Advice on going from GRID to HEX

[dagger]

I am thinking about pulling out my old 1" hex battlemat that I used to use before 3.0 came out.

Anyone have any advice on dealing with half hexes and 3.5 monster sizes with the grid map? I can't for the life of me remember how we handled half hexes in 1st/2nd edition in relation to miniatures....it has been so long.

Also any other observations you have made when dealing with hexes in 3.0/3.5?

THANK YOU!

 

[adwyn]

You will also have to cope with the issue of creature with larger than one inch base sizes. For example, a giant covers four spaces using squares. Should he now cover four hexes? seven (a megahex)?

We found that there were no perfect answers, and arguements were often generated when AoO's became important.

 

[Rel]

We found that there were no perfect answers, and arguements were often generated when AoO's became important.

Same here and, although I'm a big fan of the Hex, we decided to go back to the grid after a period of frustration.

The biggest was the issue of creatures with larger than normal bases. If they have a 10x10 face then you wind up having to go with four hexes in a sort of diamond pattern. Then, extending reach out from there, you get some pretty wonky areas into which they can make AoO's.

In retrospect, perhaps going with the "megahex" idea mentioned above (a hex and all the adjacent hexes) as the base area would be easier. But it does mean that a Large creature (say an Ogre) winds up with a base that's 15 feet across.

Spell radii are fine (especially if you use templates) but some things like Spike Stones that talk about "one 10x10 area per caster level" get tricky again because of the whole "diamond pattern" thing.

It does solve a lot of frustrations about movement though and having to count every other diagonal move as 10'.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

I really tried to switch to hexes when we started 3.0, since I had a huge hex battlemat and only a small square grid mat. It just wasn't worth the aggravation. We fought with it for a few sessions, and finally just said' Screw it', invested in a new large square grid battlemat, and switched. The 'every other square = 10'' bit was a pain for a few minutes, but not as much as trying to convert square areas and ranges to hexes. Pythagoras is your friend!

 

[Aexalon]

Unearthed Arcana

UA has 2.5 pages of hex diagrams (p128-131) that should answer your questions nicely. In short, the non-trivial conversions are:

• for creatures: large critters occupy 3 hexes, huge occupy 7, gargantuan 12, and colossal 19
• for spell effects: cones are 60 degrees wide.

For the rest, they basically suggest that if you're not comfortable winging partial hexes on the fly, this variant may not be for you.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I use hexes for outdoor combats and grids for indoor combats. Hex basing of creatures as per Unearthed Arcana.

Cheers

 

[dagger]

After reading the replies, I am leaning towards sticking with the grid map, but I still need to run it by some of the players to see what they think.