4th Edition Growing Pains

As I've mentioned in a previous entry, I've been running two separate D&D campaigns for the last year. The first campaign, set in Varisia, is played with a bunch of friends and my kids using the 4th edition rule set. The other is for a group of colleagues at work set in the Forgotten Realms utilizing the new 5th edition rules. Now, I'm okay with different campaigns using different rule sets, but usually it is two completely different rules like Mutants and Masterminds for one and D&D for the other.

The problems I have been experiencing with these two campaigns came to a head recently.  First, the Varisian campaign has been dragging a bit because the combat in 4th edition takes longer and longer as the characters gain experience.  I've been experimenting with different ways of speeding that up (different initiative types, halving monster hit points and doubling their damage, etc.), but those have just been band-aids and haven't really resolved the problem.

Secondly, because my job has been a bit more busy lately, my ability to prepare adequately for both games has fallen by the wayside. This has made it harder to properly provide the excitement and challenge to the players of the 4th edition game. I've found that when preparing encounters in 4th edition, it is much better to have them fully prepared ahead of time otherwise it is quite difficult to create an appropriate encounter on the fly.

I could probably make my encounters on the fly in 4th edition if most of my adventure wasn't reliant on creatures that need to be tweaked. For instance, I recently had a swamp hag encounter, but there wasn't a swamp hag monster in 4th edition which was at the right encounter level for the adventurers.  This means I had to break out the D&D Insider tools and find a hag that was close to what I wanted. Then I had to modify it to get it to the correct level. Finally, I had to get the stat block in to my adventure. If I was a little more versed in the 4th edition rule set, I guess this might be easier to do on the fly, but this on top of the length of time combat takes are just dragging my 4th edition campaign down. Interestingly, my campaign just reached the Paragon tier, and everything I read implies 4th edition does start to bog down as you get to these levels and higher.

Conversely, the 5th edition game has continued to flourish. Given the progression of 5th edition, I have found you can quickly and easily create new encounters on the fly. A monster of CR 2 can be either shifted up or down by tweaking just a few things. This makes it so I can take an outline of my adventure and fill in the details at the table as necessary. I'm able to continue to create interesting and challenging encounters which move the campaign forward with very little preparation time.

Based on these experiences, I've decided to cut my 4th edition experience short and convert the Varisian campaign to 5th edition. This should make my life easier and a happy DM tends to make a better game for everyone.