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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 6038040" data-attributes="member: 87792">4e's gap isn't actually much bigger than 3e's.  First level commoners in combat are almost as irrelevant as minions; one simple weapon, d4 hit points, and no armour does not a relevant threat make.  It doesn't make a difference to the character in the game world.  But as DM and as player I don't want to pay as much attention to the third goblin spear carrier on the left as I do to the PCs.  Would you mind not re-writing the rules to make your arguments please?  In 1e, each combat round was one minute.  I'd expect a fight between two 1st level fighters to be the first to a hit or two depending on whether the fighters were using shields or two handed weapons.  And they'd need about a 12 to hit.  This is going to take about three or four rounds - or in other words three or four minutes. 4e combat, by comparison, is blindingly fast - combat was sped up literally by an order of magnitude when the combat round moved from AD&D's entire minute to six seconds.  A 4e fight between equally matched foes is not going to take ten rounds (unless we have pacifist clerics or zero damage wizards) - so the longest a 4e is going to take is less time than a 1e round. Now 3e is, at low levels, faster than 4e.  The battle between first level fighters will probably take 12-18s in 3e, half a minute in 4e, and several minutes in AD&D. Or by "short" do you simply mean that you'd elide several minutes of life and death struggle into just a couple of die rolls with limited chance to meaningfully change what the PC is doing?  What does level actually mean at that point?  What does it measure?</blockquote>

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