D&D 5E 5E and Hexes

[KarinsDad]

In our run of the 5E Starter Set yesterday, we discovered a few minor issues with range, movement, and area effects of spells that I thought that hexes would resolve.

I told players to ignore our normal square grids of 4E and just place their PC where they wanted to when the PCs move. As a result of that, we had a few points in the game where is was a bit more difficult to determine if an NPC was in range of Burning Hands, or if a PC was adjacent to an NPC, etc.

My players and myself were just too familiar with having a miniature in a grid and the freeform of not doing so created a few question points that shouldn't have existed.

So, it occurred to me that hexes would solve that for my group. Historically, I've always preferred hex grids to square grids since they allowed players to move their PCs in a more "realistic distance" way. Instead of the 25 feet of the 4E diagonal grid (for a distance that should really be 35+ feet), it's closer to real world.

Either hex grids or square grids also allow my players to know exactly where the PCs and NPCs are with regard to the rules and there is no guess work. My players are not necessarily the most cautious of players and several times during the day, a player would knock several miniatures away from their locations and we then had to try to place them back. Grids make that a little easier and are more intuitive for my players. We struggled a little when not using them.

 

[Sir Brennen]

I'm tempted to go back to hexes for the new edition because they do help with a lot of oddities of a grid map. In addition to diagonal movement like you mention, spell areas, particular those with a radius and cone shapes are much easier to adjudicate.

Of course, some spells have square or "cube" areas, but there are hex battlemats which have a center-point dot in each hex, which makes it still easy to draw square areas by going center-to-center. Same is true for square/rectangle rooms. You may have to make some rulings about "half" hexes bisected this way (like save with advantage for spell effects).

Those round wizard's tower floorplans are easier to draw, though, and "natural" looking caves are actually easier to create by following the outline of the hexes.

 

[fjw70]

I liked the 4e square grid rules but for 5e I have been going freeform. It has worked well so far. If things are close I just let it go. But I have on lumpy done this twice with my kids. I will see how the adult group handles it.

 

[mips42]

You could also not have square or hexes at all. Use 1"=5' in a free-movement system (a la warhammer, wh40k) and then have templates for the range sizes (30' seems common) that you can place and immediately see what is and is not "in range".

 

[Shiroiken]

Normally I use TotM, with maybe a sketch drawing.

When I use a grid, I prefer Hexes over Squares, It's harder to draw (until you get the hang of it), but it saves time on the movement arguments.

 

[KarinsDad]

You could also not have square or hexes at all. Use 1"=5' in a free-movement system (a la warhammer, wh40k) and then have templates for the range sizes (30' seems common) that you can place and immediately see what is and is not "in range".

Yup. This is what we tried to do this last session and that is when the issues crept in.


As an example, there were two foes in a given area and one of the PCs was adjacent to one of them, but the other was real close to being adjacent. The adjacent foe died and later on, the second foe looked pretty darn close during its init. One of the players pointed out that a few PC/NPC turns earlier, he was obviously not adjacent. Once that was pointed out, then sure, we all remembered it and it was easy to adjudicate that he was not in fact adjacent, But, it was a bit more difficult to tell just from where the two miniatures were located.

Another example, the Rogue moved some distance past fellow PCs in a narrow corridor, fired his bow, and then tried to move back. Since the Rogue had 25 feet of movement, was he able to do this? Well, one could estimate that he had to move 10 feet in, or 15 feet in, or somewhere in between due to the spacing of the other PCs.

These are not difficult things to adjudicate, I just don't want to be distracted in the game in order to adjudicate them. There are bigger fish to fry. It's just easier if each miniature is in its own grid location and then the players can quickly correct any movement or range issues without me as the DM even being involved.

In the first example, either there is a hex between the second foe and the PC, or there is not. In the second example, its immediately obvious if the Rogue has to move 2 hexes or 3 before firing his bow.

The game just goes faster if minutia like this does not have to be handled. It doesn't take a lot of time during the game, it just takes us out of the action and into the mechanics when there is no need for it.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I use miniatures without the grid, but the minis have a uniform base which can be visualized as exactly five feet for the purpose of movement. For measuring distances under 20 feet, it's pretty easy to estimate which targets are in range.

 

[Tuft]

Back in the old 1E days, the group I played with simply rolled a die whenever an eyeball measure was unclear - a miniature was partially under a spell templage, a distance a few millimeters off, etc. On a high roll the miniature counted as under the template, as within range, an so on.

We also used true circles, measuring with a ruler from the center point of the effect, rather than anything adapted for a grid - thus the "partial" roll often applied at the outer edge of effects...

 

[GX.Sigma]

When I first started DMing the early 5e playtests (the first time I DM'd a whole campaign) I got a Chessex battlemat with squares on one side and hexes on the other. I used the squares for artificial environments and the hexes for natural environments. It worked great.

I stopped using the battlemat because it's pretty awkward for dungeon crawling. I'm hoping Tact-Tiles are the solution.

 

[Stuntman]

After playing 4E for a couple of years, I found a hatred for battle grids in D&D. In my last 4E session, I did without it. I just ran it the way I thought would feel right during the course of the battle. For AoE effects, I just tell the player to roll some dice to determine how many targets are in the area of effect. I did this mainly to improve the pace of the game. Measuring or counting just took up time for my group who aren't so into the tactical combat aspect of D&D, particularly 4E.

In general, I would just judge things that would make sense for a character. A fighter may want to position himself adjacent to as many enemies as possible. A wizard may want to avoid this. If there is anything constesting such as a melee fighter trying to get adjacent to an enemy archer, a roll-off would be a quick way to determine things.

If your group is more into tactical combat, then it's best to use a grid and flush out these details beforehand.