D&D 4E Is PF combat any faster than 4e?

[Lwaxy]

Going by the games I play with our living rules computer GM (Greyhawk D&D and custom world PF) PF is quite bit faster than 3.5 is, although this might be because there are still fewer options.

It really depends on the group though, and how they view battle in general. And also, how many PCs are involved, at a certain point each additional PC means a lot minutes to add to a battle.

 

[UHF]

Not disagreeing, particularly, but where did you get the data points to create the graph?*

Going off of a single GM's campaigns would likely skew the data.

The Auld Grump

* No, really not disagreeing - the chart seems reasonable, though for me the bogging starts at a slightly higher level, at least for 3.5. Maybe level 15 or so.

But I also have only two data points for how long combat takes in 4e, which was longer than any combat that I have ever had in 3.X, regardless of level. It should not take the entire evening to kill a handful of orcs. I am more than willing to accept that my data pool is limited, and that the problem likely lies in the scenario.

I would expect more sinusoidal activity on that graph. You can always pull a fast combat off in the older editions. i.e. Fail Save... players execute bad guy.

For me, 4e combats take 1 hour... but I only have 4 players. In 4e because of the tactical options in the game, and the chance your players attention have wandered from round to round, means that the time to run a fight increases hugely for each extra player you add.

My players in Pathfinder are all 3rd level and they just fought the Chupacabra in Souls for Smuggler's Shiv. It took 2+ hours. Longer than any 4e battle I've run, but just as fun and funny. The Chupacabra is hovering just off the cliff face, about 40 feet up with the Fighter in its mouth. Enter the ADD Magus, "I leap off the cliff and hit it with my shocking grasp sword!" "OK, I'll give you that... but no matter what you do, you will fall. OK? Roll." "1" *Splat* (Even the fighter in the Chupacabra's mouth took the time to laugh.)

 

[Epametheus]

My experience is that a challenging 4E battle would last about 30 minutes to 1 hour at heroic tier, and last anywhere from 2 to 5 hours at paragon and epic tiers. If the fight isn't challenging, than it might run 20 to 40 minutes at heroic tier, and maybe 40 minutes to an hour and a half at paragon/epic tiers.

One of my big eye opening moment in 4E was closer to the end of of my game, once the party hit epic tier. It was the party vs. 1 monster (a Storm that Walks, specifically), which was stunlocked the entire battle (and they could beat its insubstantial condition) and simply couldn't fight back. It still took the party about 40 minutes to kill it. Between the proportionally high HP of the monsters, the often unrewarding complexity of the math, and the endless spam of status conditions, I normally describe 4E's combat speed as "glacial."

I won't say that combat in Pathfinder is fast. Rather, combat in Pathfinder moves at an acceptable pace, and can often be brutal, nasty and short.

Edit: Looking at Merric's chart.... Maybe essentials is amazingly streamlined, but I'd put the red line for 4E much, much closer to the top of the chart. The only 3E game I've run where the combat took as long as 4E involved an epic tier 3.5 party with PCs over 30th level, one of whom was an epic Jade Phoenix mage (i.e., 9th level spells AND 9th level Tome of Battle abilities) and another of whom was an epic mystic theurge. It took that party about as long to fight a battle with Obyx-Ob that started in Zionyn and transferred over to the bottom of the Celestial Sea of the Seven Heavens (and pulled in Bahamut) as it took the 4E party (which was mostly the same players) to fight a run-of-the-mill encounter against 6 non-elite demons.

 

[Lwaxy]

In such situations, we usually skip the battle and declare the monster dead.

 

[Paxter]

From my experience, it comes entirely down to player knowledge. We just wrapped up a PF campaign at 8th level, and I was playing a ranger. Between my multiple attacks at different attack bonuses, miscellaneous buffs from the bard and cleric, and other floating modifiers, my turn took much longer than it does in our 4e campaign.

If people know what they're doing, combat can absolutely fly. With more of the players familiar with 4e, our combats are sometimes half of what they were in PF. In PF, the casters wouldn't help fight in the first couple rounds because they had to buff, and when they did, my ranger's damage completely outstripped theirs. Sure, there are no one-shots of monsters for the most part in 4e, but my character did it every fight in PF and it made everyone else's character look bad and wasn't fun after awhile.

My attack bonus was also sommuch higher than everyone else's, so if the DM made it tough for me to hit, it was impossible for the rest of the party. Likewise, the paladin's AC was double the rest of the party, so in order to challenge the paladin, the monsters would hit the rest of us every time.

In conclusion, run whatever you and your players are more familiar with. However, the combats in Pathfinder are much more difficult to balance against the party. 4e never has the problem of making a fight trivial for one character and life-threatening for another.

 

[Crothian]

I played a 4e game at Origins and we were Paragon Tier going through the classic G! Hill Giants module. I was amazed how fast the combat went. I was used to longer 4e combats like people in the thread have talked about but the DM ran combat faster and even with a lot of foes like the center room with the Chief and tons of giants.

Pathfinder is still faster in my opinion but not by nearly as much as I first thought.

 

[Mallus]

Pathfinder, which I'm playing now at mid-high levels, is still faster than 4e at low levels.

But compared to AD&D, which I'm running now, both are pretty damn slow.

 

[MerricB]

Pathfinder, which I'm playing now at mid-high levels, is still faster than 4e at low levels.

What levels in particular? "Mid-high" doesn't tell me anything.

 

[Mallus]

What levels in particular? "Mid-high" doesn't tell me anything.

The Pathfinder PCs are 13th level. Three are spell casters.

I stand to inherit the group once the DM moves away to accept a teaching position out of state in August. I'd really to like use an earlier edition, because I know I can run it fast, packing more interesting events into each session, which would be nice since we meet, at best, twice a month.

On the other hand, half the group prefers Pathfinder, and I don't see much point in running a system the players don't enjoy (and I enjoy Pathfinder well enough --well, as a player, at least).

T'is a puzzlement...

 

[dagger]

PF and 4e feels like the kid gloves are on compared to our AD&D games.

We play AD&D 1e/PF and use to play 4e but dropped it after about 15 months.


I would agree that 4e is faster at really high level compared to PF, but I would also note that the 4e game feels exactly the same (to me) at 25th as it did at 1st.