D&D 4E hex rules for 4E?

A room with no half-hexes. And lots of fun angles.

Zinovia said:

Cones work great on a hex grid. They are horrible on a square grid. So in 4E with it's bias towards all things square (it's hip to be square!), they have made spheres and cones into cubes with the awesome power of their non-Euclidian Mathmagicians. Even the *bushes* on the battle grids for KotS are kind of squared off. Perhaps the gnomes are sneaking around clipping the hedges throughout the woodlands into nice even squares, which would explain why you find them in gardens all the time pretending to be statuary.

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LOL.

A room with no half-hexes. And lots of fun angles.

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Looks like something I would use for Starwars or Dragon Star.

Aloïsius said:

The problem with hex is half-hex... You end up with a lot of "wasted" hexes as soon as you have a wall.

So, you need to defined what to do with those space : can a character stand here ? Does it count as a standard hex ? Or is this a "non existent" space ?

You need rules for turning around corners, flank, cover and concilment.

If you have all of this, then you can use hexes.

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I disagree. The grid is there as a tactical aid to give us some idea of how far people are moving on their turns and where they are standing relative to one another and to important terrain features.

With hexes the rules for flanking are clear (more so than for squares). Flanking on a square grid gets weird and I disagree with some of the situations illustrated in the diagrams. Also why do I need rules for going around a corner? Just move your figure around the corner. Move it about the right distance, and let the hexes fall where they may. It's there to help us, not to constrain us. There's no grid printed on the floor in the actual room.

Half hexes, when they do occur are not a problem. You don't have to be standing perfectly within a single hex if you are in a 3 foot wide corridor. I'm not going to remodel the world to fit my battle grid. That's one of the biggest objections I have to square grids. Soon everything in the world is not only square in shape, but also comes in even 5' increments. Corridors, rooms, caverns, bushes, fireballs. Ugh. Just look at the KotS maps - even the rough cavern areas are squared off, as are the bushes. It's silly.

For spell effects, you can make circle and cone shaped templates for various sizes. Forget counting hexes exactly - who cares? Make a paper or wire template and see who's in the area, and who isn't. Make it whatever radius, or arc that is appropriate for that spell. With a handful of templates and some common sense, you can adjudicate any situation. I would rather go without a grid altogether and use bits of string to move the characters rather than play on squares, because fireballs should be round, blast spells should be cones, and bushes shouldn't be 5' squares.