D&D 4E Is PF combat any faster than 4e?

[GregoryOatmeal]

Just yesterday we had an PF encounter with 5 PCs + 1 Cohort vs. 1 evil Wizard, 4 Xills and 3 different types of devils.

Took 12 rounds of combat and about 40 Minutes.

Saying the combat in PF is slower is not what I have experienced.

See that's a very complex higher-level combat. I rarely saw a level 1 4E combat end in that amount of time. To be fair I did play with inexperienced players.

I guess what frustrated me is you could never one-shot a non-minion monster.

 

[Gareman]

Combat Speed

I do think it's about player experience although I also think 4E is more straightforward in rules interpretation. It does what it says it does, end of story (mostly). My 4E combats were twice as fast, and I really only play Pathfinder now.

 

[DDogwood]

I haven't played much 4e. What makes 4e combat so slow?

In addition to the other answers given - 4e combat is basically a miniatures skirmish combat game. It's a well-balanced and well-designed one, so people who like that sort of thing (like me) often like it. The game is designed, to an extent, around dramatic set-piece battles that are supposed to be exciting in their own right.

Pathfinder combats are basically 3e combats, at least out of the box, so they combine a fairly simple resolution system with some basic battle grid stuff for positioning. Combat is a big part of the game, but not necessarily a central part of it. Characters have fewer options at low levels, and at higher levels they tend to have a few optimal options and a wide range of suboptimal ones. Pathfinder combats are much more likely to end quickly as PCs bring their best attacks to bear.

Pre-3e combats tended to be REALLY fast, because combat was often a last resort instead of an important feature (although this varied widely from campaign to campaign).

I agree with others here. 4e and Pathfinder are both great in their ways, but if you're looking for fast combats neither is likely an ideal choice. Pathfinder combats are generally shorter than 4e, though.

 

[GregoryOatmeal]

I haven't played much 4e. What makes 4e combat so slow?

Short answer - an orc brute from the 2008 monster manual has 66 hit points and a healing surge mechanic. There's a bunch of ways to speed that up but if you shave off 2/3rds of the time it still feels slow to me.

4E encounters have to be designed in totally different ways. If you just have five of those guys jump a level 4 party it grinds forever.

 

[xenophone]

Thanks for all the input folks.

If PF combat is 25-50% faster than 4e, I think it's exactly what i'm looking for. I went ahead and picked up the core rule book and I'm really impressed by it. The presentation is incredible, and at first glance it seems more to my liking.

I'm going to DM 4e for a group of friends (all noobs) and see how that goes. 4e seems a lot easier on the DM end. Hopefully I can find a group to play PF with also. That should give me a good handle on each system.

I've heard a lot of good things about Castles and Crusades, but I think I'll have an easier time finding games for PF and 4e, so I'm going to stick with them for now. I did play 2ed in the 90's, but not a lot, and i don't really remember the system that well.

 

[DDogwood]

I'm going to DM 4e for a group of friends (all noobs) and see how that goes. 4e seems a lot easier on the DM end. Hopefully I can find a group to play PF with also. That should give me a good handle on each system.

4e is a lot easier on the DM than PF, definitely. Paizo helps a lot with the adventure paths, but you still need to know or look up lots of feats and spells for the more complex monsters and NPCs. You are also a lot more likely to have an important NPC die in an anticlimactic fight.

If you're running both anyway, I think there are some ways you can port the best aspects of both into the other game. Unimportant fights in 4e can use lots of minions, and they'll go by much, much faster. You can also use "minions plus", minions who take 2 hits or 1 crit to kill, making blast/burst powers a little less dominant.

In PF, you can port many 4e monsters over with very little effort. Basically, give them a CMD, modify the attacks that don't target AC, and convert their non-AC defenses into save bonuses, and you've got a monster that should give a much more interesting fight with less effort than a similar PF monster (I'd only do this for an important combat, though - otherwise you risk slowing things down too much).

 

[enrious]

If you plan on using a laptop at the game table for Pathfinder, mosey over to Combat Manager and download CM - it's free (donationware) and you won't be disappointed.

 

[S'mon]

The AD&D family of games (1E, 2E, BECMI, free internet "Old School Renaissance" retroclones, and C&C) are relatively rules-lite with the exception of some fiddly bits. Combat is fastest and deadliest.

I'd have to take issue with 'deadliest'. 3e is by far the deadlist (to PCs) iteration of D&D IME, except for 1st level 0e & Basic. Certainly much deadlier than AD&D or C&C.

 

[S'mon]

One problem I've seen with 3e and that seems to go over to PF is that it often fosters a player-entitlement mentality, which can be a big problem if you're playing with strangers. It's not something I've seen with either AD&D or 4e, barring the occasional strange person on the Internet (for AD&D, there's this one guy on dragonsfoot.org...) If you're playing with friends or with people who aren't that much into mechanical crunch & optimisation it should not be a problem, but 3e is the only game where I've had to boot players off my table.

 

[S'mon]

Thanks for all the input folks.

If PF combat is 25-50% faster than 4e, I think it's exactly what i'm looking for.

It's at least 50% faster at 1st level, it's probably still 25% faster at 8th level. By 12th-13th it's about the same and by 15th or so it (well, 3e) is significantly slower, at least if the PCs have time to pre-buff before fights.

The most fun high level battle I played in 3e was at 17th level when the 3 Wizard PCs were ambushed by demons, without having buffed. It was a fun, balanced fight. Unfortunately the typical 3e fight at that level is a scry-buff-fry nightmare of accountancy followed by an anticlimactic massacre of the bad guys, or of the good guys if they got it wrong. I wouldn't run 3e past 10th level again, and AFIACT Pathfinder remains fairly similar, with just a few of the most egregious elements toned down.