Hexing!

[GlaziusF]

In the interest of avoiding Bishop Combat, I have switched my 4E game over to a hex map.

So far it's working out pretty alright. I use the DMG's random dungeon generator and sometimes have to add an extra step to figure out whether the left turn is a deep left or a shallow left, but when it comes to rooms I just convert octagons to hexagons and squares/rectangles to parallelograms/rhombuses, slanted left or right depending on whether the roll is even or odd.

Bursts and walls seem to work out just fine stepped out in hexes, and blasts are a little different - basically take a blast-sized chevron, nestle it so your character's right behind the point, and move it the way the arrow points blast-size times. Here are the arcs for a blast 3, for example:

I have yet to see how well it will work in the long term, but for the short term it seems pretty alright.

 

[Raven Swords]

Looks good. I was wondering about this, but am leaning towards dropping a grid and just using a tape measure. It works for ames workshop and i can use blast templates to work out area effects. Easier to draw maps as well..

 

[taza]

How are you planning on handling the flanking and cover rules? If you're planning on just leaving the flanking rules unmodified, it'll be interesting to see the feedback from your defenders.

With the current grid system, a defender has four available adjacent spots (adjacent to the enemy) they can move to and they can move 25% the way around an enemy. With the hex system, they only have two adjacent spots to choose from and can only move ~17% the way around the enemy -- theoretically making them less flexible on the front lines. I would like to see the feedback with respect to melee combat.

 

[Turtlejay]

lol@Bishop Combat

Does having the rooms all be odd shape take anything away for your players? I would think you could just still use square dungeons and not draw them right on the lines. Similar to the way it suggests in the 4e DMG to draw diagonal walls (not from corner to corner, but midway between the sqare) just make sure that PC's only really occupy a full hex, or most of one.

Jay

 

[GlaziusF]

How are you planning on handling the flanking and cover rules? If you're planning on just leaving the flanking rules unmodified, it'll be interesting to see the feedback from your defenders.

With the current grid system, a defender has four available adjacent spots (adjacent to the enemy) they can move to and they can move 25% the way around an enemy. With the hex system, they only have two adjacent spots to choose from and can only move ~17% the way around the enemy -- theoretically making them less flexible on the front lines. I would like to see the feedback with respect to melee combat.

I have a defender... and an insane melee striker who gets behind enemy lines. Flanking has not been a problem for them as of yet, but I haven't run any combats with large numbers of enemies yet.

As far as cover goes, current rules seem to work alright for it, just with 6 corners instead of 4.

lol@Bishop Combat

Does having the rooms all be odd shape take anything away for your players? I would think you could just still use square dungeons and not draw them right on the lines. Similar to the way it suggests in the 4e DMG to draw diagonal walls (not from corner to corner, but midway between the sqare) just make sure that PC's only really occupy a full hex, or most of one.

Jay

I actually just do parallelograms and rhombuses instead of squares and rectangles but my players aren't expecting realism from me and I'm not doing any real dungeon-flavored locations, at least not yet.