Okay, here comes the heat.
Flexor the Mighty! said:
They main thing I HATE about a map is square counting. I DESPISE it when the Wizard counts off squares in between his turns and figures out how to perfectly place his AE spell to get the bad guys but amazingly avoid anyone in the party.
The thing I hate about square counting is how the Fighter counts off squares between his turns and figures out how to perfectly place his arrow shot to get the bad guy but amazingly avoids hitting anyone in the party who happens to be in between.
In a fluid moving battle there is no time for a Wizard to do something like that, and I don't like it when the players do something like that, but it's nearly impossible to avoid.
Oh to be sure. In a fluid, moving battle there is no time for ANYONE to do ANYTHING like that. :\ It is, in my considered opinion,
nonsense to assume that a wizard has absolutely no concept of distances (like a fighter with a missile weaapon does) and thus cannot cast a spell at an ACCURATE distance. The way magic works in D&D (the way it has always worked) is that unless the caster is interrupted while casting - in which case the spell fails ENTIRELY - the spell WILL take effect exactly when, where, and against whom the CASTER decides while still following the spell description. The spell either works exactly as cast or it fails entirely. All or nothing. Saving Throws are a LAST DITCH defense that victims are sometimes (but not always) granted to avoid or lessen the effects that otherwise WILL happen.
Nothing in D&D rules - not any version of the game, ever - has even remotely suggested that wizards should
not be allowed to be every bit as specific with spell range and placement as the player desires. Nothing that even remotely suggests that a spell CAN'T be placed where the wizard wants it, that it can't be positioned just as accurately as squeezing a bowshot across a chaotic battlefield at a single individual in a crowd, nor that it can't be done EVERY time just like the last. There's plenty in the rules to reinforce the idea that he can indeed do just that or why else would spell ranges be stated as "60'+10' per level" instead of "somewhere around 60'+10' per level", why area of effect would be stated as 15' radius rather than "At least 10' radius - but sometimes as much as 20' radius!" Why have there never been RULES for "being just a little off on targetting the area", or "underestimating the range", or advice on handling those annoying players who strangely seem to think their wizards WOULD try to place that 20' radius fireball to hit ALL the enemies and NONE of their friends (what presumption!)?
The only meaningful reason for directly incorporating miniatures and a grid into the 3E rules was to eliminate the endless, pointless fudging and arbitrary rulings about just that sort of thing. (Okay, it also helps sell miniatures.) In past versions those practices came with associated disagreements and misunderstandings. They arose from assuming that Wizards are all blind as proverbial bats with uncontrollable palsies and oblivious to even basic tactics (like ACCURATE placement) that could make the most of their limited resource of daily spells. That, despite effectively being defined as smarter than the average Barbarian who apparantly WOULD know well enough to place area-effects to maximize damage to bad-guys and minimize danger to friendlies. I happen to agree with said reasons for incorporating grids and accordingly EXPECT every PC - wizards included - to use them to full advantage CONSTANTLY, not just when it's inconvenient for the DM. By covering specific squares on a grid, defined by rules, there CANNOT, by definition, be any unfairness in the accuracy of where/how a player has his spellcaster place his spells. The spell either affects what is in a given square or it doesn't - it either misses the friendly PC and hits the bad guy in the next square, or it hits BOTH and there is no question as to why since the player makes the decision about where the effect is.
But maybe that's just me. If you simply prefer a bit of uncertainty in your D&D combats, well good on ya. But this thing about somehow percieving it to be UNFAIR that wizards can use a grid to (GASP!) decide where to place the spell rather than
letting the DM decide where the PLAYER character will place his spell is really... not well-considered. It was an idea that had already overstayed its welcome in the '80's and hasn't improved with age. YMMV.
![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
