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

[Glade Riven]

In an amusing bit of irony, is that I have found minions to be deadly verses PCs.

To me, the difference comes down to this: throwing in a bad guy "grunt" with x hp, full stats, etc. that the fighter still one-shots when rolling minimum damage once his STR and other modifiers are added in is wasted time, especially when creating custom bad guy. It's much quicker to jot down a couple of stats that would come into play, and have a rule of thumb to where one or two hits bring it down. I need a battle to become a little trickier, I add reinforcements that were near by. I need a battle to end quicker - extra baddies run away (or at least try to).

Then again, I play loose and fast when DMing combat, while encouraging players to try crazy things (usually with a skill role). It isn't unusual for me keep my DM turns less than an individual turn for a player.

 

[Epametheus]

I currently run a 4E game (that just reached L18) and play in a Pathfinder game (that's at L10, in book 4 of Kingmaker).

How quickly a fight runs depends in part on your players. Do they pay attention? Are they planning their next move before their turn comes up? Are they "that guy", the one that really doesn't grasp the game mechanics and has to be coached every step of the way in order to be effective?

But it feels to me that 4th Edition combat is usually slower, for one major reason besides the various interrupt actions: the gratuitous status effects. Few things are quite as obnxious as trying to track multiple status effects that are getting applied to multiple characters and monsters all over the battle field.

Combats also have this odd feel of dominoes - while my group tries to focus fire when they can, the party usually winds up having to split fire to try to supress/shutdown two or three mobs that proving more obnoxious than everything else, with the end result being that combat will go 2 to 4 with nothing falling, and then everything just sort of dies all at once.

With Pathfinder, I'm finding more time is being spent on preparation/planning than the actual combat, with the very occasional "oh crap what do we do" moment

Spoiler

like when we discovered that (a) Smite Evil didn't work on Armag, (b) status effects in general did not work on Armag, and (c) he hit for over 60 damage a swing

; in general the Pathfinder combats just go faster because there is less action to action bookkeeping outside hit point loss.

Which in part reflects that a Pathfinder status effect usually takes the victim out of the fight, while a 4E status just sort of lingers around and is obnoxious rather than decisive.

 

[SlyDoubt]

In an amusing bit of irony, is that I have found minions to be deadly verses PCs.

To me, the difference comes down to this: throwing in a bad guy "grunt" with x hp, full stats, etc. that the fighter still one-shots when rolling minimum damage once his STR and other modifiers are added in is wasted time, especially when creating custom bad guy. It's much quicker to jot down a couple of stats that would come into play, and have a rule of thumb to where one or two hits bring it down. I need a battle to become a little trickier, I add reinforcements that were near by. I need a battle to end quicker - extra baddies run away (or at least try to).

Then again, I play loose and fast when DMing combat, while encouraging players to try crazy things (usually with a skill role). It isn't unusual for me keep my DM turns less than an individual turn for a player.

Yep. I always sort of quirk a brow when I read all the complaints about 3.x/PF DMing and what a bear it is. Really? I guess if you are all rules people and need to do everything by the book I can certainly see this. I guess again it comes down to DM/Player relationship.

In 4E I feel like I cannot DM fast and loose because the game is so mechanically tight I feel like doing so will break something immediately. By comparison 3.x/PF is like a bunch of concepts related to die rolls and stats that I can use wherever applicable and as appropriate. A monster becomes a 'minion' because of some extenuating unknowable circumstance that brought the monster down suddenly, not because the book labeled it a minion.

We play by the rules but I modify things as myself and the players see fit. I feel 3.x/PF is more about what you have there to work with than what you have to work with can do. Both systems are great and it's good to have that variety although I am really disappointed to see 4E in the position it's in now after seeing a lot I liked with essentials.

 

[silverblade56]

If you want fast combat, do not use 4E, unless you want to use all minions, which would make combat so easy as to be pointless. A low level combat in 4E will take at least 40 minutes, by the time you hit paragon 1 and a half to two hours if you are extremely lucky. I have seen a 4E LFR combat encounter at about 12th level take over 4 hours. A low level combat in Pathfinder will take about 15 minutes unless it has added complexity , indecisive players, or a series of bad dice rolls. Pathfinder combat at higher levels can take several hours for big setpice boss fights, but every fight in 4E is a big, setpiece boss fight with tons of tactical complexity, ongoing effects with different durations to keep track of, and tons of monster hit points to churn through. For example, most PFS scenarios can easily be completed in the four hour timeframe they are supposed to be completed in. LFR (4E) mods are supposed to take the same amount of time, but usually take 6 hours or more unless they have two or less combat ecnounters, PC's can opt out of combat encounters, or the DM calls the fight as soon as it looks like the PC's are going to win. Insane combat length and constant rules updates are some of the things that pretty much killed LFR in my area.

 

[Henry]

First of all, [MENTION=6750003]silverblade56[/MENTION], you might want to note that this thread is over two years old.

Second, though I don't really play 4e any more, I find that the table experience varied widely by the group I played in. Players who took time to understand their powers and who didn't fight the urge to work as a team and work against the system's design finished fights in some very short timeframes. Parties with no strikers for instance, or no battlefield controllers often took FAR longer to finish a fight, just like a Pathfinder part of characters who all duplicated the same role.

 

[silverblade56]

I didn't realize how old the thread was until I made my post. Why did a two year old thread show up on the fornt page anyway? Different tables do play at different speeds, but there are fundamental differences between the systems that make (I believe) 4E combat much slower over all. 1) Hit points. Monsters/villains in 4E have much more hit points compared to the damage PC's can dish out compared to Pathfinder. Plus, there is no way to by pass there hit points (like with some spells, etc. ) except for very high intimidate checks if they are bloodied, and it makes sense for them to surrender 2) Fiddly round to round changes. In Pathfinder you are stunned or fatigued or raging or have bless for the whole fight or a few rounds. You make the adjustments once and move on. In 4E you may have ongoing damage,and be slowed or dazed on round 1. The next round you are immobilized, and weakened but have +2 to hit from the cleric. All of these things have different durations (save ends, end of next turn, end of monsters next turn, start of your next turn). Way too much going on.

 

[Dice4Hire]

Sometimes I think old threads end up on the front page due to spammers.

 

[Wicht]

I have found that PF works fairly well with a 5 second rule. Players should be considering their move and working it out in their head when its not their turn. Unless something drastic changes, like their target dying, it shouldnt take long for the player to explain their action and move their mini.

I do something similar, though I am not overly pointed about it if players are on the ball. But if they are hmming and hawing over potential actions, I just start counting backwards, outloud... "6... 5... 4... 3..." until I hit 1 at which point, if they are not blurting out an action, I say, "Alright, "Yalandlara is gripped by indecision and does not know how to react to the situation... what is Torana going to do?" or something similar. I use "6" as the starting point because a round represents 6 seconds of action. I figure after waiting their turn and following the combat and knowing what their own powers are, they should be ready to act when their turn comes around. Fights in PFRPG typically last anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes real world time for us, with big fights lasting 30 minutes to an hour.

I think a lot of the time spent in combat has to do with GM methodology. As a DM, I am quite willing to keep mental track of things, wing a ruling on the fly (though if a player protests, we will sometimes look things up), and do what is necessary to keep the flow of a combat moving along at a brisk pace. In my experience, it is the in-between combat exploration that tends to eat up more time and that's fine with me and suits my style of play.

Edit: Heh, was just reading through and not looking at dates and only realized after I posted how old this thread is....

 

[Jhaelen]

I have seen a 4E LFR combat encounter at about 12th level take over 4 hours. A low level combat in Pathfinder will take about 15 minutes unless it has added complexity , indecisive players, or a series of bad dice rolls.

Well, and I have seen plenty of 4+ hour combats in D&D 3.5 - I doubt the same combats would have been any faster in Pathfinder. When I was still DMing 3e it lead to the same development that is typical for 4e: I only bothered with combat encounters if they were huge, set-piece affairs.
Pathfinder/D&D 3.5 may have a slight advantage over 4e at the low-level but that will quickly diminish as the party advances in levels.

If you are _really_ looking for fast combat encounters you'll probably have to look at other systems. Anything based on the d20 system won't be fast.

 

[Imaro]

Anything based on the d20 system won't be fast.

Eh, I don't know how true that is... 13th Age and DCC are both based on the d20 system and run pretty fast compared to 3.x and 4e