D&D General D&D Combat is fictionless

[Maxperson]

You don’t roll initiative until the start of combat. If there’s still an opportunity for a fight not to pan out, then it isn’t time to roll initiative yet.

Sure it is. You don't know if the words which can be spoken as part of your action for the round will pan out or not. If you're going to talk without rolling initiative and they are going to fight, you've given them a free attack on you.

Combat can start and stop without anyone ever attacking.

 

[Charlaquin]

Sure it is. You don't know if the words which can be spoken as part of your action for the round will pan out or not. If you're going to talk without rolling initiative and they are going to fight, you've given them a free attack on you.

No they won’t, because when they try to attack, initiative will be rolled, which they might win or lose.

Combat can start and stop without anyone ever attacking.

ಠ_ಠ​

 

[Jack Daniel]

Everything you've described as far as I can tell is the players interacting with the dungeon or the DM using checks to generate fictional details on the fly. That's not the kind of stuff I'm having issues with.

Then I'm still unclear on what your actual problem is. Is it the fact that D&D combat is a skirmish mini-game that doesn't require deference to external fiction to play out? (If so, I'm really having trouble with the distinction between round-based combat and turn-based dungeon exploration, which also requires no such deference.) Or is it the inherent difficulty of modeling simultaneous action within a round-based, turn-taking structure?

While I do agree that the term is pretentious as hell, I'd like to add that the whole point of Theater of the Mind is that you don't need to know the precise positions of everything in the fight. That's not a bug, it's a feature.

In my games, I have come to appreciate the fact that a DM doesn't really need to stick to grid or TotM exclusively. I'm working with a good mix of both, depending on the situation.

And anyone who played D&D on the road travelling would know that has been available since 1e till now you simply have to be willing to approximate... you did not need to get out your geometry book when the wizard of AD&D went to cast their flex shaped fire ball that conformed to the space. I did see people do that though it was a self limiting behavior.

I've been racking my brains, trying to remember what combats were actually like back before 3e got me in the habit of using grids and minis. And you know what? Thinking back to my original 0e/1e/2e days, we didn't "approximate." We didn't do anything that could aptly be called "theater of the mind." How we actually played out combats back then if we weren't using minis and a grid was: roll initiative, ignore movement, ignore distance, players attack and throw spells, monsters attack and throw special abilities, back and forth, until things (usually monsters) died. It was Final Fantasy or Dragon Warrior combat rather than Shining Force or Fire Emblem combat, and that was the only difference.

You don’t roll initiative until the start of combat. If there’s still an opportunity for a fight not to pan out, then it isn’t time to roll initiative yet.

(This is only true of the WotC editions. TSR D&D has encounter initiative as well as combat initiative.)

 

[Lyxen]

Then I'm still unclear on what your actual problem is. Is it the fact that D&D combat is a skirmish mini-game that doesn't require deference to external fiction to play out?

Just because you play it that way does not mean that it can only be played that way.

 

[Lyxen]

While I do agree that the term is pretentious as hell, I'd like to add that the whole point of Theater of the Mind is that you don't need to know the precise positions of everything in the fight. That's not a bug, it's a feature.

In my games, I have come to appreciate the fact that a DM doesn't really need to stick to grid or TotM exclusively. I'm working with a good mix of both, depending on the situation.

And it's strange that this looks like the only two possibilities. We never use a grid, but we sometimes use a map, sometimes to a scale (and this varies widely), sometimes just conceptual so that people who roughly in which area they are compared to the others.

 

[Charlaquin]

And it's strange that this looks like the only two possibilities. We never use a grid, but we sometimes use a map, sometimes to a scale (and this varies widely), sometimes just conceptual so that people who roughly in which area they are compared to the others.

Yep, I think TotM vs TV is a false dichotomy. Visual aids are a tool, to be used when they’ll be useful and not used when they aren’t. And there’s a whole spectrum of visual aids that can be used, depending on the needs of the specific combat.

 

[Jack Daniel]

Just because you play it that way does not mean that it can only be played that way.

Exsqueeze me? What are you on about?

Pointing out that a D&D combat can in principle be played out in a vacuum (just like a chess match or a tabletop minis skirmish game) is not by any means the same thing as claiming D&D combat must always work that way.

Where, precisely, do you imagine that I claimed to "play it that way" myself? Or said anything remotely like "it can only be played that way"?

 

[Lyxen]

Exsqueeze me? What are you on about?

Pointing out that a D&D combat can in principle be played out in a vacuum (just like a chess match or a tabletop minis skirmish game) is not by any means the same thing as claiming D&D combat must always work that way.

Where, precisely, do you imagine that I claimed to "play it that way" myself? Or said anything remotely like "it can only be played that way"?

Well, when you say " Is it the fact that D&D combat is a skirmish mini-game that doesn't require deference to external fiction to play out?" It seems to imply really strongly that you consider it that way (as a "skirmish mini-game that doesn't require deference to external fiction to play out"), and that therefore you play it that way.

 

[Jack Daniel]

Well, when you say " Is it the fact that D&D combat is a skirmish mini-game that doesn't require deference to external fiction to play out?" It seems to imply really strongly that you consider it that way (as a "skirmish mini-game that doesn't require deference to external fiction to play out"), and that therefore you play it that way.

Well that's awfully presumptive of you.

 

[Nefermandias]

I have to wonder.

When the player characters enter one of my dungeons, it's Turn One, which lasts for ten minutes. The party can move their exploration speed (usually 90 feet, because there's almost always at least one lightly encumbered character in the group), or each character can take an action, like searching or listening or interacting with some piece of the dungeon. On Turn Six, when the party has been in the dungeon for nearly an hour, the party needs to rest or else face mounting exhaustion penalties; also that's when torches that were lit on Turn One are due to go out. (Lanterns with a full charge of oil, of course, get twenty-four turns before they need to be refilled and relit.)

If the party encounters monsters, the very first thing checked is surprise — 2-in-6 chance that the party is surprised, probably no chance that the monsters are surprised, because they can see the party's light — followed by encounter initiative, and if the monsters win the initiative, a reaction roll (which, since none of the PCs have had a chance to speak up yet, goes unmodified by anybody's Charisma) to determine their initial disposition.

To what extent is the dungeon "fictionless" (according to whomever is making this arbitrary judgment)?

To be fair, those are Moldvay Basic rules and this thread is about 5e D&D. Nobody uses torches in 5e.