No more cone shaped powers?

[Lurks-no-More]

The whole mess could be easily avoided if 4e went hexgrid. And I'm sure they could sell a ton of battlemats, as well...

 

[Wolfspider]

Look, the majority, I bet, do NOT use mats

Hmmm. You really think so?

Interesting....

 

[The Ubbergeek]

Hmmm. You really think so?

Interesting....

Plus ca change, plus c'est pareil.

Outside of the more tactical dm and probably cons games, I never seen much in any edition mats n' minis.

 

[rkanodia]

Cones are in the 2.0 Miniatures Game so I suspect they'll be there for the RPG as well. They are 6x6, shaped like this:

XXXXXX
XXXXX
XXXX
XXX
XX
X

You can use any of the 3 corners as the starting point.

As for radial effects, they are now boxes in the Miniatures game.

While the Miniatures game is a simplified form of the RPG, it's designed to make the crossover from RPG to Minis reasonably easy to understand.

I take back what I said about removing cones entirely. I like this idea. The main reason is that 'wide lines' are only easy to do along the directions of the grid, or at 45 degree angles. If someone wants to use a wide line to hit a target that is, say, 6 squares down from him and 3 squares over, that is a huge pain in the ass. However, with those cones you are showing, it is possible to hit any particular square. Of course, that might not be the completely optimal placing, but I think I am OK with limiting a player to those options, in a way that is not nearly as comfortable with 8-way lines ("Sorry, you just can't hit the BBEG across a completely open field, because the diagonals are wrong").

 

[cholke]

Look, the majority, I bet, do NOT use mats and all in fact.

It's a strawman argument to say that it's all becoming (again) a wargame.


Also, unbalance tend to be unfun, for me at least. When one side is hoaging all the power and the spot...

I guess I've just always viewed the DM as the supreme arbiter of balance. People played whatever classes they wanted and the DM balanced things by different encounters, magic items, etc. Of course that was before point-buys and expecting magic items for sale on every street corner.

I don't think it is becoming a wargame. There have always been elements of the game that groups could pick and choose to use (weapons vs. armor, grappling, etc.) or house-rule. Now, it just seems as if the sub-modules, to use the programming analogy, are taking over the game. To "possibly" remove something that has been in the game from the beginning that works perfectly well in our shared imagination because it doesn't tactically fit on an arbitrary playing surface does a disservice.

 

[Gundark]

read the sig people

 

[DreamChaser]

The whole mess could be easily avoided if 4e went hexgrid. And I'm sure they could sell a ton of battlemats, as well...

True...cones are easier with hexes but casting a lightning bolt to the immediate left or right is not.


hexes aren't perfect
squares aren't perfect

squares are easier for most people (mathophobic culture)

squares win

DC

 

[NaturalZero]

Being able to move in only 2 directions without "waddling" kinda kills the feel of using hexes for me.

 

[MerricB]

Hmm. When I played a magic-user, I never liked cone effects. They always have to start from your space, which means you have to get into the front rank... not likely! So, fireball was always preferable to cone of cold.

I can easily live without them.

Cheers!

 

[Olaf the Stout]

I had planned to immediately house rule the 1-2-1-2 diagonals back into the game (I'm honestly not even open to considering the 1" diagonals), but this sort of change really has me wondering what other, subtle changes will come of the over-simplification in 4E.

I'll probably do the same if they change it so that diagonals are now 1-1-1-1. I'm not going to get too worried about anything until 4E comes out though. That's really the only way we'll know for sure what has changed and what hasn't.

Olaf the Stout