NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lord Zardoz" data-source="post: 4633324" data-attributes="member: 704">I ran a few 3rd Edition games, and I am a player in a 4th edition game at the moment.  I never had much opportunity to run my 3rd edition games into higher levels due to a variety of issues.  I still think I have a good frame of reference for comparison, however.First, much of what happens in any game is very dependent on what is in your players have chosen for class and feats, and what the DM likes to use for monsters, but in 3rd edition games, I did notice the following. - Fights with basic humanoid monsters, or any opponents with a reasonably limited set of options for attacking will run just fine, especially if HP, AC, and Saves are all the same.   - If your players go for Save or Screwed spells, (anything that lasts for X rounds and prevents those who fail the save from attacking effectively) fights can be fairly easy for them. - If your players go for buffing spells, things may start to slow down if they have to cast them mid fight. - Combat will slow down when players start to get multiple attacks, or when the DM is running multiple monsters (say, more than 4 at a time) that have a variety of options when attacking. - Combat will slow down when the players start having to track durations of effects. - Anything that forces recalculation of attack and damgae rolls in the middle of fight will slow things down a great deal. - Any fight with multiple opponents run by the DM where many of the combatants have wildly different attack options and abilities will be very slow to run.  (Try statting out a 4 or 5 member band of classed opponents of level 6 or higher, each with a different class, and running that fight). - Fights with a single combatant at higher levels will result in the opponent being dogpiled and dropped fast.  Fights with a single combatant who is a legitimate threat to the entire party will tend to be either a cake walk or a TPK. - In theory, I could set up fights to have several in a single day.  In practice, having more than one fight in a single day is hard to justify plot-wise outside of a dungeon, and the players will dictate the pace.  If the players will absolutely rest when either the cleric has used up most of his spells for healing, or if they suspect they will need access to any spells they have depleted. - Balancing combat to be challenging against the players is difficult, and it is easy to end up with a TPK if the players enter a fight much weaker than you expected them to.Now for what I have noticed about 4th edition combat. - Fights will almost never be over quickly unless the encounter is a cakewalk. - It takes much less time on average for a player or the DM to decide what to do, when you consider the number of options available. -- Splitting actions up into Standard, Move, and Minor allows players to easily know what they can do in a round. -- The allocation of actions often allows players to do more in a single round. - Healing surges and per Encounter abilities make is much easier to have a series of challenging fights within the same day.  Per encounter abilities dictate the baseline power level of your party.  The availability of healing surges dictate if the players will push on or rest. - We do run more combat encounters, and cover more story per game in 4th edition than we did in 3rd edition.When was running games in 3rd edition, I would end up having fights balanced assuming players were at near full HP.  I could set up entertaining fights, but it was a non trivial amount of effort, and there was a huge margin for error.  So I would generally run only a few fights, but they would all be challenging.  Running a series of combats in a single in game day was just not cost effective in terms of prep time.  Under 4th edition, while I am certain that the XP value of some combatants are not as accurate as I would like, setting up a fight is much easier, and running it is much easier.END COMMUNICATION</blockquote>

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