D&D 4E Grid-less 4e?

[Nebulous]

The minis for me are a full subset of the whole gaming hobby. I love painting, modding them, and coming up with creatures specific to an encounter. My enjoyment of the hobby would be lessened without that aspect.

But do i HAVE to have them? No. We played for years with scraps of paper and a pencil. In fact, our first venture into actual mini-dom featured a Jar Jar Binks lego figure as EVERY single villain, until i got so sick of his face i started buying real miniatures...and i haven't stopped since.

 

[mattdm]

We tried it for a session. It was one of our first 4E games, so that may have made things worse, but it really felt a bit like playing battleship.

I think it'd be next to impossible to pull off battles with more than a handful of foes. And even in the smaller ones, you'd definitely want to use a whiteboard or something to give a rough sketch of the area as you describe it. This will both give a quick overall impression of the layout and serve as a reference for the "now, who can I see, again?" questions.

 

[Wightbred]

I've run combats without grids against solos and found it works fine. Mind you we prefer the grids now.

Some links to threads on this I bookmarked previously below. Mearls advice is pretty solid.

Mearls post on this: http://www.enworld.org/forum/4112306-post25.html

Previous thread on this: http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-4th-edition-rules/222338-boardless-combat-rules.html
http://www.enworld.org/forum/4112306-post25.html

 

[Cwheeler]

I've run combats without grids against solos and found it works fine. Mind you we prefer the grids now.

Some links to threads on this I bookmarked previously below. Mearls advice is pretty solid.

Mearls post on this: http://www.enworld.org/forum/4112306-post25.html

Previous thread on this: http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-4th-edition-rules/222338-boardless-combat-rules.html

Theres a lot of great material in there. Time to experiment!

 

[vagabundo]

I just changed - last session - to running a lot of combats without mini's. I did it the same way I did 2e combats all in your imagination. I kept track in my head and discribed it to the players. Works for me and worked well last week, all the H1 goblins killed or Splugs Revenge using big dumb meat shields - as I now call it - without using the battlemat once.

 

[satin]

Prefer the grids and minis because I find it encourages people to make creative use of terrain and positioning.

Although against a solo I wouldn't mind running it with no grid.