Diagonal wonkiness scenarios

[Wolfspider]

Personally, I spend far too much of my time thinking about whether dragonborn females have breasts to worry about this kind of thing.

You, too, eh?

 

[_sheepy_]

That's why I quite love the hex grid variant in UA. No more question about diagonals. Easy burst and cones. You will have to draw your own map, though, but then I have always use grid papers instead of tiles.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

The second one does seem like something that would bite the DM from time to time. He'd always have to check to make sure that hazards were shaped such that avoiding them had a cost. Not something that'll come up every day, to be sure, but something that would be annoying when it does happen.

I think the most common real play annoyances will be as you suggest. The non-big Walls and Stinking Clouds will sometimes be walked around at zero net cost.

 

[Will]

re: 'but you can organize the map to prevent these strangenesses'

... The last thing I really need, as a GM, is to be sitting there figuring out how to bend/fold/mutilate a map to prevent the gamesystem from doing stupid things.

 

[Henry]

I was playing with my battlemat last weekend (no euphamism's please!) and have to begrudgingly admit... that it really won't make that much difference. How many times in a game does an all-diagonal move come up? How many times can that all diagonal move still get you where you want to go? I really can't see any way that it would matter in more than once or twice in a session. All the cases above, with the one exception of the poisonous plant one, really don't represent game situations that come up in any frequency.

 

[Kordeth]

I was playing with my battlemat last weekend (no euphamism's please!) and have to begrudgingly admit... that it really won't make that much difference. How many times in a game does an all-diagonal move come up? How many times can that all diagonal move still get you where you want to go? I really can't see any way that it would matter in more than once or twice in a session. All the cases above, with the one exception of the poisonous plant one, really don't represent game situations that come up in any frequency.

This whole diagonal movement thing reminds me a lot of the hue and cry when mystic theurge was revealed as a prestige class in the 3.5 DMG. The internets were full of hubbub over how badly the class would break the game, positing all sorts of wacky scenarios to prove how uber it was...

...and then people put it in their home games and sort of went "oh. This isn't that bad at all, is it?"

I for one expect much the same reaction come July or so.

 

[brehobit]

I was playing with my battlemat last weekend (no euphamism's please!) and have to begrudgingly admit... that it really won't make that much difference. How many times in a game does an all-diagonal move come up? How many times can that all diagonal move still get you where you want to go? I really can't see any way that it would matter in more than once or twice in a session. All the cases above, with the one exception of the poisonous plant one, really don't represent game situations that come up in any frequency.

Just ran a quick bit of a module (second son, posted here) to try out 4e stuff with friends. It actually came up three times in three encounters and made a difference. (1 in the first, 2 in the third). Nothing earth shattering, but the some things were a lot easier to get into range with.

I think the "firesquare" is the most wonky, and I can live with it.

 

[fnwc]

This whole diagonal movement thing reminds me a lot of the hue and cry when mystic theurge was revealed as a prestige class in the 3.5 DMG. [snip] ...and then people put it in their home games and sort of went "oh. This isn't that bad at all, is it?"

It's actually worse than not that bad. Compared to a straight wizard/cleric/druid, the Mystic Theurge is bad.

Edit: Of course, there are abuses when Mystic Theurge is combined with Ur-Priest and a liberal interpretation of the RAW.

 

[Nytmare]

All of these scenarios however are problems of the people involved thinking that the battle map is an exact representation of real time and real space. This is no longer the case.

A DM can get around of some of these by thinking about how players might use diagonals to great effect, but frankly I would rather not have to consider that for every map I write up.

All of these scenarios involve the same exact amount of DM foresight as long as the DM stops thinking in feet and starts thinking in squares.

 

[jdeyonke]

After getting to play 4E this weekend, I would say any "wonkiness" involved in the movement changes is outweighed by the ease of the 1:1. It was nice not seeing the constant 5, 10, 20, 25, 30... shoot, where was I of 3.5. When playing the Wizard it was nice being able to almost instantly figure the spell range.

Remember, the monsters get any of the same advantages with the 1:1 with their movements, spells and ranged attacks, too.