What system to use, 4th r 3.5 for a combat heavy game?

[Jaquettie]

So I am thinking of creating a new campaign where there a number of different areas that the PCs can explore for loot and so on. The idea is to design each area with a set difficulty/CR and then have the players choose where they go, i.e. how powerful a fight they want.

Basically I need a system that has a balanced CR rules. I've only played 3.5 and I know that the idea of CR and EL is totally broken if the players know how to optimize even in the slightest. So is 4th edition the same or is the CR and EL mechanics in that system more balances and consistent.

Also thoughts on the pros and cons of 3.5 and 4th in a combat heavy/kick in the door style game?

Thanks

[Yora]

As I understand it, 4th Edition is faster and beter structured, while 3rd Edition has way more options and variables. However, balance in 3rd Edition doesn't really exist and CR is completely hit and miss. If you want the game to be more predictable, I think 4th Edition wins clearly.

[Jaquettie]

Thanks, that's what I thought would be the case. Gonna have to read the 4th ED PhB now and design it using that the.

[yougi]

+1 to what Yora said. Plus, 4th edition is easier to DM, as you don't have to build monsters who have class level, and you have a multitude of creatures of each different role.

[holywhippet]

Yeah, 4th edition is a lot more balanced which is both a plus and a minus. It manages to be balanced mostly by removing or limiting a lot of the tactical options like flying, invisibility and other spells that make your crazy powerful and a lot of the synergy tricks you can use to be powerful.

The result is a very balanced game, but lacks some of the fun like spider climbing up a cliff and raining arrows on your enemies.

[neonchameleon]

Yeah, 4th edition is a lot more balanced which is both a plus and a minus. It manages to be balanced mostly by removing or limiting a lot of the tactical options like flying, invisibility and other spells that make your crazy powerful and a lot of the synergy tricks you can use to be powerful.

On the other hand any gnome can turn invisible at first level, and there's plenty of synergy tricks accessible in 4e (just ask the paragon polearm people). The tricks are there - they are just different.

What's gone are the spells that make you crazy powerful - the ability to fly out of the enemy's reach indefinitely while being invisible being a big one. Most of the powerful spells take more than a minute to cast.

The result is a very balanced game, but lacks some of the fun like spider climbing up a cliff and raining arrows on your enemies.

As a first level thief I've climbed up a cliff with no chance of failure and barraged the enemy with shuriken before dropping down in a "Death from above" maneuver. All RAW.

There are plenty of options in 4e - they are just in many cases better hidden than 3.5 and you don't get massively poweful wizards who can do anything.

(For the record I'd recommend skipping the PHB and MM and getting Heroes of the Fallen Lands/Forgotten Kingdoms and Monster Vault instead - the Essentials series is easier to get into, the best written six of the eight PHB classes are available for free online, and Monster Vault may just be the best MM in the history of D&D whereas the 4e MM1 is distinctly uninspiring).

[Endarire]

3.5 Pro:
I like it and I think it's awesome.

More seriously, what are your experiences with each edition? How much prep time do you have? What's your and your group's tolerance for character death, especially at low levels where GM Fiat is the only reason you could logically live so long? What does your group prefer in terms of edition?

I also like how in 3.x, players and characters can be more clever. Yesterday, during a fight against Crucians (turtle men), the party Psion (Kineticist) had his mount entangled, then he had to jump into a pond to escape the reach of the Crucians. He was being dragged out by the other Psion (a Shaper) who threw her rope to him and started to drag him out before the session ended. On another front, the party Crusader was tanking 2 or 3 Crucians at a time (and an Ashworm mount!) and healing himself and his mount with Crusader's Strike and Martial Spirit. It was dramatic, tense, and quite interesting; more interesting than my small amount of experience with 4e.

Thinking long-term, 3.5 does a better job at simulating the fantastic. I don't just mean typical fantasy that caps around level 6 in D&D terms. I mean a party of Wizards having to cross the very fabric of reality to hunt down someone or something, who can take over planes of existence in a week without slaying a single inhabitant, and who can basically be the GM's entertainment for an evening. (They're so powerful they can make the plot that they want, or at least give it a thorough kick start.)

Additionally, 3.5 has a lot of modules. Not sure how tough to make something? Take a portion of a pre-written module. World's Largest Dungeon is a gigantic adventure, intended to take PCs from levels 1 to 20, and maybe beyond. (It's a magical dungeon.) Shackled City is another 1-20 adventure, but takes place in the world of Oerth/Greyhawk. It's more focused on the world than keeping PCs in one dungeon, but that's what I've gotten with only a cursory glance.

3.5 Con:
Having played both 3.5 and 4e (and Pathfinder!), 3.5 requires a lot of prep time. I've never DMed 4e, but I assume it's a bit less. But if y'all are learning a new system anyway, 3.x offers more growth potential.

3.5 Misc:
D&D 3.x and Pathfinder are intended as simulations of reality. 4e is a game that admits it's a game. Since you intend to run a more casual, more violent game, the setting won't matter that much.

[neonchameleon]

I also like how in 3.x, players and characters can be more clever. Yesterday, during a fight against Crucians (turtle men), the party Psion (Kineticist) had his mount entangled, then he had to jump into a pond to escape the reach of the Crucians. He was being dragged out by the other Psion (a Shaper) who threw her rope to him and started to drag him out before the session ended. On another front, the party Crusader was tanking 2 or 3 Crucians at a time (and an Ashworm mount!) and healing himself and his mount with Crusader's Strike and Martial Spirit. It was dramatic, tense, and quite interesting; more interesting than my small amount of experience with 4e.

To me that sounds almost exactly like one average 4e battle - other than the fact that mounts tend to die pretty fast in 4e. (Please tell me your 4e experience wasn't with Mike Mearls' Keep on the Shadowfell - an abysmal adventure).

Thinking long-term, 3.5 does a better job at simulating the fantastic.

And that's a definite advantage of 3.5 if that's what you want. Under the threefold GDS model (the precursor to GNS and IMO much more useful because it's descriptive rather than prescriptive) there are three good reasons for making a given decision. 1: It makes the game a more interesting challenge. 2: It makes the story you are telling more dramatic. 3: It makes for a better simulation of the world you are playing in. 3.5 massively weights the S side against the other two.

[quoet]Having played both 3.5 and 4e (and Pathfinder!), 3.5 requires a lot of prep time. I've never DMed 4e, but I assume it's a bit less.[/QUOTE]

Having played a lot of RPGs, 3.5's prep time is extreme. 4e's is pretty good.

At the easy end of DM prep, the CR system for 4e works and works well. The XP needed for each level in 4e looks slightly odd (an almost exponential scaling) - this is to make sure that you don't need to know the PC level to work out what the challenge is worth; the monster is always worth a flat number of XP. So you just go shopping. And the 4e Monster Manuals all present a range of creatures of each type so you can take an orc archer, a dozen savage orcs, and some sort of orc champion and just see how much of a challenge it is (about EL 4 in the above example) - and it will be inherently varied.

At the hard end of prep, you never need to work out a monster's spells or feats - everything you need in combat is in the relatively small statblock. (And the design rules to follow literally fit on a business card)

On reflection on the other hand I'm going to recommend against 4e for the kick in the door style game. 4e does large combats really well. But for kick in the door style play you don't want the combats to be large. You want them to be small, fast, and bloody. Not big and cinematic.

4e combat has the following characteristics:

1: 4e is kinaesthetic. There is a lot of forced movement in 4e, and people who want it (from first level onwards) aren't forced to make the choice between pushing someone with their attack and hurting them. Which means that a fight that starts 10' away from an open pit will probably have one or more people knocked in.

2: 4e combat is evolving. Everyone has decisions to make every round, and they are different each round. There are a limited number of PCs where "I hit him" (or "I twin strike") are optimal. This makes for a much better tactical game - or leads to analysis paralysis. Even the 4e marking mechanics are about offering a hard choice (attack the fighter, wrapped in steel and who you are likely to miss - or attack the mage and give the fighter a free swing).

3: 4e combat has a deliberately tense rhythm. As a rule, PCs have fewer hit points than monsters - but monsters get no healing. So it comes out in the wash - but makes the PCs appear to be doing worse than they are. It also means that to be meaty a 4e combat needs to take four or five rounds.

So we have a 4-5 round long combat with interesting options for each PC each round and the risk of analysis paralysis. This means a 4e combat takes about half an hour to an hour. (Yes, they can take longer). For epic quest play of the sort you see on an adventure path, this is superb. For kick down the door, beat up the orc, and move on it's not so good.

[Jaquettie]

Thanks everyone for the responses, will probably use 4th edition for what I'm doing because the most important thing is that CR is balanced. Also I will probably design the areas to be big set piece fights as you were saying 4th editions is good for. It's just that I will design them all before starting the campaign and the players can go to which areas they want and decide for themselves if they want to fight that difficulty level. Also there will be a re-spawn mechanics that will be provided by the adventurers guild. The main idea is to "take off the kid gloves" and let the players go choose the pacing.

[Gavinfoxx]

You could always use one of the replacements for either?

Let's see...

I would consider Trailblazer 3.60, True20 3.65, D&D with the Frank & K Tomes 3.65, Fantasycraft 3.70, 'Mutants and Dungeons' (both versions) also 3.70, and Legend 3.75, as far as the 'number of things fixed' goes... I obviously suggest Legend

For Example:

Legend:
http://www.ruleofcool.com/
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/47651526/LCGb.html <-- an online character generator, a bit old though, doesn't contain everything or the current version. Were you adding the splat stuff or just using the core rules only?

Other good things to do is use mutants and masterminds 2e to write up D&D-esque characters, a la:
http://greywulf.net/2011/06/03/mutan...third-edition/

Also, someone is trying to make D&D stuff with mutants and masterminds *3e*:
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=279503
and
http://www.atomicthinktank.com/viewt...706712#p706712

Fantasycraft is found here:
http://www.crafty-games.com/node/348

Trailblazer is found here:
http://badaxegames.com/

The Frank & K tomes are here:
https://sites.google.com/site/midden...oject/frankpdf

True20 is here:
http://true20.com/

[Person_Man]

4E is definitely more balanced, combat focused, and easier to run. +1 on Essentials, if the easier bit is important to you as a DM.

Having said that, as a mostly 3.5/PF guy, I would argue that 3.5/PF can sometimes offer more varied combat experiences and depth of gameplay. In 4E, everyone has a small but reasonable set of At-Will/Encounter/Daily Powers, and they use those same Powers repeatedly, over and over again, often in the same exact order, every single game day. And even when characters gain a new Power, they can often just trade in 2W + status effect for 3W + status effect.

Now certainly this isn't guaranteed. 3.5/PF players can choose boring Tier 4-5 classes and do noting but make mundane attacks every round of every combat. And there are ways of mixing things up in 4E, especially at higher levels, when you have more Powers, and thus a greater number of options to choose from. That's just my general feel.

[valadil]

My most recent game was in 4e. My favorite thing about the system was the combat balance. I could trust the monsters it gave me to behave the way it told me they would. This meant I could slap together a combat in 10 minutes and as long as it fit the XP budget it worked. For a game that sets up a whole boatload of fights way in advance, I think this is going to be a huge advantage over 3.5.

[Flickerdart]

3.5 seems like a better option for letting players tackle things above their weight class and expect to triumph in the end, simply because you have more leeway in tailoring your build against a particular enemy in a matter of second/minutes/hours/days.

[Knaight]

There is a game by the name of Anima Prime that sounds extremely well suited to this - and it is free. Basically, it is a combat engine, and everything that isn't combat is role played out, though the system is set up to encourage role playing. The combat system works through what is basically several different fluctuating point and dice pools and a system of powers that comes out of them, but because of the way the abstraction is set up the actions taken often make a lot of sense.

The downside is that it is meant for Shonen action series, but the system is fully portable to cinematic fantasy - by which I mean you need to describe things a little differently in play, which doesn't even qualify as a conversion.

[gooddragon1]

Disclaimer: I like 3.5 infinitely more than 4th.

However, if you need to be doing more than 3 or 4 combats in a 2 or 3 hour session or if the combats are particularly large 4th is the way to do it.

[holywhippet]

On the other hand any gnome can turn invisible at first level, and there's plenty of synergy tricks accessible in 4e (just ask the paragon polearm people).

That only works if they take damage (fair enough, they could just punch themselves in the arm or have a companion do it), but it only lasts until the end of their next turn. I suppose you could have a gnome punching themself in the arm and moving from cover to cover repeatedly but it's not the same as dropping an invisibility spell on your ally or allies to infiltrate an area or get past an area where you are exposed to ranged attacks.

[Endarire]

4E: I played some RPGA games (levels 1, 2, and 8), but never Keep on the Shadowfell.