Diagonal wonkiness scenarios

[KarinsDad]

You're far too generous in your definition of a free action.

Not for 4E he isn't. Many 3E move actions like opening or closing a door are free actions in 4E.

 

[KarinsDad]

No, the correct tactical choice, if he really wanted to avoid a fight, would be to run out of the room. The player guessed that the monster would only reach him after he got his turn. He guessed wrong.

That's a copout.

The wonkiness caused normal real world cause and effect to fail for the player. It's not the player's fault that his expectations on distance are thrown out the window by a silly non-intuitive rule.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

The 4E primer distributed at XP explicitly stated that a square is five feet.

 

[hong]

That's a copout.

No it isn't.

The wonkiness caused normal real world cause and effect to fail for the player. It's not the player's fault that his expectations on distance are thrown out the window by a silly non-intuitive rule.

If in 6 months time said player is still making the same mistake, then you can talk about the rule being silly and non-intuitive. Until then, it's a matter of unlearning tedious and unnecessary 3E rules.

 

[Nytmare]

Spell effects are measured in squares, not feet. Movement rates are in squares, not feet. "How big is this house?" "Oh, it's 18 square squares".

I don't think that this is quite right. Real world measurement will still exist outside of the battle map, but I think it gets replaced by the abstractions the moment the scenario stops paying attention.

 

[baberg]

The 4E primer distributed at XP explicitly stated that a square is five feet.

It also stated that movement along diagonals is 1-1-1 and that movement, range, etc. is calculated in squares, not feet.

So therefore, for me to move from one square to a diagonal square is 5 feet, because a square is 5 feet and I am moving one square. If a character is perfectly diagonal from me, and there are 5 diagonal squares between me and him, he is 25 feet away, or more accurately, 5 squares.

 

[KarinsDad]

Another poster in another thread mentioned offset squares.

Similar to hexes, they resolve most of the diagonal 1 1 1 issues with squares.

http://www.mojobob.com/roleplay/props/mapping.html

They also allow for easier 5 foot LCD rectangular rooms than hexes. And, firecubes are slightly more circular with them than with squares.

They're not perfect on diagonals (x diagonal squares are 1.12x in distance), but that's quite a bit better than the 1 1 1 rule (x diagonal squares are 1.41x in distance) and more intuitive for players.

 

[baberg]

I don't think that this is quite right. Real world measurement will still exist outside of the battle map, but I think it gets replaced by the abstractions the moment the scenario stops paying attention.

I see it the other way around. I think that, in the D&D 4th Edition world, everything is in squares until it becomes necessary for us to describe it to those of us existing in meatspace. I think the house is still 18 square squares, but when it comes time to describe it it's "30 feet by 15 feet" (or 6x3 in squares). But when the Lich jumps out of the closet to engage the party, the world will once again be in squares.

I do agree that when the battle map isn't in play, things will become much more abstract. "How far is the Blacksmith down this uneventful road?" "Oh, about a quarter mile on the right, you'll be there in 5 minutes" and the squares calculation will take a backseat to playing the game. But in the situations where it's necessary to know, "How far away am I from the ladder?" should be answered in squares, not feet.

 

[Rystil Arden]

You're still thinking in feet. Don't. Characters in 4th Edition D&D don't think, measure, or calculate in feet. They think, measure, and calculate in squares. They wouldn't say "Town X is 1200 miles away" they would say "Town X is 7000 squares away" (yes, I know the math is off, work with me here).

Spell effects are measured in squares, not feet. Movement rates are in squares, not feet. "How big is this house?" "Oh, it's 18 square squares".

It's counterintuitive to our everyday experience with linear distance, yes. But it is (I hope) internally consistent to the game world that WotC is creating. The characters in-world knowledge is not based on feet but on squares.

Nope. Sorry. I will not measure by the non-Euclidean square that isn't a square. You can't make me. I'm okay with measuring in feet, meters, cubits, or any other actual distance measure such that the diagonal requires 1.414 times as much movement (I included the last to cover someone saying 'You can measure in a glarbrinz, where a glarbrinz is just equal to a 4e square' after mistaking my distaste and thinking I just had a problem with the gamist term square, which I don't). If you did make me think in squares somehow (I'm not really sure how this is possible, but assuming you could), it is enough of a dealbreaker that I would stop playing. The dealbreaker is not even the 1-1-1-1-1 itself--I'd be okay playing with 1-1-1-1-1 if I absolutely had to, but forcing me to think in these squares and use it for my fluff is a dealbreaker for me. You won't be able to convince me otherwise because it's my opinion.

That's okay, though because I'm happy if playing that way works for your games, so I won't try to convince you to do it my way either. In fact, I would hope you wouldn't play 1-2-1-2-1 if it hurts your game in any noticable way. It just happens (and I know it's because of selection bias--I mean, when you've been at MIT the last five years, you get to play with a certain type of person) that every person I've ever gamed with in home games has never been noticably affected.

 

[Will]

Everything I see on the grid is an abstraction. An abstraction serves a purpose. When it no longer serves that purpose, it's not a good abstraction.

For me, and many others, a map and grid is a way to communicate what's going on in the world. There are certain simplifications made, such as quantizing movement into grid points. But for the most part, people have a general idea of how far things are from one another just by looking down.

The 1-1-1-1 thing means that the expectations people have from living in the real world are wrong in many cases. For short distances, single steps and so on? No big deal. But when circles become squares and similar effects crop up, the map becomes distanced from the world.

Four people in a circle shouldn't be equidistant from one another in anything like the real world.