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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Man in the Funny Hat" data-source="post: 2656810" data-attributes="member: 32740">Which is a real problem for playing D&D at all then given that it always has been a turn-based system with no limits on the time taken by players to decide on tactics except as the DM desires to maintain pacing to combat.Which, thankfully, D&D has NEVER tried to accurately model because it would make for a hideously dull, tedious, UN-fun gaming experience for the "high fantasy" genre.Well, certainly anyone who chooses D&D as an ostensibly "realistic" model of tactical combat has no clue.  D&D is not now, never has been, and (hopefully) never will be even close to "realistic" combat.Um... AoO is hardly the major reason for using a battlemat.Nobody has said (or at least nobody SHOULD be saying) that the mat and minis are "necessary".  3E WAS designed with them in mind though.  Even so, AoO is NOT what makes a grid "necessary".  The need for a grid and rules to make direct use of it arises from the desire to eliminate AMBIGUITY and ARBITRARY decision from the process of running combats.D&D, having been based originally on table-top wargaming miniatures rules, has always used table-top scales appropriate for the use of miniatures.  So in a sense it has always had a grid.  Back in the day, if your characters movement was 12" you literally moved a miniature 12" on the tabletop - if you indeed used miniatures.  What the game hasn't done until 3.0 is to not just use the scale appropriate for miniatures but to require adherence to a standard grid.  It now has rules to make maximum use of that grid.  It can thus be used to further quantify rules regarding such issues as facing (or as of 3.5 the elimination thereof), areas of effect, line of sight, line of effect, cover, movement, and range for both spells and weapons.  Where previously a fireball was a 20' radius circle with all the attendant issues of a potential target being inside, outside, or neither fully in or out of the radius, depending on PRECISE placement of miniatures as well as arbitrary decision on spell placement, now that radius is represented by a specific grid pattern rather than a circle and it affects only those squares that it covers utterly eliminating spell placement and character positions as an issue requiring DM adjudication.Miniatures are of course the least "necessary" component, but they look cooler than fold-up cardboard, flat disks of cardboard or plastic (like poker chips and coins), Lego-people, Green/Tan Army Men, and the like.AoO's is a rule that was instituted to make up for a failure of previous rules - the failure to model exactly what you're talking about, which is when an additional vulnerability DOES open up in someones defenses because of actions that they are taking.Mulitple attacks, that is what are now referred to as iterative attacks, do NOT model that because iterative attacks are NOT conditional upon what an opponent does.  They are strictly a reflection of YOUR skill at attack, not your opponents skill at defense.  And AoO's were introduced because people DEFINITELY DO have the wits to take advantage of openings in someones defenses and that NEEDED to be addressed.  Removal of AoO therefore [without simultaneously replacing it with other rules serving the same purpose, is LESS realistic.But wait a minute.  I just read your comment again and I'm now quite confused.  Let me see if I have this right:An opponent lowers his defenses below "normal" and you say mulitple attacks should be used to model it - not by granting an additional attack with AoO rules?  Indeed, you're saying that simply granting an additional attack is LESS realistic, and that the situations being modeled are better dealt with through... multiple attacks.  I think you'll have to explain this to me again.  Especially since you also say that granting AoO attacks is mostly what makes a grid and miniatures necessary.* * * * *Mind you I DON'T have a particular issue with whether people want to use grids and miniatures with D&D rules or not.  Heck there's a few points that have been made that I agree with as a downside to mats and minis.  It's just that I'm seeing some poorly considered arguments against them as well.</blockquote>

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