Kwalish Kid
Explorer
I don't think any DM has to go that far. I suspect that there will be very few of these contrived scenarios that actually come into play.Kordeth said:
Diagonal wonkiness scenarios
- Thread starter Kobu
- Start date
Goobermunch
Explorer
_sheepy_ said:
You may have to draw your own map, but you don't need to draw your own battlemat!
http://www.chessex.com/mats/Battlemats_MegamatsReversible.htm
And this should make drawing the maps easier!
http://incompetech.com/graphpaper/hexagonal/
--G
Bagpuss said:
You do know that Star Wars 2-2-2 diagonals have exactly the same problem as 4E 1-1-1 diagonals, just rotated 45 degrees?
The 4E system allows you to circumvent an obstacle at no cost if it's orthogonal to you, but not if it's diagonal. The Star Wars system allows you to circumvent an obstacle at no cost if it's diagonal to you, but not if it's orthogonal. Six of one, half a dozen of the other... but Star Wars diagonals are slightly more complicated since you have to remember to count them as 2.
Therefore, I contend that regardless of the relative merits of 1-2-1 and 1-1-1, the Saga Edition system is strictly worse than the 4E system.
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Dragonblade
Adventurer
I was kind of on the fence about 1-2-1 vs. 1-1-1 movement before I did my playtest of 4e last weekend. I found it made a dramatic difference in play.
It made movement much faster for one thing. I just started moving and BAM! I was done. I didn't have to try to remember if moving diagonally was my second diagonal or my third or what. I just moved. Score 1 for WotC.
Only one wonky movement scenario came into play during the whole session, when a player moved around some caltrops I had on the ground without movement being affected. Score 1 for 1-2-1 traditionalists.
But overall, 4e movement just felt more dynamic. As strange as it sounds, not having to treat diagonals in any special way actually made the game feel more cinematic and LESS wargamey. I didn't expect this at all. It really became noticeable when I went back to 3.5 movement rules later that night for my Pathfinder game. It suddenly felt like all my monsters were wading through molasses, or were wearing ankle weights. The game felt much less cinematic and more like I was playing some sort of tactical wargame.
I expected 4e movement to feel more gamist. But the opposite was true. At least for me. I think it has to do with the fact that counting squares in 4e required almost no mental effort. You just moved. Beyond counting squares, no mental effort was required. You could pretty much move on auto-pilot. As a DM, this freed up my brain and allowed me to think ahead about other tactics, it also allowed me to describe and narrate the action while moving the monsters.
In 3.5, movement requires your brain to track three things simultaneously: feet to square translation, total squares moved, and total diagonals moved translated back to squares. Now, this doesn't require any strenous effort or anything but it is distracting enough that when I move I have to concentrate on movement. I can't narrate the action. I can't think ahead to the next monster until I'm done with the current one, etc.
If you can, more power to you. But I'm not good at multi-tasking. For example, I can't really talk to my wife while driving (much to her annoyance).
So for me, its point and match for WotC. I will use 4e movement as written and I think my game will be better for it.
It made movement much faster for one thing. I just started moving and BAM! I was done. I didn't have to try to remember if moving diagonally was my second diagonal or my third or what. I just moved. Score 1 for WotC.
Only one wonky movement scenario came into play during the whole session, when a player moved around some caltrops I had on the ground without movement being affected. Score 1 for 1-2-1 traditionalists.
But overall, 4e movement just felt more dynamic. As strange as it sounds, not having to treat diagonals in any special way actually made the game feel more cinematic and LESS wargamey. I didn't expect this at all. It really became noticeable when I went back to 3.5 movement rules later that night for my Pathfinder game. It suddenly felt like all my monsters were wading through molasses, or were wearing ankle weights. The game felt much less cinematic and more like I was playing some sort of tactical wargame.
I expected 4e movement to feel more gamist. But the opposite was true. At least for me. I think it has to do with the fact that counting squares in 4e required almost no mental effort. You just moved. Beyond counting squares, no mental effort was required. You could pretty much move on auto-pilot. As a DM, this freed up my brain and allowed me to think ahead about other tactics, it also allowed me to describe and narrate the action while moving the monsters.
In 3.5, movement requires your brain to track three things simultaneously: feet to square translation, total squares moved, and total diagonals moved translated back to squares. Now, this doesn't require any strenous effort or anything but it is distracting enough that when I move I have to concentrate on movement. I can't narrate the action. I can't think ahead to the next monster until I'm done with the current one, etc.
If you can, more power to you. But I'm not good at multi-tasking. For example, I can't really talk to my wife while driving (much to her annoyance).
So for me, its point and match for WotC. I will use 4e movement as written and I think my game will be better for it.
Kordeth said:
Actually, this latter argument here is fallacious.
If the DM has to design a dungeon with specific wonky movement rules in mind, then that's a problem.
Also, it's not quite a simple thing to do like you claim. For example, put the cover (or difficult terrain or caltrops or whatever) on the diagonals is a simple approach. But, it forces cover that needs to be navigated around to be in the corner of rooms (unless the DM also rotates the grid 45 degrees or so off the diagonal which creates problems of its own for rectangular shaped rooms). If many rooms looked this way with difficult terrain or cover on major diagonals, players would also come up with tactics to handle this and the utility of this approach would diminish for the DM.
Having to even think about this, let alone design dungeons with this in mine, is problematic for many DMs. It forces them to design a dungeon based on the movement rules, not on the scenario and details the DM wants to present.
Kwalish Kid
Explorer
Phlogiston is a great moment in the history of chemistry. It arose from the discovery of gases, it had practical applications, and it had excellent qualitative and quantitative experimental support from a variety of independent sources. It just happened to be based on almost the exact opposite of what was going on.hong said:
The departures of the phlogiston theory from physical results were hidden by the techniques used by chemists of the day, so discovering the problems of the theory required some exceptional work. I suspect that the departure of the 1-1-1 diagonal system from optimal gaming will similarly be hidden from all but exceptional circumstances.
WhatGravitas
Explorer
That's totally not 'Phlogiston' - it's totally the luminiferous aether!hong said:
"Driving Michelson crazy", LT.
Kwalish Kid
Explorer
You are so right. I'm going to assume that characters shorten when they don't move on the diagonal.Lord Tirian said:
"Loving Lorentz", KK.
