D&D 4E New to 4e, not sure I like it.

[Rechan]

If you're financially capable, run them both and compare.

Anyways, there are multiple threads about speeding up combat. A famous tutorial here on the boards is Stalker0''s guide to Anti-Grind, and another is a recent thread about halving hit points.

Although I don't know if Stalker0's guide has been updated to address the New Math, and his advice boils down to the advice [MENTION=78255]Truename[/MENTION] handed out.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Encounters is lowest common denominator 4e and is all about the combats. It's a good way of learning the rules, but a seriously lousy showcase for what can be done with 4e. I'd seriously suggest a homegame - and keep the number of combats down.

 

[Dragonblade]

Most people in the PF forum say it's quite a bit faster than 4e, so I think I'll attend one of the Pathfinder Society events at the local shop.

I call total BS on that. If your players and DM know what they are doing, and are ready to go on their turn, I find that 4e combat is about 50% to 2x faster than PF combat and will go through nearly twice as many rounds in that time, meaning every player gets to go more often.

I play 4e and Pathfinder. In our last PF 4 hours session we had two fights, each one taking up about 60-70 minutes. We have 5 players, all are veterans who know PF well.

In our last 4e four hour session, we had those same 5 players and got through 5 fights, each one taking about 30-35 minutes. We are all veteran 4e players as well.

Both battles were with a party of level 6 PCs vs an appropriate number of foes which makes direct comparison easy.

Here is the rub, though. Because of 4e's combat design, it lends itself naturally to combat. Part of this is because outside of rituals, no powers last more than 5 minutes. In PF, casters have a wide variety of spells and spell durations. PF comes with a lot of other undesirable rules baggage that I won't get into here, but this feeling of openness is one area where it does shine.

I compensated for part of this feel in 4e by house ruling that you can recover an encounter power by expending a standard action on your turn. What this does is make encounter powers that take only a move or a minor action effectively unlimited (by forgoing your standard action every round). Especially when used out of combat where giving up a standard action (which is usually an attack) for a round doesn't hurt so much.

I have yet to find an encounter power that I feel is broken when allowed to refresh this way and it lets my players feel like they can freely use more of their cool utility powers outside of combat.

 

[McTreble]

For what it's worth:

My group and I are taking a slight detour on the way to D&D Next and going back to 2e. (I'm still running a different 4e game) and if I remember correctly, combat in that version was about 20% of 4e's length. According to your wishes, this immersive, but highly abstracted combat might be what you're looking for, at the cost of coolness and tactics. If you're cool with it, give it a shot.

 

[xenophone]

I call total BS on that. If your players and DM know what they are doing, and are ready to go on their turn, I find that 4e combat is about 50% to 2x faster than PF combat and will go through nearly twice as many rounds in that time, meaning every player gets to go more often.

Well, the consensus seems to be that PF is faster.

I played through a 5 hour session of Pathfinder Society the other night. We had at least six combat encounters. I would say they ranged in length from 15 minutes to 30 minutes.

It seems as though you can get 4e faster, but not without house ruling the hell out of it, and making major changes to the monsters.

 

[Dragonblade]

Well, the consensus seems to be that PF is faster.

I played through a 5 hour session of Pathfinder Society the other night. We had at least six combat encounters. I would say they ranged in length from 15 minutes to 30 minutes.

It seems as though you can get 4e faster, but not without house ruling the hell out of it, and making major changes to the monsters.

Every table is different and every experience is different. I have consistently found PF slower than a comparable encounter run in 4e.

That isn't always true depending on the party mix and levels, but I have found that it generally holds true for about levels 3-10. From level 1-3 PF tends to be faster since you generally have fewer options to choose from than a comparable 4e PC. And beyond level 10, too many variables start to enter the picture, though PF tends to be slower for us. Are there more spellcasters? Did half the party fail a save and thus cannot act, are there multiple summoned creatures who all need to take their own turn, that sort of thing.

I'm curious what your party mix is, what level you are playing at, and what opponents the DM was throwing at you? Did you use minis? Was there any fudging, like the DM making ad hoc rulings to avoid the time it takes to look something up in a rulebook etc.? Computer aids used to look up rules, or to track buffs, debuffs, initiative count and so on?

 

[xenophone]

All of the games I've played in both 4e and Pathfinder were organized play/Encounters. I haven't been aware of any fudging, and it seems unlikely considering that we were mostly playing LFR/Encounters and PF Society.

In 4e, I've played with three different DMs. Most of the groups had a fairly balanced class mix, and I don't think I've seen a combat encounter go less than 45 minutes.

I've only played the one PF session. We had four players. Two fighters, a cleric, and a rogue.

We've used minis in every case, and none of the characters in any game have been above 2nd level.

I have heard that the speed of combat for 4e vs. PF can change as you get into higher levels. Specifically, 4e seems to stay about the same (lengthwise), while PF slows down as you level, but I can't speak to that personally.

 

[D'karr]

Encounter lengths at 1-3 level in 4e might be longer, and D&D Encounters are designed to have challenging encounters and are always at those levels so it's not a very good measure. You're having one encounter in the 1.5 hours set for D&D Encounters. That is the showcase.

PF Society scenarios are designed for a longer period of time (4-5 hours). They have variation in encounter lengths based on the adventure.

Comparisons between the two are not representative.