Combat in your game

[jmucchiello]

I like the way you think. Eyrx. D&D never was chess.

Um, 33 years ago there was game called Chainmail. It was a tactical miniatures game with rules for fantastic creatures. About 3 years later the guys who played that a lot released this little box set game where you changed the miniature scale from 1 to 10 or 1 to 20 to 1 to 1. These miniature represented characters on the tactical board, measured in inches with a ruler. One cool thing they did was change the terrain from wide rolling hills to narrow dungeon corridors. Much cooler. That game was called Dungeons and Dragons and it was ALWAYS chess (without the grid). D&D was always a tactical game, it was always a minis game. It was 2e that got away from the miniatures roots of the game (until combat and tactics came out).

I've played most every version of D&D and I've always used minis to represent combat to the players. Whenever I play with folks who do it without minis I get frustrated and annoyed.


Oh, and this poll should be multiple choice.

 

[Sir Elton]

I've played most every version of D&D and I've always used minis to represent combat to the players. Whenever I play with folks who do it without minis I get frustrated and annoyed.

Oh, and this poll should be multiple choice.

Oh well, your loss.

 

[dren]

Aprox 90% of what we use are heroclix (I think) which one of the players brought so we could use. We have a few silver minis which are official WoTC, but neither I nor any of my players have the money to invest in proper minis. What we have serve us quite well, in that we know where everyone is in terms of combat strategy. Anything else, is, gravy.

Now, given an extra few hundred dollars...I would really like a beholder and a few other hundred minis from the standard set but thats unlikely to happen anytime soon.

 

[moticon]

I've always played with a grid and miniatures, even since the late '70's. We found it helped establish a clear visualization of what was happening and prevented alot of misunderstandings. Our games get pretty intense sometimes so that's very important!

I still like to use my metal mini's over the D&D mini's, but I have to admit I'm buying a lot of the mini's on Ebay and other places because:

1) They are cheap compared to metal ones. (5 ghouls for $1.50 is great compared to metal of $3 each).
2) I don't have time paint any more unless there's a special project (the large Red plastic doesn't compare to the Large Red Metal one!)
3) I don't worry so much about them getting chipped and damaged (Storage is easier).

The metal ones now are used for NPC's, PC's, and unique creatures.

Moticon

 

[Desdichado]

We use a wet erase battlemap, a few minis, and whatever counters or tokens are handy (which often happen to be spare dice.) I'm not sure if I have a position on whether or not this type of graphical combat hinders imagination or not; certainly it encourages players to do cool things within the rules, as ForceUser says, but it seems to discourage out of the box, weirdo swashbuckling original actions, which is a shame.

 

[Doctor Bomb]

I disagree. The grid is unequivocal clarity necessary for fair play. Plus it's more fun to see it.

Well, that's true for most people, but we tried that in my campaign (using a grid) and not only did it slow down combat because everyone started counting the squares, but it limited the spellcasters, because they were insistent on waiting until they could get three or more enemies in the area of effect of their spells.
And of course, the enemy isn't going to do that on purpose, when they can see a grid laid out at their feet.

So, that lasted two encounters.

The rest of the time, we use tokens or minis to represent PCs and other creatures, and usually a large piece of white paper or a whiteboard to draw the surroundings, but with no grid.
Can you really tell if the bad guy is 60 feet or 70 feet away?
Who knows, charge him and see if you can gut him, or drop a spell on him and see how many of his allies you can burn.
Speeds things up if you use cut-out templates for spells, you can literally drop a fireball on them and see who needs to make a save.
As far as flanking goes, if the line between the counters goes through an enemy counter, he's flanked. If not, he's not.
Same rules apply to PC's, NPC's, and monsters, so it's as fair as it gets.

 

[Pants]

If your DM has a head for keeping this stuff straight, you do well. If he doesn't, it may seem like the combat is simpler and easier to you, but to the DM I almost guarantee that he's got no frigging idea what's going on, and is being constantly amazed that you accept the stuff that he's making up.

That's what used to happen with me. I had a hard time keeping the locations of opponents and PC's straight. Even with quickly drawn paper maps it was hard. Then again, I was initially against buying a battlemap and using miniatures, but now, I'm all for them.

However, I will concede that if I ever play under a DM who can keep most everything straight without one, I won't raise a fuss. I also think that the use of a battlemap somewhat inhibits the 'feel' of cinematic combat. So it's not perfect.

 

[RFisher]

My group is probably 50/50 on all-verbal combats v. battlemat combats.

When the battlemat comes out, we use a combination of paper minis, tokens, & various other minis. (None of us have any of the WotC minis.)

For MSH we used mostly dice & free placement (no battlemat).

 

[Piratecat]

Merric, you should have made the poll multiple choice.

Whenever possible, we use only verbal descriptions. The rest of the time we use a battlemap (actually giant 1" graph paper flip charts) and a odd mix of Fiery Dragon counters, painted metal miniatures, unpainted metal miniatures, painted WotC plastic miniatures, coins, glass counters, dice, and large plastic figurines from PlaySchool or Spawn or some other source. It's a bit odd, but it works well for us.

 

[Cranus]

I voted miniatures mainly because the two D&D games I play in use them. Otherwise, I generelly use verbal descriptions. However, its dawned on me that the system is heavily dependent on the use of some form of "mini's".