4e vs PFRPG

[ve4grm]

Personnally, I much prefer the 4e system.
Problem is, this is a game I finally plan on playing with only one player, with NPCs I will play. The player will be squad leader and the NPCs will be his squad.
That's something we did in Pathfinder, and it was perfect for immersion and role-play.
I don't know if 4e will be as good for that...

I have little experience with 3e and none with Pathfinder, but my impression is NPCs would be built pretty much the same as a normal character. On the other 4e has the companion character guidelines set out in the DMG2, which give suggestions for simplified characters. Depending on your view, I could see benefits of either having fully complete characters or having the simpler easier to manage system that could work well especially if you'll be needing to run multiple characters plus the normal NPCs

This is definitely possible with 4e. While 4e characters can be a bit more complex, I've always found that 3e/PF spellcasters can exceed even that complexity at higher levels. I'd imagine that, by the end, it would all average out.

As mcmillan mentioned, too, the 4e DMG2 has some great rules for building companion characters. These are basically slimmed-down characters that use the 4e monster stat block for ease of use. If you were to use Companion Characters, I believe 4e becomes stronger at this than Pathfinder.

(You can even have the player run the companion characters at times, without giving him/her a whole lot of new material to learn by doing so.)

I'm hoping the design won't be affected that much. Keep in mind that RangerWickett edits all the adventures, has a lot of experience with 3.5 from WotBS, and can generally decipher my Pathfinder conversions when they reach his desk.

Still, writing an adventure really made sense from my end. I've converted all Z material to date, so I'm pretty familiar with the setting, and I generally have an idea of where RangerWickett wants the story to go...

Unicorns. Expect herds of unicorns.*



*This is a pre-release statement. Under no circumstance should you be expecting unicorns in any way, shape, or form.

Heh. I don't doubt your ability, man. Nor your setting familiarity. But writing for 4e and writing for PF do bring some different design conceits with them, as you well know from your conversions. As such, I'm merely curious how these design conceits might affect the adventure.