imagination vs battlemat

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

Sometimes I use a battlemat...sometimes I don't.

For a long time, I didn't. Just did combats without any visual reference and there was no problem with spell range, attacks of opportunity, etc. But now..after getting hooked on the D&D Minis, I've started using a battlemat in combat. Still fun, takes nothing away.

 

[Bloodstone Press]

The problem I had with 2e is that there was constant misunderstanding about where everyone was.

I agree. Once we started to use a battlemat for combat, the encounters were resolved a lot better. The biggest problem we had in 2e was when a PC would fall and another PC would always be right there to help him out. After we started using a battlemat we could see that it might take 2-3 rounds to get to the fallen comrad and doing so might provoke attacks of oppertunity.

 

[nopantsyet]

Only in combat, always in combat.

Earlier combat rules were more complicated in terms of basic mechanics (e.g., THAC0), that it was often played like a kids soccer game: everybody is considered in reach of the ball. Having cleaned up the basic mechanics, 3E gave us more position-based rules (e.g., AoO), which I like. It allows combat to be more tactical--the combat analog of roleplaying. That is, requiring the players to think rather than just roll dice. I cannot imagine an any easy or fair way to adjudicate that without some way of tracking position; a battlemap plus minis/counters/stones/coins/whatever is a good enough lingua franca as far as I'm conerned.

 

[BiggusGeekus]

See, I don't really get that though. In 2e a thief had to be behind someone who wasn't expecting an attack to backstab. In 3e a rogue has to be attacking someone who is denied a dexterity bonus to sneak attack. The 3e restrictions seem broader.

AoO I'll give you. But why not just remove AoO from the game and give classes who gain special AoO abilities a few extra hit points to comepensate? Maybe treat each AoO ability as a "toughness" feat or something like that.

I dunno. I certainly think D&D should have a "mapless" pamphlet or sourcebook or something. They should also have a stripped down boxed set with half the classes removed and character cards that mandate advancement progress, but that's just me.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

Aside from a few sessions spread over 20 years, I've never played D&D without mini's, usually with some sort of battlemat but occasionally by just eyeballing distances. I really like it that way. I don't think those occasions where their use was precluded were any better from an RP standpoint, and they were a lot worse in terms of confusion.

For the most part, though, my players don't count out squares in the middle of combat for optimal spell placement, and are more than willing to incur AoOs they could avoid if they felt the situation warranted it. For example, in one game the barbarian wanted to get to the wizard before he could cast. He could have skipped a little sideways and avoided attacks from the wizard's minions, but the player accepted the fact that the character wasn't paying attention to such things because he was so focused on reaching the wizard.

We actually enjoy the precision, I think. Knowing that your charge didn't fall 5' short just because the DM said so, or the occasional 'Oops' when casting a fireball just enhances the experience.

 

[Derren]

Why messing with the game system and remove a very important ability only to be able to play mapless when you have one availiable?

What exactly takes a map away when you use it for combat only? Characters not be able to do crazy stunts? Its that what you mean by "distraction from roleplaying"?

Just imagenig may be fine when you have only one enemy, but as soon as there are more you need imo a representation of the combat. Without it it turns into a simple dice rolling without any tactical moves.

And be honest, how often did you hear sentences like "I shoot the fireball so that I don't hit my comerades" when playing without map? At least I prefer square counting over such sentences.

 

[The_Gneech]

I've played both ways; I haven't yet been in a situation where the map made everybody turn off their character and just start moving pieces around the board. But for that matter, the group I play with adds roleplaying elements to Monopoly, so perhaps I'm unusually blessed in that regard.

See also the thread that I suspect inspired the poll for details.

-The Gneech

 

[Arnwyn]

We've used battlemats and minis even in previous editions. So, my answer is "all the time".

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

My experience is that, every single time players don't use a mat and decide to rely "on their imagination" it turns out that every player has a slightly different imagination from the DM and from every other player.

For instance, once my party of 5th level adventurers was facing two specters. The DM despite having our miniatures in a marching order on the battlemap decided that it was too much work to draw out the room and put two tokens on the board for spectres and so decided to run it without miniatures. Sure enough, in round one, both specters manage to fly all the way through the party without provoking AoOs and drain levels from the archer who had thought he was out of range when he moved.

It was pretty consistently the same when we'd do combats without minis in 2e. "I move around behind him." "There's a wall in your way." "You didn't say anything about that." "Yes I did; so now that you've hidden behind the wall, what is the next person going to do." "Wait a minute, if I'd known that the wall was there, I would have just attacked instead of moving."

The reality is that battlemaps help to make sure that everyone has more or less the same picture of the battlefield in their imagination and, if the DM is willing to keep things moving (which is a necessity whether or not you use a battlemap), decrease the amount of time spent on each move rather than increasing it. With a battlemap, there's no need to ask "Is there enough room to tumble around the villain and get behind him?" "If I drop the zombie with my first swing is there another I can cleave into?" or "Can I step in and attack the ogre in fullplate without being next to the ogre in studded leather?"

The other thing that battlemaps are very good at is enabling the imagination of complex scenes. It's one thing to say, "the battle takes place on a swift, two masted vessel like the Interceptor from Pirates of the Carribean." That's enough to give players a vague idea of what the battlefield looks like. However, if you slap down a deck plan and put miniatures on it, that enables PCs to duck behind the mast and cast a cure spell from behind cover, jump onto the top of the main hatch to get a height advantage, and bull-rush foes off the side. All of that can be done without a map, of course, but the map resolves questions of what is possible ("is there a line I can move in to bull-rush the pirate off the deck?" or "is the pirate standing in an arc where I could swing the ship's boat into him?"). Seeing detail on the map (where far more detail can be taken in in a short amount of time than through verbal description) also suggests such manuevers. (Now, detail like that is probably easier to achieve with predrawn tiles than with battlemaps drawn in session, but I get the idea that this thread isn't calling for such fine distinctions).

 

[Ashrem Bayle]

I voted "other".

For my standard D&D campaign, we use my Tact-Tiles for all combat.

In Midnight, I try not to use them at all. I preffer Midnight to be 100% in our imaginations.