D&D 5E 5e CB's Stonefast OOC -- COMPLETE

[Forged Fury]

As far as I'm aware, moving on a diagonal has always been allowed, regardless of the size of a creature, and isn't counted as moving through its space.

So, if you had this situation:

 _ _ _
|_|_|_|
|A|A|B|
|A|A|_|

It would only take 5' of movement for character B to get to the top-center square.

 _ _ _
|_|B|_|
|A|A|_|
|A|A|_|

But the presence of the wall may prohibit that movement, which is largely where our questions are originating, I think. Regardless, Roscoe can move to H30 and attack, which would cost him 25' of movement (10 to get through Spec's square, 10 to get into the Spider's top-right square, 5 to get to H30).

 

[CanadienneBacon]

This is interesting to me. In all the groups I've played in, I haven't ever been part of a group that used the rule as you describe it. We have, to a group, always played as I've described it, that movement on a diagonal through a square occupied by a foe is expressly not a permissible action.

Any chance this boils down to a difference in play style? If not, I could really benefit from a page cite.

 

[Forged Fury]

Could be play style. I doubt there are rules citations for it in 5E, given the theatre of the mind preference, but I'll see if I can find anything.

So, does that mean the groups you've played in don't allow the following movement using 5'?

 _ _ _
|_|_|_|
|_|A|B|
|_|_|_|

to

 _ _ _
|_|B|_|
|_|A|_|
|_|_|_|

 

[CanadienneBacon]

Could be a vagary of how your post displays on tapatalk, but I can't tell if there's a wall to the north of B. Let me know.

 

[Forged Fury]

No walls. It's all just open space.

With that said, I believe the 5E PHB may have some of the answers for this situation. On p.192 under grid combat, it specifically talks about Corners and diagonal movement, indicating "Corners: Diagonal movement can't cross the corner of a wall, large tree, or other terrain feature that fills its space." To me, the movement is prohibited by the presence of the wall, rather than the square in which the creature stands.

Ultimately, we just need to understand what movement is allowed or disallowed, particularly to save ourselves the time of writing unnecessary posts.

 

[CanadienneBacon]

Open space is fine.

Here, it's the wall, the size of the creature, and the narrow 5' doorway that act in concert to proscribe movement on a diagonal into the room.

Thx.

 

[Forged Fury]

It looks like 5E takes it beats from 3.5 for grid movement, other than the 5'/10' thing. Diagonal movement in 3.5 was:

You can’t move diagonally past a corner (even by taking a 5-foot step). You can move diagonally past a creature, even an opponent.

You can also move diagonally past other impassable obstacles, such as pits.

In case that's helpful in the future.

 

[CanadienneBacon]

Yeah, diagonal movement given an open area past a pit or opponent was never in question in my mind. Characters can do those things in both editions.

I've discovered that I have to be cautious about 5e rules adjudications in order to avoid inadvertent edition cross-pollination. For this first year, this has meant looking up every.single.thing in the PHB to verify for accuracy. Tedious. There are times I wish I could unlearn 3.x. I'm glad to know what from previous editions informs 5e, but have to be careful to wall off knowledge.

 

[Forged Fury]

With all that discussed, I think Roscoe can still get to H30 given his halfling ability and attack. His question was whether he could attack from his square diagonally into the spider's square. I think the rules would provide a cover advantage to the spider against that attack given the corner there.

 

[CanadienneBacon]

Memorializing my agreement that Roscoe's Halfling Nimbleness enables him to enter the room and reach H30 by means of passing through the spider's squares (which is different altogether than moving diagonally past the wall). I updated the IC to reflect this a bit ago.