Miniless 4e

[Phaezen]

This came up on Mike Mearl's blog

Some interesting ideas in there.

Phaezen

 

[vagabundo]

I like it. It could be an interesting experiment.

But I like to mix and match. Minor combats mini-less and one major combat per session using the mats and tiles.

 

[jasin]

Definitely interesting, but some of it is patently unworkable for 4E without making it a whole different game. Specifically:

For each of the PCs' powers, give the players the flavor text for the powers and nothing else.

As the PHB is written now, this is a terrible, terrible suggestion. The current flavour text for powers is often literally laughable, and gives very little idea of what the attack does. Choosing your maneuver based on that would amount to randomization.

 

[Mercurius]

I've found it irking that this sort of thing isn't core to the rules. I think it has less to do with the "fun of the game" and more to do with "requiring minis = more cash."

That said, I like using miniatures, just not all the time, and I don't like HAVING to use them.

 

[I'm A Banana]

This doesn't really address the core of the issue, but it's not a bad start to the thought process. "Tucking the mechanics in" robs PC's of some choice, makes balance a bit wonky, and, as Mearls points out, ups the DM bookkeeping. It's not a good fit with 4e as it exists.

It could be a great way to ground-up a new combat system. FFZ isn't much different -- the players are given an attack, damage, and any keywords or statuses (along with the cost for using the ability).

So much in 4e relies on different kinds and types of movement to balance it and also for strategic variety that just "making the DM handle it" isn't a satisfying solution. But it's interesting that Mearls is thinking about it. Maybe they're tossing around ideas to lower the barriers of entry to D&D (which, in 4e, consists of a significant investment in little plastic toys and accessories to play), which could be cool.

 

[Protagonist]

We have been playing miniless 4E for 5 sessions now and so far we get along by simply using abstractions for distances and reminding each other of the rough positioning every once in a while.
Some powers become weaker / harder to use efficiently but all in all we get a better feeling of immersion from this.

 

[Mercule]

I've always thought it'd be easy enough to do 4e w/o minis. After all, 1e measured everything in inches and generally assumed you'd have a tape measure but we ran it just fine with nothing but verbal descriptions. The main trick to running 4e w/o minis is to accept that the DM is the final arbiter, just as in 1e. Of course, the inability of 1) most players I've met to accept this and 2) most DMs I've met to provide sufficient info for reasonable mental mapping are why I tend to favor battle mats (using minis, chits, extra dice, or other debris).

There's also no reason you couldn't use inches and a non-grid mat with round area-of-effects for 4e or a grid with squared areas for 1e.

 

[hailstop]

It's an interesting idea, and something I've always kinda liked about the old way of doing it (ahhh...Basic). It should speed combat up a fair bit wouldn't it?

 

[JohnnyQuest]

Blasphemy! Lies -- all lies! Avert your eyes! Wormwood!

Uh ... actually ... sounds like fun

 

[kenmarable]

Definitely interesting, but some of it is patently unworkable for 4E without making it a whole different game. Specifically:



As the PHB is written now, this is a terrible, terrible suggestion. The current flavour text for powers is often literally laughable, and gives very little idea of what the attack does. Choosing your maneuver based on that would amount to randomization.

Back when I started with the Red Box, we were miniless. We didn't need to hide the spell descriptions or any of that nonsense. That just seems downright silly. During 2e (coming back to it as a bona fide adult as opposed to back in high school) we started using a dry erase board where each character was their first initial. It's not entirely miniless, but it's still pretty close with everything being approximate and in largely still in our heads.

It wasn't until 3.5 that we actually started using minis (and then only because I was taken in by how cool my Battlemat and D&D minis were).

With 4e, there's no reason to hide power descriptions from players. It's pretty easy to just translate 1 square = 5 feet and imagine it. Damage rolls and other effects have no bearing on minis or no minis, and just puts an absurd amount of work onto the DM.

I might actually consider trying miniless 4e for at least some combat because I can already see it occasionally drifting more towards players making decisions in the mindset of a tactical minis game than an immersive RPG. I'm not saying 4e is automatically that way, it's just wasy to drift into that mindset while in combat.