1 square Diagonal Movement: Reaction from Players

[hong]

I was constantly gaming the diagonals on Civ. Nice for covering more ocean space to find small islands but wacky. Luckily as Civ isn't an rpg, there was no immersion for the system gaming to break.

Immersion was broken the moment I stopped keeping track of the characters' bodily fluids.

 

[The Little Raven]

Am I nuts or is this a 3.5 thing or something? Why does the elf have an extra square of movement in this example?

4e elves have a speed of 7 squares (35').

 

[Delta]

Oh, 4E. Well then I agree that's broken.

 

[delericho]

- removed -

 

[Hussar]

Y'know, that's a point. With the 1-2-1 rule, all creatures HAD to move in 10's. You could never have a 35 movement because of the problems it would cause in 3.5. Now, you can have a movement divided into multiples of 5 and it doesn't cause any headaches at the table.

It does give you a smidgeon of extra granularity for movement rates. Not sure if it's worth it or not, but, it is there.

 

[Jhaelen]

Y'know, that's a point. With the 1-2-1 rule, all creatures HAD to move in 10's. You could never have a 35 movement because of the problems it would cause in 3.5.

Umm, that's not really true. E.g. the dash(?) feat increased your movement rate by 5 ft. You also had to deal with odd movement rates when you looked at medium armor or encumbrance.

 

[Wormwood]

Now, you can have a movement divided into multiples of 5 and it doesn't cause any headaches at the table.

Interesting observation (and while I doubt we'll be moving 25' in Medium Armor . . . you never know)

 

[pawsplay]

It's some sort of space-warping shape where every corner is the same distance from its adjacent corner as it is from its opposite corner.

In many cases, it will be faster to move in a zig-zag than to simply turn a corner.

 

[Hussar]

Umm, that's not really true. E.g. the dash(?) feat increased your movement rate by 5 ft. You also had to deal with odd movement rates when you looked at medium armor or encumbrance.

The Dash feat was from Song and Silence, IIRC, so, chalk it up to 3.0 inexperience and poor design.

Movement goes from 30 to 20 to 15. 15 feet is no problem because you can always move however you want. 2 straight, 1 diagonal or 2 diagonal, no problem because the first diagonal is only 5 feet. There's no 25 foot movement.

Although, to be fair, if you got up into 50 feet of movement, being encumbered did drop you to 35. But, let's face it, these are pretty corner cases that likely didn't come up in play too often.

Interesting though. 1-2-1 means you never have 25 foot movements. Not a biggie. Honestly, either way doesn't faze me too much.

 

[Thyrwyn]

Is the basic assumption of this controversy at all refective of reality, though? Isn't the idea that all humans move 30', or 6 squares, or have 6 movement points or whatever arbitrary, flawed and (in some sense) broken? It is fair, in that it treats everyone as 'the same', but that is hardly the way life is. What about reaction time? or indecision? or the fact that a character can cover the same distance in a straight line as one who makes a 90 degree turn?

What if we look at the whole process as being representative of far too many variables to be worth tracking (was the character moving in that direction last turn? was he prone? what way was he facing? why can't anyone get in his way? etc. . . ). The same thing applies to distance: why is the 'range' of Point Blank Shot exactly 30' or 6 squares for everyone? why can't it be 32' for some, and 27' for others? does it matter? Why does does someone .001 feet outside the area of effect of a fireball take absolutely no damage, while someone just a little closer gets toasted?

Lets look at the rules of the game as a formula for representing "the way things work in the real world" or "the laws of the universe".

If we wanted to, we could introduce a Reaction Roll, to see how far you get to move each round; we could give spells and abilities variable ranges and AoE; we could roll for initiative each round; we could do all these things and they would allow us to quantify more of those variables; they would give us the appearance of achieving a closer approximation of reality at the expense of time and effort.

The 1-1-1 rule makes a sacrifice in the other direction, it recognizes that there are so many possible random variables - why roll them? Under 1-1-1 movement rules, sometimes you can cover more or less distance than others, or shoot further, or be affected by something you were not as close too - in some ways this is more reflective of reality than the 1-2-1 rule. Rather than die rolls, time, and calculations - it uses the dynamics of the game board.

If we were to truly look at situation fom the character's PoV, would they really notice? No - because they don't think in turns and concrete, delineated actions. They do:

"The Troll is awfully far away - I hope I can get there before he finds a hole in the Rogue's guard. . ."

They don't do:

"I can just make it to the Troll with a normal move, even though he's on the diagonal because we are using the 1-1-1 rule.

They do:

"Your supposed to be watching my back - that Troll could have killed me!"

They don't do:

"I'm glad we weren't using the 1-2-1 rule, that Troll would have clobbered my Rogue. . .

Life is variable. Combat is variable. Life goes on - and the laws of the universe remain unbroken.