D&D 4E Is Pathfinder Combat As Slow as 4e?

[Stan Shinn]

Have you ever played 3.x? Because it's pretty similar to that.

Nope, never played 3.x. Thanks for the feedback everyone.

 

[Stan Shinn]

We do this as well. We do not break out the minis and battlemats for all combat encounters. It does help keep things moving when setting up minis and getting them positioned could take longer than just running the combat. It works well for our group.

This is an interesting idea. If you ditch the battlemat (maybe keeping the minis for relative positioning, but ignoring the movement rules, etc.) will that speed up combat? That might be something I'd pursue.

 

[Jhaelen]

Have you ever played 3.x? Because it's pretty similar to that.

If not, I'd say compared to 4E the overall fights are shorter, but you go longer in between individual actions as a player, since you're not constantly shifting, interrupting, and so forth.

The Gneech has it principally right, except in my experience 3.x fights take longer than a comparable fight in 4e.

It's also a level-dependent thing; the higher the average party level in 3e/Pathfinder, the longer individual turns and thus total combat takes. 4e scales better in that regard, i.e. low level combat may take a bit longer than in 3e/Pathfinder, but high level combat in 4e will most likely be faster than in 3e/Pathfinder (and will definitely _feel_ faster, since you don't have to wait as long for your next turn).

Also, there's a reason Pathfinder APs typically end at level 15.

 

[Walking Dad]

...

I tried 4e once at a D&D gameday. Combat took 40 minutes for one encounter and seemed to me to be monotonous. Maybe it was because I was a newbie and had to be couched on what to do?...

Using different powers was more monotonous than 'I attack with my sword.' in AD&D 2e? Could you please explain? Was it that you just need fewer rounds to end the combat?

 

[IronWolf]

This is an interesting idea. If you ditch the battlemat (maybe keeping the minis for relative positioning, but ignoring the movement rules, etc.) will that speed up combat? That might be something I'd pursue.

Here is an example - last night we had two combats in our session and I ran both without minis and battlemats.

The first was a lone barghest that stumbled upon the party's camp. The person on watch did not determine something was approaching camp and was surprised by it. The sleeping party members made their listen checks and woke the next round ready to act. The paladin on watch was obviously in melee range because he was attacked in melee by the critter. The other fighter moved up close and was also in melee. The druid and wizard used ranged tactics to fight it. That all fell into place pretty nicely and when the wizard asked who he would get in a web it was pretty obvious that with the paladin and fighter in melee then they would get stuck in the web as well.

The second was against a slow moving critter with reach. The paladin used arrows, the druid and wizard used ranged spells and the fighter went to melee. So again, pretty easy to keep track of things without need to get the minis and map out.

Granted - those were both party versus lone enemy combatant, so pretty easy to keep track of. But still a decent example of how you can play out a full combat without needing to use the time to set everything up.

This does require a certain amount of trust of the GM though. But these days I prefer to empower my players - so if they ask can they get into position to do such and such - I am quite inclined to say yes unless there is a good terrain reason that has already been described not to. So the way we play may not work for every group.

 

[Stan Shinn]

Using different powers was more monotonous than 'I attack with my sword.' in AD&D 2e? Could you please explain? Was it that you just need fewer rounds to end the combat?

It wasn't that the nature of the battle was boring, it's just that if you like the roleplaying as much or better than combat (striving for 50% roleplaying and 50% combat) then a 40+ minute battle might be too much. I play with a younger crowd (I GM a group of 12-17 year olds) and they are used to video games where combat lasts seconds or maybe a few minutes. So anything I can do to speed things up will help the appeal to the sub-20 year old crowd (or at least the sub-20 crowd I play with).

Of course, if the tactics of combat is your greater interest, then a 40 minute combat is a great thing.

 

[Dark Mistress]

Ok first off let me say, This is just from my personal experience and from talking to other people I game with. My group is cross tied to two other groups, one of which i play in sometimes, but the other one I never play with but sometimes see and talk to.

Ditching the battle mat and mini's greatly speeds up combat in PF/3.5 I would say on avg it cuts the time in half or near enough. We tried doing it with 4e but 4e is a lot more tied to using the map that we ended up going back to it.

At low levels I found PF/3.5 to be faster, at mid levels I found it to be much faster. But I do know PF/3.5 tends to slow down at higher levels, if 4e stayed the same and it seemed to from the levels we played in. Then at high level i would say they would be about the same.

I personally found 4e combat more boring than PF/3.5 combat for one simple reason. Often times it seemed it was very obvious which side was going to win, to the point there was no doubt. Yet the fight was barely half over. Those fights got boring in a hurry.

But if you want some truely fast fights you might want to look at some of the retro clones like Sword and Wizardy or Castles and Crusades. As they are closer to 1e. Me I like more options so prefer PF, but you may just like the fast combat better.

 

[pawsplay]

IME, the lack of a battlemat tends to slow down games. You have to pause for discussions about who is in relation to who, or whether there's a clear shot to X, or how long it would take to run away. For the scene to even work, everyone needs a "mental battlemat" anyway. If you make a decision based on a misunderstanding of the scene, that's a further problem. Even in largely mapless systems, I've found it useful to position some minis or dice or something.

Pathfinder tends to be fairly quick. It can, however, drag on for various reasons. As a GM, I usually insist that players make up their minds fairly right away.

 

[Stan Shinn]

IME, the lack of a battlemat tends to slow down games. You have to pause for discussions about who is in relation to who, or whether there's a clear shot to X, or how long it would take to run away.

Based on the comments I've gotten and my own experiences (and my desire for quicker combats) I think I'll try this:

1) Start using PF

2) Have minis and/or pogs and a battlemat, but only use them for relative positioning (I'll ditch the movement rules and other bookkeeping). So you won't keep track of home many squares to move, and the GM will make rulings on Area of Effect and flanking, etc.

3) Keep the characters lower-level, maybe using a slow XP track.

I think by doing this I can enjoy the benefits of PF and its stellar resources while keeping combat fast and focusing as much on roleplaying as combat.

Let me know if anyone else has futher comments. I appreciate the feedback!

-- Dwilimir

 

[Caerin]

The Gneech has it principally right, except in my experience 3.x fights take longer than a comparable fight in 4e.

I had a different experience in the longest-running 4E game I played in (~2 years)- by level 21 or so, we could have one combat last 4+ hours, which didn't happen to us in 3.x. (Of course, members of my group will complain that 3.x most combats went by too quickly at high level.) I suspect much of it depends on the group you play with...