Combat in your game

[Mystery Man]

Then the D&D Miniatures came, and because they were cheap*, durable and portable, I started using them... now almost all of my combats use miniatures.

Cheers!

From a visual standpoint its great for scale. Just how big is that huge red dragon or cloud giant compared to your human fighter? If you can actually see it, it adds to the psychological impact that your verbal description is expressing.

Once upon a time, not that long ago, I used to describe almost all my combats verbally, not using miniatures at all.

If its really big, or I'm really lazy and don't want to get up out of my chair, or its going to be really quick, I still go this route. It's not unheard of to go an entire night without mini's. I find this happening more often as the players increase in level.

 

[Stockdale]

I have used minis in almost all the games I've played in 3e; I played an AU game without minis and found the combat diffcult to follow. Prior to 3e, we used graphic paper and pencil marks to indicate where PCs, monsters, and objects were located.

I disagree with the position that the use of mini's detract from the game . I find that their use makes combat run more efficently by avoiding the "where am I? where is he?" questions. Becuase the use of a battelmat and minis solidly lays out the terrain and positions of the parties, there is a better degree of realism (if fantasy combat can be consider "real" in any sense) than what I have experienced in verbal only combat situatations. However, its not the use of battlemat and minis that make this version more of a tactical game than other versions, its the 3.xe rules themselves.

I believe this comment applies equally well to JDyal's criticism. It's not the battlemap and mini's that defeat the " out of the box, weirdo swashbuckling original actions." Rather its the rule system itself. Where in earlier versions of D&D rules for certain actions were unclear (and further muddied in verbal games) thus permitting crazier actions to be adjudicated by the DM, 3.xe provided a degree of clarity through feat selection and combat actions.

 

[MerricB]

I have a feeling that the greater the complexity of the combat system, the harder it is to run swashbuckling combat.

I think the 3E system is pretty simple, actually... but it may be that you need to play a game like Lace and Steel to really get the feeling.

(Now, Lace and Steel had an inspired combat system...)

Cheers!

 

[maddman75]

Mostly description. My games are heavily role play oriented, with play taking place all over the host's house. The table is for the "big fights" where I use some 9"x11" gridded whiteboards I got from dragonscale counters. Advantage of these is I can pre-draw terrain. For minis I use metal, plastic, dice, or just a mark on the board, whatever is most expedient.

Then the living room is where most of the action takes place, where everyone is more relaxed and can role-play easily. Dice are only rarely rolled, so generally someone will have a d20 and their character sheet. I think I need clipboards.

The porch is where we go to smoke, and its a handy spot for taking someone aside privately. That's how things went last time as our group really seemed to gel, me running my fool head off between groups of players. I plan to keep doing things this way!

As for fighters and their feats - well it depends on how you DM. I actively try to let the players to their thing, and if your fighter puts a bunch of feats into cleave or combat reflexes I'll be sure to let you get those in. But like I said for the big fights we do have the table.

 

[MerricB]

When I last voted on this subject, I was in the "description" area, but that's changed.

Here are some previous related topics:

http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=73982
http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=67677

Cheers!

 

[Wombat]

I(Now, Lace and Steel had an inspired combat system...)

Ooooo! A lovely game, that!

 

[MerricB]

Ooooo! A lovely game, that!

I played in a game run by one of the designers, as I recall. Fun game, but terribly expensive to buy... which is why I don't have it. (I was also a near-penniless student...)

Cheers!

 

[Aaron L]

We use a peice of graph paper for teh DM to quickly map the combat on, and the rest is in all of our heads.