Manuevering in melee

[MerricB]

Here's a question: when you played previous editions of D&D, how much manuevering did you actually see in melee?

Most of my memories are of the forces engaging... and then standing there just hitting each other. We very, very rarely used minis.

These days - especially when I use minis - manuevering is much more common. 5' steps and tumbles to flank, keeping out of spell effect range, etc.

Cheers!

 

[The Shaman]

I was a miniatures wargamer before I picked up D&D, so of course we used minis! Buying and painting those little lead figures was half the fun.

We used a variety of combat maneuvers - facing, flanking, shield-side v. sword-side, bull rushes, grappling, "attacks of opportunity." If the rules didn't provide what we needed, we made it up - the two of us who GM'd in our group had wargamed enough that we could come up with something on the fly pretty easily.

As such, our combats were rarely "stand still and swing your sword for eleven rounds." Our characters were in pretty much constant motion during combat.

 

[S'mon]

We didn't use minis, we played 1e and the maneuvering was in our heads, but there wasn't 3e style tactical positioning. The main thing was trying not to get attacked from flank or rear, so you would stand in a doorway or corner, or try to draw foes through a doorway where they could be attacked from 3 sides. What's now 5' steps would be assumed to be taking place all through melee. Because fighters didn't lose attacks through movement, high level fighters would move a lot as they hacked through hordes of foes. The greater level of abstraction made battles much faster, we played nearly as much in 1 45 minute lunchtime session in 3e as I manage in a 4+ hour 3e session these days.

 

[Numion]

We almost never used any maneuvers. There was never any planning to protect the weaker types or anything like that. Maybe the most common "maneuver" was to move next to a wall to prevent all the enemies wailing on you at once.

3E combats are much more dynamic. People change positions often to get out of reach, prevent full attacks, avoid AoOs, pick up AoOs (deliberately walking past an opponent to see if he spends the AoO, so that someone else can follow you without getting hit), get on other side of a suspected shield spell, etc .. just loads of stuff. Makes for very interesting combats. We actually are organized as a group, and the system promotes team play, while leaving space for shining as individuals.

...aaand we dont even use minis

 

[Jupp]

We have quite a lot of movement in our 2e game. With the rule of disengagement (Player/Monster can walk back half their movement rate in feet without provoking an attack but loosing their attack in that round) there is lots of feet moving around. We do lots of changes to walk to someone that is in need of help. Especially the dwarven priest is running around the battle scene by playing healin tank (thats the reason he has the best armor in the group). We also have the flanking/back attack rules active so everyone watches out on where he is related to his enemies.

 

[Quasqueton]

Most of my memories are of the forces engaging... and then standing there just hitting each other. We very, very rarely used minis.

These days - especially when I use minis - manuevering is much more common. 5' steps and tumbles to flank, keeping out of spell effect range, etc.

This was and is my experience as well, except that I have always used minis.

Quasqueton

 

[Akrasia]

We didn't use minis, we played 1e and the maneuvering was in our heads, but there wasn't 3e style tactical positioning. ... The greater level of abstraction made battles much faster, we played nearly as much in 1 45 minute lunchtime session in 3e as I manage in a 4+ hour 3e session these days.

That was pretty much my own experience as well.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

Most of my memories are of the forces engaging... and then standing there just hitting each other.

My memories are similar. I played all the way through 2nd Edition, and we invented our own "in combat" movement rules because the core rules didn't support moving in combat much if at all. I was always trying to get combat to be more dynamic, but 3E was a big step towards what I wanted.

 

[Thanee]

I played another fantasy RPG (Midgard) quite a bit, and there they had rules similar to D&D3E+ since 20+ years. Not quite as detailed, but threatened areas, tactical movement, something akin to AoOs and stuff like that was (and still is) there, there is even a (slightly more clumsy) system similar to full actions and standard+move actions, and they also have minimal movement (1m per round) during a full action, kinda like the 5-ft. step.

But in D&D maneuvering was mostly descriptive, as it made sense for the situation, and had no real mechanical effect.

Bye
Thanee

 

[IronWolf]

In older editions we just stood there and bashed on each other. Not a lot of serious tactical movement was happening. There was a little bit of initial positioning, but once the battle started it was bashing.

With 3E I think we watch our positioning more closely and make more tactical decisions on where to stand and where to attack from from - both before and during combat.