Playing 2e, 3e, and 4e at the same time: Observations

[ferratus]

I have made the switch from 4e to 2e a couple months ago, and I'm a player in a 3e game. I've thus had the experience of playing the games fairly close to each other. I think then I have a somewhat unique perspective of having the experience of each edition fresh in my mind. Here are my experiences, with my first post being about combat length.

Combat Length:
I was surprised by the fact that 3e combats are much longer than I remembered and I'm not saving any time over 4e. 3e and 4e both take 1 hour + for every mildly challenging encounter. I remember 3e combats being long, and 4e combats being worse, which I had blamed on the high defenses and hit points of 4e monsters. I think this is because once you blow your encounters and daily powers you are going to expend, you are pretty much done with the encounter and want to move on, so the "mopping up" with your at-wills is particularly dreary. 3e on the hand never gets as interesting to play as 4e, though it requires all the same minis. 3e doesn't really have teamwork or tactical positioning, so there isn't much to gameplay other than whittling down hit points or getting off a particular spell. So to sum up, 4e gets tedious after you blow your best powers, while 3e never really gets exciting to begin with.

2e on the hand has much faster combats. When I first got back into 2e as a DM, I was amazed at how quickly we would get through combats. The first time saver was that minis were much less necessary, so you don't need to dig them out and set them up for small encounters. Second, monsters generally have less hp than their 3e (and especially!) 4e counterparts, so they go down after 2-3 swings, which is generally about as long as a fight can hold your interest. 2e combat suffers at low levels when PC's don't hit very often, so it is often 3 or 4 rounds between someone striking a blow. That gets tedious fast, and combat would be even faster with a little tweaking in that regard. I like the fact that higher level PC's hit more often than lower level PC's (thanks to the AC ceiling) but it drags out too long at low levels.

2e also loses its speed when you have a large fight that includes spellcasters and armoured opponents. Last session, I played a combat that involved some human pureblood cultists, a blood elemental, 2 Yuan-ti halfbloods and a banelar naga. Between the spellcasters denying actions (suggestion, hold person polymorph etc), the poisons, the hp stealing blood elemental, and the high AC of the yuanti this fight took almost 2 hours. 4e regularly chews up combats of similar epic scale in less time, and more interestingly. However, it is much more tolerable to have a few fights that take a long time if they are epic, than to have each combat be a grindfest.

Verdict: 2e wins the combat length and enjoyment of combat aspect of the game, with 4e coming in 2nd. 3e is the least enjoyable combat experience for me.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Gotta say my experiences vary greatly from yours. Never had an combat last an hour+; definitely used tactical positioning & teamwork prior to 4Ed. And so forth.

I'm not saying you're "doing it wrong," just observing that this is a great illustration of "YMMV."

 

[Crothian]

There are just way too many variables here to make any kind of conclusion. I have found that slow players and DMs and fast players and DMs are the biggest facotors in combat length over the games. The games do have some varibability to them but not like players who take five minutes to decide what to do or to read the spells they have.

 

[JamesonCourage]

Yeah, I'm going to echo tactical positioning and cooperation in not just any version of D&D I've played, but in any combat RPG game where people are on the same side.

Additionally, my group can hold interest on a combat much longer than "2-3 swings" but maybe it's different for us, because we may only get in one combat encounter for every 10 hours of out-of-game time that passes.

At any rate, I'm glad you figured that stuff out for yourself, though. It sounds like you've found something you like (again). As always, play what you like

 

[ferratus]

The Roleplaying Edition

Promotion of Roleplaying: I wasn't expecting much change here, being a big believer in the amount of roleplaying is determined by the group. Certainly there isn't much roleplaying with my 3e group other than nerdy and juvenile sex and poop humour. However, even my Warhammer-loving all combat player and my observer wife did more roleplaying with 2e.

The two main differences seem to boil down to two aspects. The first is 2e's complete lack of social skills. The Diplomacy skill, ironically, seems to be the biggest roleplaying killer in the game. Players just seem to want to use it as a bludgeon to get their way, by treating the skill as "I fast talk them into liking me and so they do what I say". Since 2e doesn't have a diplomacy skill, people engage the NPC's conversationally, using roleplaying to find out what they want, or how they can interact with them. Having a skill to roll rather than giving a dispassionate measure of success or failure, simply short circuits the entire process.

4e does indeed seem to be the edition least able to facilitate roleplaying, but it isn't because of the combat focus as many people have alleged. There are certainly just as many (if not more) opportunities to roleplay as in 3e. However one wrinkle I've noticed as having a negative impact is a side-effect of recharging your powers and hit points after the encounter. As a result, as a DM, I design encounters and the roleplaying tends to happen in between the combat encounters or in lieu of a combat encounter. In 2e and 3e the line between encounters is blurry.

Vancian magic also has this problem, as running out of spells forces an end to exploration and encounters and destroys the narrative flow of the adventure. In many ways this is even worse than 4e, as the game can continue after a short rest, while in 2e or 3e you have to go back to base, rest and return. So in essence you are trading a few major disruptions to the narrative flow for a minor disruption between every encounter.

There is also a tendency in 3e and 2e to reserve resources (since they don't recharge after the encounter) that isn't found in 4e, so players are more likely to look for a solution that saves their spells and hp. In 4e, players tend to simply cut through any minor obstacle.

Verdict: 2e is the winner as the game that has the most roleplaying and interaction with NPC's and the gameworld.

 

[SteveC]

A lot of what you're talking about comes down the options that the Edition presents you with. Having just played a short "old school" game that corresponded to the old Holmes edition, combat turns were incredibly short, because the system didn't present you with any serious options. We were playing a low level game (it went levels 1-3) and so our combats took more time due to the large "wiff" factor.

The other systems (and even 2E when you throw in skills and powers) have more options, and I'd argue that more options means more time in the combat. How exactly that all works out is a largely group-dependent exercise, but in general, 2E (and certainly earlier editions) is going to come out as much faster combat in practice.

 

[ferratus]

Yeah, this is definately a YMMV sort of thing. For example, my 3e game does have a particularly argumentative fellow player, largely about the restrictions of movement, and fighting with 2 weapons. That obviously affects combat length. However, looking at is as dispassionately as I can, it seems to me that 3e and 4e combats take a similar amount of time in length, which is largely too long for my interest. I am firmly convinced that if your group was equally familiar with 4e and 3e, and you got the stopwatch out, that you would find that the combat length is the same.

YMMV on the type of game you like to play too. My Warhammer-loving player misses 4e and after these last few weeks is ready to go back. I am a bit happier with 2e because I like exploration games and the combats are simpler and faster, but I find the rules system frustrating to say the least. I do however think that there is a reason our preferences are coming to the fore, and that certain editions do different things better and worse.

 

[Pheonix0114]

I am interested in this thread.

 

[BryonD]

I've never understood this issue as an issue.

First, obviously, DannyA is right that it is hugely a YMMV thing.
But I think it goes way beyond YMMV on how long combat takes and into YMMV on many other elements as well.

Counting PF I've now been playing 3E for a decade+. I've seen a WIDE range of sessions. I've seen long dragged out combats that could've been better if they ended sooner. I've also seen combats that ended way to fast and could have been more fun if they lasted longer. But these are certainly the exceptions.

The idea that 3E combat "takes a long time" doesn't reflect my experience at all. The idea that 3E combat "CAN take a long time" is certainly true. But 3E combat CAN also be done in a quite reasonable time. So when someone says either way is a truth, I consider that to be much more a reflection of the speaker and the folks they game with, because I know from experience that it isn't a direct function of the system. Not that this is in any way a critical comment on the quality of anyone's game. Just that they do something that is bringing "long time" into the equation, be the game a blast or crap.

But beyond that, I've played great sessions with no combat. I've played great sessions with one massive combat that dominated the night. I've played great sessions with several quick combats. I've had great sessions with a few quick fights and a long one, or two.

The point is, if you play for 5 hours and have fun for five hours, then what difference does it make? An awesome fun time spending five hours in one epic battle is no better or worse than an awesome fun time spending 2 hours in four combats and 3 hours outside of combat, or 5 hours completely outside combat, or any shade in between.

Is the really important thing that you are having fun doing what you are doing?

 

[ferratus]

Easy to Run

Ease of DM to run a session: This is definitely going to be probably the biggest YMMV observation, but I don't see anyone talking specifically at what I found difficult, so I'll rant about it anyway.

2e has won the last two rounds, but it isn't going to do well here. The biggest gripes so far?

Monster manual layout - Why in gods name aren't the saving throws in the monster stat block? You make me drag out a the saving throw table out of the DMG whenever I need to know if you resist a sleep spell? Secondly, can't you have any consistency about how similar monsters work? I'll never know how a monster works unless I carefully read the combat section and puzzle out a brand new rules mechanic which may or may not make sense.

Rules references - It is a good thing that 2e has the best index ever given to the D&D rulebooks, because you have to look up a table for everything. I loathe the old school movement for making all of these old school clones, and making them the same unwieldy mess that 1e/2e was. It does not increase enjoyment to stop the game to look something up, and I refuse to memorize rules minutae in order to make the game flow better. I'll make stuff up first, which may or may not work better than the rule in the book.

Spells - Spells are the bane of the DM. Once again, their effects aren't in the monster entry, so you have to look them up. Then once you do look them up, they are often vaguely worded and open to the interpretation. Finally, a DM has the night before to learn how to properly use a spellcasting monster or NPC, so he usually is going to make a hash of it.

The solution to all these complaints? I have to be willing to commit to my memory all the variant rules, spells, and tables that I did between the ages of 12 and 15. THAT! I'm an adult now, and I cannot spend the time to memorize rules minutae when later editions came up with practical ideas and unified streamlined mechanics to do the same job.

3e for its part, kills the DM with prep work. An NPC generally takes as much time to make as a PC, even though he might just die from a slay living spell cast by the PC, or by a 10d6 fireball. Customizing monsters is time consuming pain in the ass unless you ditch the entire rules system that building monsters is based on. The CR table is needless work to calculate whether something is appropriately difficult to deserve XP. Near the end of 3e I gave up and simply ran Paizo adventures.

Verdict: 4e is the best edition to be the DM's chair by miles. 3e is okay to run during the session, but buries you in prepwork. 2e has less prepwork, but requires an investment in rules mastery that I'm simply unwilling to commit to.