Pathfinder: Going forward in reverse

So it is now official.  WE are moving our 4th Ed. D&D over to Pathfinder.

I am of two minds about this.

On one hand Pathfinder is a lot of fun.  It is easy to do and given the years long 3.x game I have been playing with my kids it is easy to teach them.  4e's combats just take so damn long, it is hard to do more than two encounters per day.

On the other, I really enjoy Fourth Edition and have a lot of nice toys for that too.  I love the DDi and I am lamenting that there is nothing similar for Pathfinder. Yes I know about Hero Lab, but I am not sure how well it works and whether it would work for me.

I am not going to debate the merits of one over the other.  I am sick to death of edition wars and I don't want to contribute to either side on this.   Both games are fun, both games "can do D&D" and both are good games.  Everything else is just details.

So I am in the process of converting back some of my 4e characters to Pathfinder.  Not difficult really, the systems have more in common than I think some people would like you to believe.  I focus more on concept than actual class.  So some warlocks become witches, other sorcerers.

Chances are some 4e-isms will enter our Pathfinder games.  Passive Insight and Passive Perception come to mind right away. Though we are not likely to use healing surges at all.  Though my son made a good joke about that on Saturday.  One of the boys (all of them 6/7 to 10 years old), made a joke about "being bloodied" and "needing a healing surge". Liam said, "sorry you have to wait for the universe to upgrade to 4th edition first!".  

So we will use terms like "bloddied" and that might mean something in the future, but not quite yet.  I also like some of the ideas behind skill challenges and I would like to import Dragonborn over for my son.  After all what is D&D if you can't house rule it?

I am certain we will come back to 4e, and it is also likely that my current 3.x game with my two kids will become a 4e game some day.  But now just to be honest I am happy to be gaming regularly and I hope we stick with this for a long time to come.  It's a new world, but no more new than 4e, and the adventures still feel like adventures.

Course now I have to figure out if a character I play in both games (which is likely to happen) is the same character or maybe a Mirror/Mirror, alternate universe deal.   These are important things to consider afterall...