The scale of ranges and area of effect

[Kobold Avenger]

I like 3e's scale of range and the area of effect the best. In my opinion it was the refinement of what came before.

2e I remember being confusing as it alternated in the unit of measurement used, I think everything was feet except for ranged weapons which used yards.

4e was based on non-eculidean geometry with diagonal movement being the same distance as moving horizontally or vertically on the grid. Not only that, but everything was of much shorter ranges. While it's certainly easier to remember normal no penalty range, and longer -2 penalty range and that combat in 3e rarely went beyond the 2nd range increment. I didn't like that simplification. I think moving forward there should be:
1xrange: no penalty
2xrange: -2
4xrange: -5
8xrange: -10

Also for the square burst/blast which replaced circular radius and cone areas, they were all much smaller. Rarely anything went beyond 10' radius. Well it made since for all those melee weapon attacks to be 5' radius close attacks, I didn't like how fireballs and other things were much smaller.

I think we're probably going to things with 20' radius, or the really ridiculously large area of effect for Firestorm seeing what they've mentioned about spells already. And that ranges should usually be more than enough to cover the entire length of a typical battlegrid.

This time I feel those scale of ranges and area will be back, mainly because of the possibility of a mass battles module, where those ranges and areas will be more relevant.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Missile weapons in 2E worked much like 1E. Yards were used outdoors while feet were the norm indoors.

This made sense because you can fire an arrow (or throw a javelin) much farther when you can arc the shot. I always allowed outdoor ranges when the indoor setting was right for it, such as a huge underground cavern with a ceiling a hundred feet high or more.

I hope the outdoor adventure sections get back to more reasonable encounter distances for outdoors.

 

[Astrosicebear]

Personally, I would like to see a return to the 3E style of movement/distance measurements for the CORE game. If you want to add the tactical battle module, you can have the option, allowing your group to use squares for movement and blasts/burst etc with more precision.

It the core module does not absolutely require a battlemat then I think the 3E system is the way to go.

 

[KidSnide]

I'd like to see a return to a variety of ranges. The ranges in 4e were specifically designed for a battlemap with 5' squares. It's important to that the rules work on such a map, but encounters shouldn't be limited to dungeon-style range increments.

3e's Short, Medium and Long ranges may have been confusing for some, but I think they were a pretty good compromise between recallable standardization and variation between casters and spells.

-KS

 

[NMcCoy]

For spells, 4e did basically have short, medium, and long ranges. They were just 5, 10, and 20.

I expect to see 5e's Fireball say something like "long range - large spread", and then the tactical module will define "long range" as "20 squares on a battle grid" and "large spread" as "3 square radius from the target square".