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

[Retreater]

Have you seen Critical Role, the show with 3-4 hour combats on gridded terrain?

The only episodes I've seen are people talking in funny voices going shopping with zero action. Some of the most boring moments in my life.

 

[darjr]

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.

 

[Parmandur]

Have you seen Critical Role, the show with 3-4 hour combats on gridded terrain?

In the "Is D&D 90% Cbat?" thread, @Oofta shared the stats on Criticsl Rols, and they spend about a third of their time in combat. Not many whole episode fights, and they aren't necessary to their game in the same way as 4E.

A notable control sample is Acquisitions Incorporated: they played 4E for years with some decent streaming success...and then really took off with 5E.

5E being more appealing for streaming doesn't make it "better" than 4E, but it does fit the medium much better. Which is a total coincidence, since WotC had no reason to think streaming would boom the way that it did.

 

[Parmandur]

As another interesting control sample, here is the one Pathfinder game Mercer ran on stream: he is visibly frustrated at times with trying to balance the minutiae of PF rules and math on the one hand, with running an entertaining show on the other hand. Which essentially never happens with 5E on their show.

 

[Parmandur]

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.


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Exactly: but even this is very niche to how big AI got with 5E. It's just more fun for a broader audience to watch other people play 5E than to watch other people play 4E.

 

[Parmandur]

I will also say that being streaming friendly is not a unique trait of 5E. Vampire: the Masquerade and Call of Cthulu have proven well suited to streaming, and I suspect MERP would play well.

 

[BRayne]

In the "Is D&D 90% Cbat?" thread, @Oofta shared the stats on Criticsl Rols, and they spend about a third of their time in combat. Not many whole episode fights, and they aren't necessary to their game in the same way as 4E.

A notable control sample is Acquisitions Incorporated: they played 4E for years with some decent streaming success...and then really took off with 5E.

5E being more appealing for streaming doesn't make it "better" than 4E, but it does fit the medium much better. Which is a total coincidence, since WotC had no reason to think streaming would boom the way that it did.

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.

 

[Oofta]

Have you seen Critical Role, the show with 3-4 hour combats on gridded terrain?

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.

 

[HammerMan]

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.

yeah but the "it takes multi hours" is an exaggeration of 4e too (not that I wouldn't have minded like half the HP bloat on both sides of the screen) so if they are averaging an hour I'm not sure it would be that noticeable to run4e... then again maybe they take for ever to take there turns... I don't know.

 

[Oofta]

yeah but the "it takes multi hours" is an exaggeration of 4e too (not that I wouldn't have minded like half the HP bloat on both sides of the screen) so if they are averaging an hour I'm not sure it would be that noticeable to run4e... then again maybe they take for ever to take there turns... I don't know.

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.