D&D General What if Critical Role had stuck with Pathfinder? Or 4E?

[HammerMan]

I don’t disagree but in the case of the Acq Inc games I think it was because more people could slide into playing vs the actual streamed game being all that different.

Watch the 4e streams and the 5e streams and the game is mostly the same. IMHO.

Though I give a ton of credit to the DMs, especially Chris Perkins.

This realization, for me, helped a ton.

TBH, if I sat down to play ANY rpg on stream with a hand full of charismatic art types that knew the rules, I don't think the rules matter that much. CR I think would have been as fun and engaging as I have heard it is if they ran Call of Cthule or Shadow Run, or even Rifts... and each of those very different games each have hang ups no edition of D&D have.

 

[Remathilis]

I assume by 20th level my PCs would have 2 or 3 nuke/win buttons that would if not instant win that at least come close, and I know my lich would too... I can't imagine that fight going to round 3

It's been a long time since then, but keep in mind we were pre-buffed with all our good spells (haste, foresight, death ward, etc) and potions when the lich cast Disjunction, which the DC was so astronomically high that the non-spellcasters could only succeed on a natural 20 to keep their magical gear. So, all the prep + all our precalculated item buffs were gone (save a scant few) which slowed down the rate of "I win" from our side significantly. A number of rounds were spent undoing the lich's various "I win" effects (such as forcecage) and taking out the death knight, before the parties two wizards and the cleric basically decided to cut their losses on keeping the fighter, rogue, and ranger in the fight at all and just focused on killing the lich in spell-duels using herds of summoned celestial dire elephants while the martials sat by disabled.

The moral of the tale was that I couldn't imagine a fight like that (and those kinds of fights were still plentiful in PF) ever playing out on streaming.

 

[darjr]

Oh this was 2013 during the playtest. No 5e yet.

PAX 2013 in front of thousands.

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[Vaalingrade]

That's impossible! We all know 5e invented playing RPGs on the internet!

 

[teitan]

People credit Critical Role with the success of 5e and while it is a factor, I think it is overcredited for the success by most touting it as a reason for that success. Before CR was, well, CRITICAL ROLE, and a cultural phenomenon, 5e was still hugely successful. I think of it like Masters of the Universe: people think that MOTU would not have been successful were it not for the show but historically it was the number 1 toy on the shelf in its category when the cartoon debuted a year after the toyline launched. Undoubtedly the cartoon helped sustain an already incredibly successful brand but it was already a massive success before the animated series launched.

Had they stuck to Pathfinder for Campaign 1 I think they would have switched to 5e for campaign 2. PF1 was winding down and coming to a close as a product line with PF2 heading into public playtesting so the new version wouldn't be ready and the new edition was a huge question mark plus the complexities of streaming PF1 would have pushed them to 5e. PF1 may have squeezed out another year or so as a product but not a sustained thing as CR wouldn't have been as popular with navigating the rules dragging the show a little. The interruptions in Glass Cannon being the singular annoyance for me with that show, I don't want a tutorial on rules when I listen to a stream. 5e gives Mercer freedom he wouldn't have with PF in 1e and 2e has complexities of its own.

 

[teitan]

That's demonstrably untrue. The PHB was released in August 2014. The MM in September 2014. And the DMG in December 2014. CR started streaming in March 2015. Depending on how you count it, 5E was between 3 and 7 months old at that point. It was not the resurgent pop culture fad it eventually became when it was that new. A success, sure. On its way to beat 4E, sure. Beating Pathfinder? Maybe, I don't remember exactly when the top spot swap took place. But it certainly wasn't all this that quickly.

The swap only occurred because there weren't any new releases for D&D coming for a couple years and the months where the edition neutral products did release they outsold Pathfinder. To keep touting Pathfinder as beating D&D is like saying Uncharted beat DC at the box office this past weekend. Of course they did, there wasn't a DC movie in the box office last weekend but I would put money on The Batman KILLING Uncharted this week.

 

[JEB]

The swap only occurred because there weren't any new releases for D&D coming for a couple years and the months where the edition neutral products did release they outsold Pathfinder.

According to Wikipedia, Pathfinder first outsold D&D in Spring 2011, while 4E was still being actively supported. To be fair, some commentary at the time (like this ENWorld post) similarly attributed this to a slower release schedule... but it seems that reduced release schedule was close to the one in the earliest years of 5E, which easily trounced Pathfinder. Also of note: according to citations in that linked ENWorld post, Pathfinder and D&D were neck-and-neck even earlier than that, in fall 2010.

Now, I would agree that once D&D Next was announced in January 2012, it would certainly send 4E sales into a death spiral, even had support continued in any serious way. But it looks like Pathfinder was out-competing them well before that, before support had truly disappeared.

 

[Lyxen]

even in our first game learning it (useing the models) we only came close to 2 hours with big solo's at high level (and tbf 3e, and 5e big dragons sometimes take 3x longer then normal encounters too) in my experience a hard or complex fight would be 30-45 minutes (where in 5e it would be 10-20). with slog fests being more 45- an hour (in 5e a slog fest looks more like a 4e complex fight of 30+ mins) but I still saw plenty of alpha strike 2 round 10 minute fights in 5e...

And for me, that's just it, in 5e, I can do an exciting combat in 10 minutes, no need to draw a map, to place miniatures, etc. And it can be in the middle of a social situation, a chase, a skirmish, etc. no need to interrupt the flow by the formalism of 4e or the complexity of 3e and computing all the buffs and modifiers.

3e on the other hand by the time we walked away often was "Who won initiative... okay can you 1 shot this or do others get to go?" with the occasional wizard winning the day (at high level) before there turn on initiative. so longer fights were a plus at teh begining of 4e. However again I do wish they had addressed the HP bloat.

I agree that 4e was a large improvement of 3e in terms of combat complexity and duration, combats actually could be run at max level, whereas running combat at 20th level in 3e was an almost impossible backtrack fest of "I forgot that modifier"... Unfortunately that came at the cost of flattening the power curve and possibilities of high level characters, no longer fighting on dragon back assaulting astral fortresses. Now, I can run taht in 5e with zero problem just like I did in AD&D/BECMI.

the biggest problem with 4e isn't how long... its how long that doesn't matter. If 15 mins in you know you are winning and it will take a huge long shot for the monster to pull out of this... but you still have 20-30 minutes to go, THAT was my 2nd biggest gripe.

It might be depending on characters, but in particular my Swordmage had an incredible staying power and could outlast opponents even if a combat started badly. Sometimes you could see where things were going, sometimes not, but it took a long time to resolve. Don't get me wrong, I completely understand people liking it and the fact that "technical skill" really matters more over long combat with a lot of rounds where cleverness can show. It's just not what I'm looking for in a TTRPG. If I want that, I can play technical fighting games, some are way better than D&D. So it's not what I'm loking for, it's I think not what the now much wider audience of D&D, and it's obviously not (from the popularity of the show) what the people watching CR are looking for either.

Again, it does not make any approach superior to another, what matters is having fun, it's just that there are different tastes on this planet, to each his own.

 

[teitan]

According to Wikipedia, Pathfinder first outsold D&D in Spring 2011, while 4E was still being actively supported. To be fair, some commentary at the time (like this ENWorld post) similarly attributed this to a slower release schedule... but it seems that reduced release schedule was close to the one in the earliest years of 5E, which easily trounced Pathfinder. Also of note: according to citations in that linked ENWorld post, Pathfinder and D&D were neck-and-neck even earlier than that, in fall 2010.

Now, I would agree that once D&D Next was announced in January 2012, it would certainly send 4E sales into a death spiral, even had support continued in any serious way. But it looks like Pathfinder was out-competing them well before that, before support had truly disappeared.

YEs you are correct, it was the slow down of 4e with several announced products getting cancelled. Why this is different to the earlier D&D release schedule for 5e is you are comparing a dying product (4e) line to a new, hot product line (5e). 4e was in a tailspin once the release schedule slowed and the follow up products for Essentials were canceled like the Nentir Vale Gazetteer, the Ravenloft Campaign Setting etc. It was writing on the wall and the tail end of 4e was edition neutralproducts so active support is a misnomer. Halls of Undermountain was the last pure 4e product in 2012, April 2012. Up to Undermountain book releases had slipped to every other month and PF was releasing new books every month whether it was a rules expansion, a Golarion chapbook etc. that drummed up sales. Undermountain was the last PURE 4e book and then it was all setting neutral with Menzoberanzan being the first of those while still having 4e style trade dress and Ed Greenwood's FR dropping the pretense altogether as the very next release. Everything for 2012 was edition neutral like materials such as dungeon tiles and cards for their failed random card product line.

2011 didn't see a new book release until Heroes of Shadow on 4/19, a full five months after Essentials launched and before Essentials it was multiple major releases a month. 2010 had, starting in January: Underdark, PH Races: Dragonborn, February: Martial Power 2, March: PHB 3 and Hammerfast, April: Plane Above, May: Slaying Stone, Strategy Guide, Dungeon Mag Annual, June: PHB Races Tiefling, MM3 July: Demonomicon, Tomb of Horrors, Vor Rukoth, Orcs of Stonefang Pass August: Dark Sun Creature Catalogue, Psionic Power, Marauders of the Dune Sea, Dark Sun Campaign Setting, and then August was the launch of Essentials and no real heavy releases followed. The next major release after the 3 month roll out was Heroes of Shadow. Essentials last release before that, as noted was: Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdom on 11/16/2010. Then Heroes of Shadow was on 4/19/11.

5 months with no major releases. AFter Heroes of Shadow came... Gloomwrought in May, Threats to Nentir Vale Monster collection in June, Neverwinter in August, Gardmore in September, Heroes of the Feywild in November, BoVD in December, Heroes of Elemental Chaos in February 2012 and Undermountain in April.

That is a very steep drop off in support in comparison to Pathfinder's robust support on a monthly basis. The long gaps are the months where PF would overtake D&D for a month or so and when a new release came out D&D would take back the top spot. There was a short time where it seemed like they were going to start ramping support back up and then the rug was pulled out in January 2012 when "Next" was announced. Ravenloft, which was to be a "new" rpg was cancelled as early as 2011 when Mordenkainen's Magnificent Emporium was originally cancelled along with the Class Compendium and the Hero Builder's Handbook. Mordy was eventually released after the close to finished products were sorted out and rescheduled. According to Applecine, Essentials officially ended in 2010.

 

[Lyxen]

5 months with no major releases.

You do realize that 5e's calendar was always way less full than 3e and 4e calendars ? For me that is a very weak excuse, again, I'm not judging the pure quality of the editions, it depends way too much on taste, but just on the target audience, and the audience for 4e was always passionate but it was just not what the market wanted.

That being said, where PF always had it right, it was about releasing adventures rather than / on top of sourcebooks. For me, a good adventure (path) - and PF created a lot of good ones - is worth at least 5 sourcebooks full of options that I will never use. I might not play all the adventures published, but I will get lots of ideas and pleasure from reading them even if I don't play them.