D&D 5E How I ran combat in AD&D - doable in 5e?

[Neonchameleon]

Well I, for one, have never played in a D&D game using miniatures or grids. To me, they aren't necessary as long as the DM is descriptive enough.

4e is the only edition of D&D that I consider actively improved by the grid. This is not because the rules measure the distance in squares (or inches) but because there is a lot of forced movement and a very kinaesthetic feel to the combat. If you put a pit twenty feet from the bad guy in 4e it is entirely likely three PCs will put together a spur of the moment plan and team up to force the main bad guy into his own pit. Such teamwork and combinations work much, much better with a grid where you can see how everyone's position relates to everyone else's. If you can't easily force people around, thus taking advantage of anything in any corner of the room and interacting with any large part of the environment you don't get much out of the battlemap.

 

[underfoot007ct]

When I DM-ed AD&D we didn't do combat with miniatures, usually either just a description or a really quick pencil drawing. I ran with facing, you could move to stop people from moving past you and all that fun stuff. It was more of a simulation than the tactical board game 4e is. A typical example would be if you played a Thief. You couldn't get behind somebody that where aware of you, they would just move back and/or turn.

One of the primary design goals of D&D5eNext is to make the grid & minis totally optional. Also to support many play styles.

 

[Mattachine]

I often played AD&D with minis and a grid (it was intended that way), and I sometimes played 3e and 4e without a grid.

Both worked out just fine.

 

[Rhenny]

In the old days, we always used "theater of the mind" for everything (1e and Advanced D&D). With 3.0/3.5 we started to dabble into minis and mixed it up. With 4e we only used grid and minis/tokens. It was refreshing to play D&DNext in our minds. My group had forgotten how evocative mere description could be.

With "theater of the mind" combats, the feeling of combat and the way the DM and player describes the scene/action has to overshadow or eliminate attention to really small details and rules or it gets bogged down and confusing.

For that reason, I like eliminating OAs in theater of the mind. Instead, I replace them with skill contests to determine the outcome of any proposed action. This way, facing and postioning are not as important. For example, if the fighter is engaged with two orcs, but he wants to get to the orc leader behind them. I ask the fighter player to explain what he will do to get there. The fighter might say, "I'm holding up my shield and pushing through the two orcs." Then I tell him to make a strength check. I quickly roll a die for the orcs or I set a DC based on how likely I believe this maneuver should succeed (DC 13 maybe for these orcs). If the fighter succeeds he gets through. If he fails, the orcs keep him from moving toward the leader. Most of these checks are part of a move action unless they include an attempt to directly injure, trip, grapple, etc.

By doing this, we don't necessarily need to know exactly where everyone is on a grid.

This is the "improvising" mentioned in the rules.

I would love for the next draft (or at least the final draft) of D&DNext to really flesh out more examples for improvising actions in combat. I'm a little worried that Combat Superiority may be limiting what could be done as a PC in any given round although I really like how it gives fighters some extra muscle.

 

[Blackbrrd]

Seeing how many of you would be willing to try it out, or are playing D&D this way, I think I will give it a go. I liked the way [MENTION=18333]Neechen[/MENTION] described how you got through the orc chieftains bodyguards. A much better approach than the 4e "go around" tactic that would probably have been used.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

When I DM-ed AD&D we didn't do combat with miniatures, usually either just a description or a really quick pencil drawing. I ran with facing, you could move to stop people from moving past you and all that fun stuff. It was more of a simulation than the tactical board game 4e is. A typical example would be if you played a Thief. You couldn't get behind somebody that where aware of you, they would just move back and/or turn.

I started with Holmes basic using miniatures and a grid in 1976. Began the foray into AD&D with the release of the Monster Manual in 1977 still using minis and a grid. AD&D DMG specifically mention miniatures and a grid as aids to play for the very purpose of eliminating ambiguity in combat. In fact, I can probably count on the fingers of less than a full hand the number of times I've played D&D (any version) without miniatures and grid. It was a number of years before I became aware that people beyond our gaming group frequently felt the game was supposed to be played without them. Even if we hadn't started with them already available for our use we'd have made up something like them for that purpose.

Combat does get a lot more free-form and throwing a fireball when people where in melee range was not something you did with a light heart.

It was where I came from. Oh, nobody TRIED to burn their friends with fireballs, but it happened a lot.

I am starting to wonder if it would be doable to run it a bit more like that in 5e? Instead of running it on a grid, just do it free-form and use push-backs and similar tactics to actually get behind mobs.

I don't see use of miniatures and grid as needing to be constraints to otherwise "free-form" gameplay.

On the other hand, you describe what you are trying to do the same way you would describe it when role playing, instead of counting squares and doing small 5' pushes.

There is no practical difference to me between:
"He's blocking the passage preventing me from getting past? I shield bash him and run past. Do I need to roll or can I just do it?"
and,
"I can see that he's blocking the passage but I can also see there is room where I can push him aside. I use my shield bash ability, push him a square, and run to THIS square. I'll just take the AoO because doing all this will put me and the thief in flanking position."
except that one relies on DM judgement and fiat, and the other suggests already fixed rules for what would likely be a fairly common situation.

Would you play in a game without miniatures where most of the combat is just described in words and sketched quickly on a piece of paper?

I have absolutely no reason to believe that it would be a superior approach to the game, yet have no issue with others doing so. But writing the rules that way leaves A LOT of people out in the cold who prefer NOT to play the game that way.

- Where simulation takes a front seat to gamist approaches?

When it comes to debate of, or even mere use of G/S/N terminology my eyes glaze over and make me want to just go watch TV instead of play D&D.

 

[john112364]

In our play test we tend to mix it up a bit. Some of it is grid less (especially small random or throw away encounters) and some is with the grid. The grid is mainly because for a large fight I like to know where everyone is during the fight and I have trouble visualizing positions in my head. That's a shortcoming of mine not the game btw. I have found 5e work fine either way.

 

[Steely_Dan]

Ideally 5th Ed will support TotM, minis, and everything in between (piece of graph paper with pencil marks to show positions, or a plastic dinosaur on the table and a measuring tape, etc).

I like to mix it up.

 

[Blackwarder]

In answer to the OP, you can at 5e with theater of mind, if your group lean toward this than you shouldn't have any problem doing so in the current playtest rules.

Warder

 

[the Jester]

It works fine; probably 90% of my playtesting has been through Theater of the Mind rather than on a grid.