Is 4e do-able w/o minis?

[ferratus]

You know, I'm not going to claim it can't be done...but I'd really like one of the posters who has done this to go into a little depth.

I thought I had. What would you like to know?

Mostly it boils down to simply imagining what is going on and choosing the rules that would apply in the situation.

Since 4e is based a lot on powers, some powers will be better or worse for mini-less play than others.

 

[malraux]

So I'm wondering, how interwoven is the dependence on minis to the combat system? - from what I've seen it looks like they are almost inseparable.

I personally don't think its more dependent on the mat than 3e. That said, I think 4e makes much better usage of its dependence on the mat.

 

[FunkBGR]

In 3e, you could do it without the mat.

Same with 4e.

The way I do it is as follows:

In combat, there's basically two types of attacks, melee and range. If you're in melee, Melee and Close powers will work. If you're at range, Ranged and Area powers will work. Since Close and Area generally hit more guys, you have to be more careful with that.

Is it an exact science? No. Does it need to be? No. Not using miniatures generally allows for more fudge-room, since you're not constrained to a map. You don't want to be exact - but you do want to be fair.

Evey time I do this, my players know to ask more questions - Can I move and hit these two guys, w/o drawing an OA? Stuff like that.

When 3.0/3.5 came out, people cried foul that it "required" miniatures. It doesn't. 4e doesn't need it either.

 

[Holy Bovine]

Heh. Even if I thought 4E (or 3E or 1E or BD&D) would run just as well without a map and minis I would never want to do it. The minis are what attracted me to D&D in the first place and I have always used and loved them. Going on 25 years for me!

 

[Umbran]

I think for small combats, or combats where the bad guys aren't worrying about positioning, it is probably not unreasonable to work without a mat.

I think for larger combats, you'll have to do a lot of work to be fair with the folks who have notable powers that depend on position (strikers, for example), and it is probably easy to over- or under-power them without the map as an arbiter.

If the party doesn't have many such powers, or you're wiling to take other forms of care with those powers, then it probably doable.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

You know, I'm not going to claim it can't be done...but I'd really like one of the posters who has done this to go into a little depth. I mean every time I see this brought up, there are people who said they've done it but they never go into depth about how exactly they accomplished it, what does or doesn't work as far as playing 4e without tactical representation goes, etc.

The impression I mostly get when people say they've played without the grid is that it boiled down to handwaving alot of combat.

I would like to see more actual examples, too. But ultimately - there _has_ to be hand-waving - unless you have found a way to mentally describe the 2D to 3D nature of D&D combat without a map, but less effort!

I would say that in battles without minis and grid, differences between "slide 2 squares" and "slide 3" squares will be washed away. I don't know if the difference between pushing and pulling will be negated or even increased, since you can push and pull diagonally, which might give you a small edge in certain map-situations.

I think the ranges 5/10/20/30 will define informally understood range classes.
Melee/Close to 5 squares will probably seen as one special range class where ranged and melee combats intersect and most distances can be covered with a move action shift. 10 might be "Charge Range" where you expect people to charge to get a ranged warrior in melee.

The most interesting question is how you'll deal with terrain features and difficult/challenging/blocking terrain. But even the above range categories might help...

 

[I'm A Banana]

I'd like to see some detail, too.

I did it in 2e no sweat.

I did it in 3e, only minor sweat.

But 4e contains so many shifting, pushing, pulling, and sliding abilities that I feel like I'm robbing something from the players if I don't give them a grid to move around on.

I do abstract combat in FFZ all the time, because it's made for it, and there I use the "rows" system (basically a "next-to," "close range" and "long range" choice), but 4e....echh...

 

[Ant]

I've run 3e combats with nary a hitch and had little to no issues with resolving distances, feats, AoOs etc.

However, having played in a number of 4e games now I think stripping minis from combat would take away one of the key strengths of 4e.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

As asked shall go a little bit more indepth, it alters with each time since we run it very loose but it basically goes like this.

DM: "As you enter the alleyway you notice a group of Ravagers (think voodoo possessed Gnoll zombies) at the far end of it."

*Rolls Initiative*

DM: "Two of the Ravagers draw near to you, the putrid smells of their body filling the air around you. Too the Gnolls left beside him is a rickety balcony its beams rotten"

P1: "I close in near the Ravager and smash it into the wall beside him." (Power be used that pushes the target).

Essentially we use these certain terms to describe the distance instead of using meters/squares. I trust my players and they trust me, so if they say that their power pushes the target near or far, or they can draw near, beside, far, etc. Then that is what happens and vice-versa.

Along the way I use the same terms to describe the surroundings, so the surroundings evolve and change as the battle progresses. Hell I may have something I didn't imagine to be there be imagined by a player or I think up on the fly.

I know that isn't really that indepth, but it is hard to go indepth when it is really run in a very simple manner. Essentially just based off of trust between what the DM and Players say as being so.

One thing I do, do to keep the mental map in my mind is have each monster's name on a piece of paper. Then draw a line with 3 markers on it: Beside, Near, Far. On this I place a movable prop that represents each PC, thus I can quickly glance to tell how far away each monster is from another PC (and thus how close they are from eachother as well).

 

[Cryptos]

I don't doubt that you can do it, but it sounds like the two styles wind up as completely different games to me. Keep in mind that I'm not saying one or the other is superior or inferior to the other. Several things I wonder about during this discussion:

The group massacred the goblins in KotS without a single battlemat drawing.

While I don't doubt that the group would have massacred goblins regardless... I have to wonder if it becomes more of a lopsided fight given that 4e goblins rely on a very minor positioning ability as the primary feature that makes them a nuisance to fight.

One thing I do, do to keep the mental map in my mind is have each monster's name on a piece of paper. Then draw a line with 3 markers on it: Beside, Near, Far. On this I place a movable prop that represents each PC, thus I can quickly glance to tell how far away each monster is from another PC (and thus how close they are from eachother as well).

How near is near and how far is far? If a power in RAW calls for a warlock to teleport five squares away from X but a wizard uses a power to teleport seven squares away from X, is the warlock still near X while the wizard is far from X, yet the warlock and wizard are close to each other?

How about movement? Does a single move action allow me to go from being far to near, or from near to close? But then, a shift would also allow me to go from being near to close or close to near, so a shift seems more potent and a move less so under the abstraction. It won't get you far (no pun intended), but otherwise it seems it would be as good as a move.

Evey time I do this, my players know to ask more questions - Can I move and hit these two guys, w/o drawing an OA? Stuff like that.

Wouldn't the effect of having to ask and answer positional questions (ie, can I reach X? Can I hit both X and Y? Will Z still be able to move close and then hit me if I teleport?) more than make up the time you save by not pulling out a map and markers? It seems like in terms of time spent preparing with a map vs. time spent playing without, it would be a wash.