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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Epametheus" data-source="post: 5430497" data-attributes="member: 719">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[/spoiler]; 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.</blockquote>

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