In my experience the PCs have to work a little harder to get at the baddies in 4E because they don't have easy access to game breaking magic like teleportation and flight. Sure you can teleport and fly in 4E, but the distances are fairly short, and you usually can't move the entire party along with you until really high levels.
Access to party-wide flight comes at level 10 (with a conjured mount) or at level 20 (without), or possibly even before level 10 if you can hit an Arcana DC of 40 with Phantom Steed.
Party-wide teleportation also comes relatively early on (via Linked Portal at level 8) but you are limited by the sigil sequences you have memorized (so unless the DM provides you with extra sequences during the adventure, you're typically only able to teleport to places you've been). It isn't until level 28 that you can learn True Portal and go wherever you darn well please.
Yes but such powers are far more limited in use, and generally can't be easily used in the midst of combat. Linked Portal won't get you out of a fight going badly, and it won't get you back to the dungeon, unless there is a teleportation circle there to make use of.
You aren't going to have a sorcerer zipping around with fly, and improved invisibility hurling acid orbs down on the monsters.
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Maybe you want to tone back on the power of the monsters you are using.This feels like you can't get killed. At all.I've pulled off 5 TPKs in 4E. I've NEVER TPKed in any edition in the previous 3 decades. I'd imagine my corpse count would be even higher if I was playing more frequently (about every other week since release). It's gotten so scary lately (last game I felt like I was playing whack-a-mole with the players) that almost everyone is eyeballing a cross-class into a healer, just because ...
The funny part about it is when I introduce the super-big baddie, they handle it/them with aplomb. Example: The other day I threw three elites at them. The earlier part of the night had been going rather roughly, so while I was setting up I quickly chopped 1/3 HP off all the critters. Second round into combat and I was quietly adding that 1/3 back in because they blew through them so well.
It's the "chump fights" that seem to get them. Standard encounter (or, same level as the party) - A few myconoids, a green slime, and some home-made minions (no special powers - just claws) and the next thing I know half the party has dropped at least once and we barely killed the minions! It's just one of those things, I wish I could explain it. Oh, and I usually screw up the monster fights and don't use all the oomph they have.
Again, this is what happens at my table. I DEFINITELY believe you can be killed in 4E.
The funny part about it is when I introduce the super-big baddie, they handle it/them with aplomb. Example: The other day I threw three elites at them. The earlier part of the night had been going rather roughly, so while I was setting up I quickly chopped 1/3 HP off all the critters. Second round into combat and I was quietly adding that 1/3 back in because they blew through them so well.
It's the "chump fights" that seem to get them. Standard encounter (or, same level as the party) - A few myconoids, a green slime, and some home-made minions (no special powers - just claws) and the next thing I know half the party has dropped at least once and we barely killed the minions! It's just one of those things, I wish I could explain it. Oh, and I usually screw up the monster fights and don't use all the oomph they have.
Again, this is what happens at my table. I DEFINITELY believe you can be killed in 4E.
Hmmm...
Well know you have me curious - whats your group make up?
My experience as a DM was that something like 3 elites versus a 4 player group was just about as tough as it got for my players. A slew of minions or other weak enemies got chopped through fast and where prime targets for the wizard and clerics area effect powers. A single big enemy is vulnerable to getting hit with a detrimental effect every round (things like a power that dazes an enemy until the end of the next round - that sort of thing) but multiple elites are just bad news - to many hps to fall easily - hits very hard and to many baddies to slow them all up with detrimental effects.
All that said every party has some very significant strengths and weaknesses based on the party make up. If you don't have area effects and just have really high damage dealing characters like strikers then minions are a nightmare - the fact that you can do 40 hps in a single hit is irrelevant if there are 22 of them each with 1 hp.
I'm late to the party as usual on this thread, but chalk me and my players up as another Pathfinder group using 4E-style movement schemes. We've house ruled this since the end of 3.5 going into the Alpha playtest for PF, with virtually no problems at the table.
I've also converted movement speeds into squares for years now (since Revised d20 Star Wars, in fact); generally when I build a stat block for an NPC or monster, I notate standard medium humanoid speed as "30' / 6 sq", for example.
The 1-2-1-2 convention, to my way of thinking, is another example of a game mechanic being overly simulationist to the point of negatively impacting play. Yes, we are all educated adults with good grips on the fundamentals of geometry, but this is a mechanic which confuses new players, who usually seem to prefer board game logic to pure simulationist logic. 1-2-1-2 may work for a lot of groups, but it hasn't for mine in most cases, and simplifying all increments of movement to count as one square in any direction speeds up play. And, as pointed out by many other posters, if all participants in a combat are following this rule, then it pretty much evens out in the end.
I'm late to the party as usual on this thread, but chalk me and my players up as another Pathfinder group using 4E-style movement schemes. We've house ruled this since the end of 3.5 going into the Alpha playtest for PF, with virtually no problems at the table.
I've also converted movement speeds into squares for years now (since Revised d20 Star Wars, in fact); generally when I build a stat block for an NPC or monster, I notate standard medium humanoid speed as "30' / 6 sq", for example.
The 1-2-1-2 convention, to my way of thinking, is another example of a game mechanic being overly simulationist to the point of negatively impacting play. Yes, we are all educated adults with good grips on the fundamentals of geometry, but this is a mechanic which confuses new players, who usually seem to prefer board game logic to pure simulationist logic. 1-2-1-2 may work for a lot of groups, but it hasn't for mine in most cases, and simplifying all increments of movement to count as one square in any direction speeds up play. And, as pointed out by many other posters, if all participants in a combat are following this rule, then it pretty much evens out in the end.
I like the 1-2-1-2 for diagnoal movement...but 4th ed does not blow up if you use...as PF does not blow up if you use the 1-1-1...it is not a big issue.