diagonal movement - 1:1 or 1.5:1?

Laslo Tremaine · May 19, 2011

Yeah, my snarky reply was to say "hexes!"

Which really is not too snarky, since it's the way we play!

Vespucci · May 19, 2011

Laslo Tremaine said:
Yeah, my snarky reply was to say "hexes!"

Which really is not too snarky, since it's the way we play!

Doesn't that cause problems in 20' by 20' rooms?

Laslo Tremaine · May 20, 2011

Not really...

The trick to drawing square rooms on a hex grid is to draw the lines between the rows of hexes. Then only count hexes that have a majority of their space inside the room. It takes a couple tries to get the hang of it, but it works quite well for us, and there is almost no confusion as to what is a valid hex.

Thusly...

GlassJaw · May 20, 2011

Laslo Tremaine said:
The trick to drawing square rooms on a hex grid is to draw the lines between the rows of hexes. Then only count hexes that have a majority of their space inside the room. It takes a couple tries to get the hang of it, but it works quite well for us, and there is almost no confusion as to what is a valid hex.

Cool graphic. Just wondering why you don't line up the left/right walls of the room with the vertical hex lines?

In that case, you would essentially end up with half hexes, although I would probably count them as normal size.

Laslo Tremaine · May 20, 2011

The reasoning at our gaming table is that it would mean that some parts of the room would be 25' wide while others would be 20'.

With this method, the room is effectively 20x20 and it's pretty clear which hexes are valid. I fully admit that it's a bit kludgey, but the upsides to hexes greatly outweigh the downsides for us.

Counting movement, determining spell effect (both radius and cone), drawing round rooms, etc, are all pluses. The only real downside is drawing sqaure rooms, and this method solves that issue for us.

I should probably add that my group of gaming buddies were super-hardcore Champions/Hero players way back in the day. So we cut our teeth on hexgrids.

BryonD · May 31, 2011

GlassJaw said:
So is it a balance issue or not? I'm less concerned with "realism" - Trailblazer should be proof of that.

Serious question: What part of Trailblazer should lead me to conclude that a 40% acceleration resulting from simply turning 45 degrees is not within your "realism" threshold?

I know it sounds snarky, and I apologize if it comes off as nothing less, but I really mean the question.

In a related manner what other properties applicable to commoners and puppies does Trailblazer disregard because no reason other than "realism" applies? Is there a reason other than realism for why commoners can't all walk up walls?

To me RPGs are much more than tactical games and getting it right is important. At least when it is really easy to do. And 1-2-1-2 is really easy to do.

1-1-1-1 has tactical implications, but it comes a long way from "breaking" the game. Balance in not on my radar when I think about diagonal moves.
But when I see 1-1-1-1 it immediately tells me that either the game does not expect to live up to a high standard of being right, or it just doesn't think very highly of the capabilities of its target audience.

In my games things that are not realistic fall into one of two categories.
1) Features of the game.
2) Failures of the system.

And BOTH do exist. Accepting and mitigating the second kind is part of the process. Hit points are the obvious prime offender, but there are certainly others. But any time an easy fix for a failure exists, that fix should be implemented immediately. And 1-1-1-1 has an amazingly easy fix.

csuaso · Mar 20, 2015

How can it be realistic if when firing an arrow or throwing a javelin it counts as 5 feet? The same amount of distance is covered by both walking and range weapons.