Has Anyone Tried 4E Combats on a Hex Grid?

[Pbartender]

...and how did it work out?

I was thinking of playing around with it.

 

[Peraion Graufalke]

Some guys on the Gleemax boards tried it:
1 inch Square grids VS 1 inch Hex grids - Wizards Community

 

[Crothian]

Yes, I think it works just fine. There are plenty of hex based templates for area of effect out there.

 

[Intense_Interest]

I've used it as a campaign-specific trope; "Bag Worlds" or combat in places that is bigger on the inside than they are on the outside occur on the hex grid because of the weird non-euclidean geometry present in the area.

So far, it's been used as an interesting combat curve-ball in a campaign. The strangeness of the combat isn't a game-stopper, save for Bursts being "play to fit". I've played around that by using more solos/elites during the encounters matched with some lower-level lurkers/minions so that burst attacks don't feel off-kilter when the Sorcerer tries to drop 5 skirmishers at once.

However I haven't made a try at being a strictly grid combat campaign, and don't know how that would work out.

 

[the Jester]

It does slightly change tactics because of the fact that you can only get six medium creatures to dogpile one medium enemy. But overall, I haven't had any issues with it at all.

 

[malraux]

I tried it briefly, and it seemed to work ok. We kinda winged the rules, but it wouldn't be too hard to systemize them. Overall though I think 4e dropped the main advantage of hexes by making it easy to count movement.

 

[Fifth Element]

I've used hexes a fair bit. One of my players much prefers it, because it produces roundish fireballs, and the 1-1-1 movement makes much more sense. Helps his suspension of disbelief, essentially.

One issue is working out which hexes a larger-than-medium creature occupies, but that's not really a big deal.

 

[Intense_Interest]

One issue is working out which hexes a larger-than-medium creature occupies, but that's not really a big deal.

Let me just C&P off my house-rule folder- odd house rules italizied:

2 hex "line"
Centuars/horses, "long not tall" Large monsters without reach
3 hex "triangle"
Ogre/Troll "fat bigguns" Large monsters with some reach
3+ hex "line"
Long snake creatures with limited reach, can at-will shift as a minor within its own space without provoking any OAs to change its footprint (avoids stupid "I attack the tail for 20 damage at no risk to me" moments)
4 hex "diamond"
Huge horses / quadrapeds, can at-will shift without provoking any OAs as a minor to pivot off a "foot" (two feet, head/tail)
5 hex "trapazoid"
not used yet
6 hex "parallelogram"
Really tall Large/Huge creatures, the 2-hex lines of the short parallel are the "feet", free movement for Short creatures in the "crotch tunnel"
7 hex "circle"
Huge creatures with 2-square reach
8-18 hex "weirdos"
not used yet
19 hex "circle"
Gargantuan creatures with 3-square reach

 

[cmbarona]

I've used it as a campaign-specific trope; "Bag Worlds" or combat in places that is bigger on the inside than they are on the outside occur on the hex grid because of the weird non-euclidean geometry present in the area.

Wow, that's... an awesome idea. I'll have to give that a shot some time. I'm sure it will be quite the curveball when I tell the PCs to take their stuff off the battlemat so I can flip it over.

 

[Dausuul]

Tried it, found it too distracting trying to track movement of Large and larger creatures. Since I find battlemat play too distracting to begin with, that was a deal-breaker for me. I tried using hexes for outdoors/natural environments and squares for indoors, but these days I just use squares for everything.

If you can deal with Large creature movement, though, everything else works fine.