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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 4619136" data-attributes="member: 996">Counting distance is not difficult in 4e. A square is a square, diagonal or not, occupied or not, it's still there.  Counting movement or determining the affected area of a burst requires you to go around obstacles, counting distance does not.  There are oddities in this that result from eliminating the 1.5 square diagonal of 3e.  One of them is that going around a barrier oriented perpendicular to your movement along a row or column of squares is free if you start and end far enough back from the barrier - but, if the barrier is perpendicular to a diagonal path of movement, going around it always takes more movement.  Zig-zag charges are an artifact of the same simplification, /if/ you interpret 'directly' as 'by the shortest distance' as opposed to 'in a straight line.'  IRL, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.  In 4e, the shortest distance between two squares is a straight line along a diagonal, or any path within a 90-degree angle and back again of a straight line along a row or column.  If you want to get silly, you can also protest that only movement along a row, column or diagonal is movement in a straight line, since anything else only /aproximates/ straight-line movement.It's just one instance among many where 4e's reality check bounces.</blockquote>