talking about. You are saying that the way to make 3e work is to have an extremely high pacing, independent of the PC's actions. The PC's MUST ACT NOW all the time, or the DM gets out the newspaper and whacks them on the nose.

While I do loves me a good time based adventure, if every adventure and every campaign must be time based to the point where a few days will always matter, how is this not extremely limiting of playstyles?

What if I want to play an Isle of Dread style exploration campaign where there is no time limit? Or Keep on the Borderlands where taking a few extra weeks doesn't really have any impact? Are you saying that 3e cannot do these adventures?

S'mon - yeah, I can agree with those issues. 4e doesn't do throwaway encounters very well at all. Although, that being said, it does depend a lot on group. My bunch seem to get through 4e combats (at least pretty strong combats) in about 40 minutes to an hour, regardless of level. There have been some notable exceptions (NEVER EVER USE WRAITHS!!) but that seems to be where we are. But, even at that speed, trying to do something with as many combats as you'd see in some of the older 1e modules would take bloody forever. So, yeah, I'd agree with you there.

 

[Remus Lupin]

I see your point, but isn't the whole point of pacing that things don't AWAYS have to happen OMG-RIGHT NOW. Rather (and this is how I read Kingmaker), there are a few moments in any given set of adventures when it's necessary for the players to rush from event to event because timing is of the essence. So, for example, the Priest of Pelor tells you about the goblins, and you decide you'll head out tomorrow, because you want to prep the right spells. Most of the time, that won't matter much.

But next adventure, the Priest comes back to you and says, "Help! My daughter has been taken by the Orc King, who wants to sacrifice her to Grummush at the full moon, and that's TONIGHT! Furthermore, he's fortified in his stronghold in the mountains, which you must find, penetrate, and overcome in order to rescue her!"

Now in that situation, you've got a single adventuring day to do all of this, no time to rest and prep spells. Time is of the essence. In my group, it might take us a month's worth of sessions to play through that, but it's still the single adventuring day.

Next adventure out, the DM says, "OK, you've been busy lately, so you've got some down time. Nothing much happens over the next few weeks. How do you spend your time?" So, we craft magic items, stock up on provisions. Role play our budding romance with the saucy barmaid, etc.

Lather, rinse, repeat. While there may be occasions where the party meets a big encounter and blows all it's resources, requiring it to fall back on a 15 MAD, most of the time, you've got a mix of small encounters, big encounters, open ended encounters, exploration, and role play. This isn't modifying the rule system to overcome a flaw. This is the way the game is supposed to be played.

In my recent memory, the only time the party has need to fall back on anything resembling a 15 MAD strategy is when we were in for a TPK, needed to retreat and heal before we headed back in for round two. That may have been a bit artificial, but the problem wasn't wasting resources, but getting clobbered owing to our own bad strategy and bad luck. We theoretically had resources to spare, except for players and hit points.

 

[Hautamaki]

What if I want to play an Isle of Dread style exploration campaign where there is no time limit? Or Keep on the Borderlands where taking a few extra weeks doesn't really have any impact? Are you saying that 3e cannot do these adventures?

I can't speak to Isle of Dread but certainly time can always be a factor in Keep on the Borderlands. If the PCs weaken a lair but retreat and come back to finish it off another day, they will find the occupants of the lair have fled with all the treasure (thus no exp points gained), allied with another lair to make their defenses 2x as strong, or been wiped out by a rival lair and had all their treasure taken (again no exp points gained). 15MAD style play is punished because the PCs must play well enough to take out the entire lair in 1 assault, otherwise they will find their efforts wasted. How much they rest in between lair assaults isn't really important, yes, but certainly trying to rest with a lair half-cleared is sub-optimal play that is logically punished by the parameters of the scenario.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Tell me - did you bother reading Kingmaker? Really?

It freaking tells you what those monsters are for.

Oh it does. What they are for is to be an arbitrary fix on a broken sandbox.

There's a term for people and things stupid enough to attack parties of adventurers. Darwin Award Candidates. Most wild beasts won't attack humans. (That's in part why feral animals are so dangerous). In just about any state a party of adventurers is about the toughest prey going. Which means that anything with any brains or any instinct for self preservation is going to not attack them unless something goes wrong (e.g. they wander deep into the territory of territorial monsters).

At this point, I would say that all the problems you are having do come down to not only letting the PCs enjoy that 15 MAD, but outright encouraging them to do so.

These aren't problems I'm having. Because I'm not running a sandbox game on a 12 mile hex grid in Pathfinder - and I've redefined the recharge rates.

And I suspect that nothing that I say will ever convince you that the biggest problem isn't the game, it is the fellow sitting behind the GM screen.

No. Because it isn't either. The problem is a broken system that forces certain modes of play on the players and DMs and requires the DMs to work hard to make up for the limitations of the system. Elf Witch also has problems however much she defends the system - IIRC she uses a spreadsheet to plan. I get enough of spreadsheets at work. And this is why I won't DM PF and wouldn't want to inflict my play on an already overworked DM.

Kingmaker is a decent set of inspirations. But if I have to put piles and piles of duct tape on the sandbox to make it hold together (as you seem to think is necessary for a good DM) then I'm going to consider it not worth the hassle. The duct tape in question are these random encounters you are throwing. Whereas I'm using a system that's IMO superior for many reasons - one of which is that I need very little duct tape.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Heh, thats two in a row.
You know I've describe in detail many times how 3E does a vastly better job of supporting differing play styles than 4E does. So, again, you make a resounding argument for why 4E had market issues.

And I have emphatically disagreed with this time and again.

Sword and sorcery? 4e wins. It wins almost the whole of Appendix N over any mainline D&D variant. The Grey Mouser is trivial in 4e - and almost impossible in older editions. Jack Vance's heroes are much more like 4e heroes than so called "Vancian" casters with their complete focus on spellcasting and massive numbers of spells.

High fantasy. Bread and butter 4e.

Harry Potter? Sure. Expeliarmus and Stupefy as your At Wills.

Gritty fantasy? You can't do in 4e. But 3.X sucks at unless you take out the wizard, the cleric, the druid, the sorceror, and just about every other major casting class.

I find 4e to better fit a broad range of playstyles than 3e. For one simple reason - the magic in 3.X is far too powerful. Gandalf doesn't cast six spells a day. Merlin doesn't cast six spells a day. Harry Dresden? Nope. And as you go gritty, six reliable spells a day (easily possible with a third level wizard, ignoring cantrips) is massively out of genre.

Yes, you can do grit in 3.X when you can't at all in 4e. But in order to do grit, you need to eliminate four out of the eleven classes (wizard, sorceror, cleric, druid) - with one of the remaining classes (monk) being a dud. That's about a third of the PHB (given quite how many spells you've just removed) and half the iconic classes. Pretty serious drifting IMO. (Not that there's anything wrong with that).

Oh, and you have some very basic rules for a game of Shopkeepers and Basketweavers. Which give you a number but that's about it.