4e rules will make some games much harder to run

[WheresMyD20]

Use minatures. No, seriously. 3.x was designed to be used with minatures and plays better with them. 4th looks to be even further down the path back to the roots of D&D. If you're going to play D&D stop fighting it and play the system the way it was designed to be played (and plays best) or stop playing D&D and pick up one of the many, many systems out there which are designed to be played without minatures.

Like 1e or BECMI D&D.

 

[EATherrian]

Like 1e or BECMI D&D.

I know that is the stock response but I never even felt the mechanical need for miniatures until 3rd Edition. I think that as a logical off-shoot of Chainmail, miniatures were helpful but not necessary in the earlier versions.

 

[WheresMyD20]

I know that is the stock response but I never even felt the mechanical need for miniatures until 3rd Edition. I think that as a logical off-shoot of Chainmail, miniatures were helpful but not necessary in the earlier versions.

Yeah, I never used minis for anything other than a visual aid until 3e. Although I like a lot of the 3e changes, the two that I dislike are the emphasis on grid-and-minis combat and the emphasis on character-engineering. I was hoping that 4e would undo those two changes. I think the game would be much more approachable for new players and easier to DM. Plus, there'd be the added benefit of much faster combat and character creation.

 

[baberg]

Yeah, I never used minis for anything other than a visual aid until 3e. Although I like a lot of the 3e changes, the two that I dislike are the emphasis on grid-and-minis combat and the emphasis on character-engineering. I was hoping that 4e would undo those two changes. I think the game would be much more approachable for new players and easier to DM. Plus, there'd be the added benefit of much faster combat and character creation.

Really? I think that using minis and battlemats make the game easier to approach because things like OA and range-to-target are much more obvious when you can see the location of everybody in the game world. Maybe this is a auditory-versus-visual learning style difference, but it seems to me it's much harder for a newbie to grasp concepts when they're left to only their imagination and DM's descriptions in combat, rather than actually seeing minis moving tactically around the grid.

 

[Dragonblade]

Having played 4e games a few times now, I think playing without minis would work identically to playing 3.5 without minis. Which I have done and it works fine.

Players have to trust the DM to fairly adjudicate distances and OA's but it should work just fine.

 

[el-remmen]

We use minis for our homegame and have used them for over 10 years now (before that it was a mix of pure imagination with the occasional drawing on a piece of paper or layout of marching order/general position using dice) and were using homebrewed initiative and movements, etc. . . during that time. So going to 3E was no big deal to us in that regard.

On the other hand, when I run games at Cons, I never use minis or the grid. I don't want to carry them around and when you have limited slot I would rather move the game along than have people vacilate on their actions as they check out the battlemat.

Not that that happens much in my home games because we play that all tactical discussion must be done in character and you can only speak as a free action on your own turn (around 5 to 10 words give or take). Hmm, this inspires me to start a thread about that aspect of how we play. (EDIT: And here it is!)

 

[WheresMyD20]

Really? I think that using minis and battlemats make the game easier to approach because things like OA and range-to-target are much more obvious when you can see the location of everybody in the game world. Maybe this is a auditory-versus-visual learning style difference, but it seems to me it's much harder for a newbie to grasp concepts when they're left to only their imagination and DM's descriptions in combat, rather than actually seeing minis moving tactically around the grid.

The older editions didn't have OA and range-to-target can be estimated by the DM on the fly. Combat in the older editions was a bit more free-form and gave the DM more room to make ad-hoc rulings. Of course, that style of play requires more trust between the DM and the players. For some groups it works well and for other groups it might not work at all.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

thats a very optimistic approach, but maybe thats just the thing, tell my players to be flexible as always and recommend people who want to play warlords be more aggressive with stating their position in relation to the enemies around them. I guess as long as its being called out as the action occurs it might not be so bad... I just was feeling a bit of despair as I read through the warlords power list

Don't. I've been playing without a grid or a battlemat for 29 years (!), despite lots of rules over the world that seemed to require them.

 

[Nikosandros]

Really? I think that using minis and battlemats make the game easier to approach because things like OA and range-to-target are much more obvious when you can see the location of everybody in the game world. Maybe this is a auditory-versus-visual learning style difference, but it seems to me it's much harder for a newbie to grasp concepts when they're left to only their imagination and DM's descriptions in combat, rather than actually seeing minis moving tactically around the grid.

In my quite limited experience, when we started playing 3rd edition the hard core players were thrilled about the tactical options while the less committed ones found it quite boring and preferred a system with less precision and more DM adjudication.

 

[Zaruthustran]

The biggest reason that I don't like mats & figures is that in every game I've played WITHOUT them I remember the events as if I was my character - seeing the events from my character's eyes.

WITH mats & figs I remember moving the figures around the mat.

This is a very valid concern. When I switched to a battlemat for 3E I at first found myself remembering the mat & figures, and not the first-person viewpoint I experienced with other games. But it soon went back to normal. All it takes is a little bit of time and familiarity with the system.

One specific suggestion: keep your eyes on the eyes of the other players, and not the battlemat. This will focus you on the story/narrative/description, and you'll see the battlemat for what it is--just a reference, to be briefly glanced at only when needed.