D&D General What if Critical Role had stuck with Pathfinder? Or 4E?

[Parmandur]

I mean "a third of their time" still comes out to around 300 hours of combat streamed. I'm not disagreeing that 5e is better for shows but I think talking about a lack of 1 hour, gridded combats being the reason when the biggest actual play show has a good amount of those things seems inaccurate.

According to Running Stats, the average time spent on combat is a little less than an hour. The longest combat was 2 hours 18 minutes in campaign 2. Longest in campaign 1 was an even 2 hours.

So no, I haven't seen 3-4 hour combats in Critical Role.

And there you go.

Sure, there is combat...but it is not 4E style combat.

 

[BRayne]

According to Running Stats, the average time spent on combat is a little less than an hour. The longest combat was 2 hours 18 minutes in campaign 2. Longest in campaign 1 was an even 2 hours.

So no, I haven't seen 3-4 hour combats in Critical Role.

That has the longest combat in campaign two being Lucien, Cognouza Incarnate at 3 hours 7 minutes (which I'd argue Lucien, Neo-Somnovum is the same combat bringing it over 5 hours) and campaign one is Vecna, the Ascended at 4 hours 48 minutes

 

[HammerMan]

Based on my personal experience high level 4E play frequently took an hour per round, so several hours for some encounters. YMMV, just relating what we hit.

even in our first game learning it (useing the models) we only came close to 2 hours with big solo's at high level (and tbf 3e, and 5e big dragons sometimes take 3x longer then normal encounters too) in my experience a hard or complex fight would be 30-45 minutes (where in 5e it would be 10-20). with slog fests being more 45- an hour (in 5e a slog fest looks more like a 4e complex fight of 30+ mins) but I still saw plenty of alpha strike 2 round 10 minute fights in 5e...

3e on the other hand by the time we walked away often was "Who won initiative... okay can you 1 shot this or do others get to go?" with the occasional wizard winning the day (at high level) before there turn on initiative. so longer fights were a plus at teh begining of 4e. However again I do wish they had addressed the HP bloat.

the biggest problem with 4e isn't how long... its how long that doesn't matter. If 15 mins in you know you are winning and it will take a huge long shot for the monster to pull out of this... but you still have 20-30 minutes to go, THAT was my 2nd biggest gripe.

 

[HammerMan]

That has the longest combat in campaign two being Lucien, Cognouza Incarnate at 3 hours 7 minutes (which I'd argue Lucien, Neo-Somnovum is the same combat bringing it over 5 hours) and campaign one is Vecna, the Ascended at 4 hours 48 minutes

never... not in 4e vs a god in the worst case have I ever had a 5 hour fight...

 

[darjr]

never... not in 4e vs a god in the worst case have I ever had a 5 hour fight...

I’m curious, when did you start playing high level games? After mm3?

 

[Retreater]

Also of note. The PAX folks were packing large rooms of people during 4es run.

This was in celebration of the 4e Red Box.

G4 TV showed up and filmed. WotC and PAX had a store on a buss giving away a ton of stuff.

PAX Prime 2010.

What we saw in 2010 during 4e is a drop in the bucket to the success of 5e and Critical Role.

"I was there. I was there 14 years ago ... when WotC took the OGL. I was there the day the strength of nerdom failed. I led my friends into the heart of GenCon, where the new edition was announced, the one place It could be played! It almost ended that day, but D&D was allowed to endure. WotC returned to tradition. The line of 4e is broken. There's no strength left in the world of other editions. They're scattered, divided, leaderless."

 

[Parmandur]

What we saw in 2010 during 4e is a drop in the bucket to the success of 5e and Critical Role.

"I was there. I was there 14 years ago ... when WotC took the OGL. I was there the day the strength of nerdom failed. I led my friends into the heart of GenCon, where the new edition was announced, the one place It could be played! It almost ended that day, but D&D was allowed to endure. WotC returned to tradition. The line of 4e is broken. There's no strength left in the world of other editions. They're scattered, divided, leaderless."

No need to even bring Critical Role into it: the 4E success of Acquisitions Incorporated are a drop in the bucket to the success of Acquisitions Incorporated in 5E. It went from a fun sideshow to a whole media franchise.

 

[Remathilis]

never... not in 4e vs a god in the worst case have I ever had a 5 hour fight...

We once had six 20th level PCs fight a CR 30 lich and his CR 20 death knight lieutenant in 3.5, and it took roughly 6 hours to play out 10 rounds. One hour alone was spent redoing characters after the lich's opening attack was Mordenkainen's Disjunction...

 

[darjr]

No need to even bring Critical Role into it: the 4E success of Acquisitions Incorporated are a drop in the bucket to the success of Acquisitions Incorporated in 5E. It went from a fun sideshow to a whole media franchise.

The show was just a tip of the iceberg. They turned away a lot of people and next year it was in a much bigger space, the biggest one they could get if I remember and still they turned people away.

At the time it was a shock.

Still it had little to no effect on 4e sales.

But that’s my point.

I dunno about the rest.

In part it’s such a weird world now. Not to much earlier than those shows lots of folks thought D&D was a dying hobby for old grognards and was slowly going to die off. That was accepted wisdom. 4e was the hail Marry.

 

[HammerMan]

I’m curious, when did you start playing high level games? After mm3?

it took a little bit but it was H1-H3, P1-P3, and E1-E3 adventure path (I like to call it the orcus adventure path). I don't remember when each monster man came out but I know psionics were in PHB3 and by then we had 2 epic games down.