back to 3e... feeling funny (aka 4e to 3e)

[GMforPowergamers]

Ok, so me and the guys have started a monthly 3 game. The basic concept is we are the bad guys. We each started at level 6, and had our own cult to a devil lord. we were called to hell, and are now working togather to over through the 'goodie goodies'. We have our first goal to disstableize the world.

OK so we have 4 pcs.

1)(me) Necromancer/Master specilist/Sorcerer/Ultimate magus
2) Warlock/Fighter/Urpriest (going for the warlock/priest pc from complete mage)
3) Wizard/Mindbender
4) Psiwarrior

and we found a funny little thing at 6th level...3 out of 4 of us are throwing 3d6 damage.
My reserve feat, the warlock eldritch blast, and the psi warrior large sword...

How ever we always had the 15 min workday thing worked out before, but now we seeam to be going too far the other way.

We had 7 encounters in one day, I didn't touch even half my spells (I use commoand undead and got a big undead, then mostly my resrve feat, along with 1 magic missle, and 2 tasha's uncontrolable laugh) The psi warrior only expended his psi focus once, and used 1 power two time. The urpriest used 1 spell after the 6th encounter.

So here comes my quastion...after playing 4 year for more then a year, does going back to 3e seam to easy? I meanour charcters are running rampage over everything. The DM is missing saveing throws on 17's, and we were burly hurt...


edit: to continue this train of though no encounter lasted more then 3 rounds, and many monster died in 1 or 2 hits...

 

[Starfox]

I've been playing 3E and 4E games side-by-side almost since 4E came out. The 3E game is now level 29, the 4E game is level 16. Overall, 3E seems to run smoother, but a large part of this is that the players don't really like 4E. Also, 3E has house-rules by the bucket, while 4E only has some.

As for the multiple easy encounters a day, I find its often great fun both for players and DMs, and somehow works better in 3E with its resource depletion than in 4E, where such a setup really represents no challenge at all. 4E is more about a few big, dramatic fights.

 

[MortalPlague]

edit: to continue this train of though no encounter lasted more then 3 rounds, and many monster died in 1 or 2 hits...

This has always been the case with 3rd edition.

I've been playing (and enjoying) 4th edition since its release. I did, however, get involved in an Iron Heroes game recently, and I noticed a few things like that. Combat felt swingier, but also far clunkier. I hadn't realized how many little touches 4th edition brings to combat... auto-crit on a 20, for instance. Rolling to confirm feels so backwards, now. It seemed like in Iron Heroes I was rolling way too many dice for each attack or action. That was my prevailing thought, going back.

I'll be playing in a Pathfinder game shortly with the same group. We'll see how that goes.

 

[Celebrim]

Well, if you'd built Pun-Pun, you would have taken over the world by now.

By mid to late 3.5, if you allow the full range of options available into a campaign, the level of optimization available to players with a bit of system mastery reaches the point that it does in fact get ridiculous.

If your are sixth level and already multiclassed into 4 classes, there is a good chance that you are taking advantage of some ill-thought out rules that become absolutely ugly when used in combination. Whenever I hear things like 'reserve feat' and 'Ur-Priest', I immediately assume the campaign has gone off the rails.

Honestly though, you probably aren't even getting close to touching the level of brokenness available to you. It is for this reason (among many many others), that I think that 3.0 is for the most part a superior game to 3.5. If you are going to patch something, and end up breaking alot more than you fix, it strikes me as an epic failure.

 

[pawsplay]

Sounds like it could be fun. Encounters in 3e can really range from the a two round song and dance up to the two hour long dragout involving a couple of escapes and regroups. 4e encounters are more programatic; you would have to intentionally lowball the encounter and use lots of minions to make it a short fight.

 

[Jack99]

Sounds like it could be fun. Encounters in 3e can really range from the a two round song and dance up to the two hour long dragout involving a couple of escapes and regroups. 4e encounters are more programatic; you would have to intentionally lowball the encounter and use lots of minions to make it a short fight.

When you say that level-appropriate 4e combats can not be short, do you mean short as in a low # of rounds or do you mean time-wise?

 

[pawsplay]

When you say that level-appropriate 4e combats can not be short, do you mean short as in a low # of rounds or do you mean time-wise?

Generally both, although an area effect might be able to wipe out most or all of a group of minions in a go.

 

[Ourph]

4e encounters are more programatic; you would have to intentionally lowball the encounter and use lots of minions to make it a short fight.

I haven't found this to be true at all. I think the length of fight has a lot more to do with the mix of monster roles used than with a programmed length ingrained in the rules. The longest fights are usually the ones where a good mix of roles are present on the monster side. If the monsters are essentially one-trick ponies (especially all skirmishers, for example) the fights tend to be a lot quicker. Adding in elites or solos can stretch out a fight, but one of the quickest fights I've run in my game was against a level appropriate solo monster. The PCs ganged up on it, got lucky on a few rolls and used some really good combos of daily powers and action points to waste the thing in dramatic fashion.

IME, the main difference between combat times in 3e and 4e is that in 3e if the fight is short, it's usually due to individual achievement. A caster got lucky on a big spell or one of the melee guys did amazing damage on a crit. Whereas with 4e, the quick combats usually come down to well-coordinated teamwork, where the dramatic moment isn't an individual doing something, it's several individuals synergistically combining their actions to do something spectacular.

 

[pawsplay]

IME, the main difference between combat times in 3e and 4e is that in 3e if the fight is short, it's usually due to individual achievement. A caster got lucky on a big spell or one of the melee guys did amazing damage on a crit. Whereas with 4e, the quick combats usually come down to well-coordinated teamwork, where the dramatic moment isn't an individual doing something, it's several individuals synergistically combining their actions to do something spectacular.

IME, "individual achivement" and a 5000 gp diamond will get you a raise dead.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

well yes, most of our system mastery is pretty high, but we try to find ways to go 'round about' for our gains.

Example yes I have 4 classes, but if I had just wizard I would still have most of my options and 1 extra caster level...

The first fight was 5 undead, 4 of witch we joked were 'minnons' becuse they each got 1 shoted, the fifth was the one I commanded and now have as a toy.

The second fight was more undead, and the other wizard summoned a small army to handle it.

the fifth fight should have been hard 3 archers, a paliden, and a hound archon... but the psi warrior crited with expanded focus for psi weapon and killed the paliden, I tasha laughed one archer, the other wizard charmed one archer, the warlock sickening blasted the last archer, whoo then rolled under 10 the whole fight (missing even the lowest AC in the party at 19). The hound archon then got focus fired in round two, and since he missed the save on my new undead toy's aura was dsown 5 str pts...