D&D 4E Non-Euclidean Geometry in 4E?

[Stone Dog]

I just stopped using a grid for anything other than ease of mapping and all movement is in inches. It also avoids such wierdness as cone attacks having slightly different aoe on the diagonal than they do on the up and down. Sure, things play out more like Necromunda than D&D, but that is a good thing in my book.

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

Hmm... I thought you couldn't move diagonally past an occupied square (like the one on the right with a pillar in it)?

Not that this solves all your issues, but it might make things slightly less annoying.

 

[frankthedm]

I just stopped using a grid for anything other than ease of mapping and all movement is in inches. It also avoids such wierdness as cone attacks having slightly different aoe on the diagonal than they do on the up and down. Sure, things play out more like Necromunda than D&D, but that is a good thing in my book.

Hell yeah! Grids are fine for those who need them, but tape measures and area templates feel so much better to me.

 

[Derren]

The 1-1-1 rule is for people who can't count to 2.

Using 1-1-1 doesn't really increase the speed of the game either. Sure, new players would need a bit till they memorized tthe 1-2-1- rule, but once they did 1memorize it, the game would progress as fast as with 1-1-1 and would not have this huge logic issues.

1-1-1 would only speed up the game if the players are unwilling to learn the movement rules and I don't think that it is a good idea to develop the game for people who don't even bother to learn basic rules.

 

[Jhulae]

Hell yeah! Grids are fine for those who need them, but tape measures and area templates feel so much better to me.

Yeah, that's what I was going to say. Just use a ruler and circular templates.

Or, make some kind of 'standard distance' length flexible string or plastic measurement aids that you can 'lay out' for a travel path.

 

[delericho]

And as Ari pointed out - you can houserule it back if you think it's that big of a deal.

I can't house rule it if I'm not the DM. I can't house rule it easily if I want to take advantage of the 'network externalities' of D&D to allow me to move groups easily. I can't house rule it easily if I'm at a convention, or otherwise operating in a time-limited venue. I can't house rule it on the Digital Initiative if the virtual tabletop counts movement squares for me, or provides built-in spell templates, or handles reach and threatened areas.

(To be honest, though, the Digital Initiative virtual tabletop shouldn't be using squares at all - given that the computer can invisibly handle all these things it should really be using free-form movement as in NWN and spell effects that are actually spheres, or cones, or whatever. It's only the real-world tabletop that needs those abstractions. However, that's another debate for another time, I think, and I can entirely understand why the decision might be taken for the DI to model the tabletop game, even where doing otherwise might give a better game experience in a stand-alone product.)

Additionally, once my list of house rules reaches a certain length, I'm no longer interested in even trying to run the game. Even if each of the items on the list is trivially easy to implement, the end result is that I question whether this is even a game I want to play any longer.

In short, while I can house rule this issue, it's just not the magic bullet that it would appear to be. And, while I appreciate that WotC have had this debate internally, and while I respect that you have made this decision in the sincere belief that this is what is best for the game, this is that big of a deal for me.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

The 1-1-1 rule is for people who can't count to 2.

Using 1-1-1 doesn't really increase the speed of the game either. Sure, new players would need a bit till they memorized tthe 1-2-1- rule, but once they did 1memorize it, the game would progress as fast as with 1-1-1 and would not have this huge logic issues.

1-1-1 would only speed up the game if the players are unwilling to learn the movement rules and I don't think that it is a good idea to develop the game for people who don't even bother to learn basic rules.

I am not convinced of this rule either and prefer the 1-2-1-2 rule.

But I feel tempted to defend it with all my heart and passion if people want to insult people that can accept or even prefer the rule.

So, well. The rule is the best thing since sliced bread. Really. I mean, if you move a square diagonally, you're obviously moving one square, not 1.5 or sometimes 1 and sometimes 2. So it makes totally sense and is consistent with how you actually move your miniature.
For area effects, you can still make templates, so you don't get stupid cubes.

For the "bypassing the defender" thing - what's actually described there is a corner case where the movement of the attacking monster just happens to be barely fast enough to reach the Fighter. If it was faster or closer, it could do the same with the alternate "counting methods".

Hexagonal movement works in 60° steps best, and Square movement in 90° steps. But if you go somewhere in between (in hex, that's means "sidewards", in Square it means diagonal) you end up with artifacts. The best way might indeed be to use a ruler (and possible a calculator + circle) and ignore any grid-notion of combat. But that's so videogamey (at least modern, 3D graphics cards accelerated video games that allow pixel-wise movement)

 

[Arkhandus]

Fair enough. So, what do you think about the non-euclidean geometry in D&D 4e?

Ia! Ia! Cthulhu ftagn!

Doesn't matter much to me, since I'm not buying into 4E. But I do prefer the 1-square-is-1-square method. It's just simplest and comes the most naturally; people are less likely to mess up when figuring out their movement, they'll get it figured out quicker, and I as DM don't have to manually calculate every dang critter's and PC's movement in exacting detail to be sure that it was right. So combat runs quicker and more smoothly.

And I handle the firecube problem by just ignoring WotC's silly wrong concept of how spell areas should be based on grid corners and how every square is affected if even just a little bit of the spell's area passes through the edge of the square. I use simple common sense to figure it out and not WotC's funny version of mathematics.

I'm all for abstraction in D&D, but not for throwing semi-realism completely out the window. It's not hard to ignore a minor oddity in diagonal movement, but it's more unusual to think of fireballs and cones of cold and other things behaving like massive collections of cubes. And similarly frustrating for WotC to treat every creature and object as though it has the body type and proportions of a Gelatinous Cube.


I like the Movement Point idea, though. It's not as slow to figure out as the 3.5 method, and more realistic than the alternatives, so it's not as much trouble.

And really, I just preferred the gridless movement me and my friends used in 2nd Edition. We'd tell the DM how many feet we'd move, in what direction, or we'd tell him how close we wanted to get to monster X or object Z, and our characters would move appropriately. The map grid was only a means of showing general positions and where each wall was.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Ia! Ia! Cthulhu ftagn!

Doesn't matter much to me, since I'm not buying into 4E. But I do prefer the 1-square-is-1-square method. It's just simplest and comes the most naturally; people are less likely to mess up when figuring out their movement, they'll get it figured out quicker, and I as DM don't have to manually calculate every dang critter's and PC's movement in exacting detail to be sure that it was right. So combat runs quicker and more smoothly.

And I handle the firecube problem by just ignoring WotC's silly wrong concept of how spell areas should be based on grid corners and how every square is affected if even just a little bit of the spell's area passes through the edge of the square. I use simple common sense to figure it out and not WotC's funny version of mathematics.

I'm all for abstraction in D&D, but not for throwing semi-realism completely out the window. It's not hard to ignore a minor oddity in diagonal movement, but it's more unusual to think of fireballs and cones of cold and other things behaving like massive collections of cubes. And similarly frustrating for WotC to treat every creature and object as though it has the body type and proportions of a Gelatinous Cube.

By the way: Is it even confirmed that Cones and Bursts become cubes, or is this just our extrapolation of the fact that the DDM uses the 1-1 scheme for diagonal movement. At some point, we might be really leaping to conclusions. I wouldn't be surprised if 4E used standardizes spell sizes and thus also fixed templates. Simpflying diagonal movement cost speeds up play because people don't just move diagonal, they combine it with different movement directions. Spell area's don't "move"...

 

[glass]

1-1-1 would only speed up the game if the players are unwilling to learn the movement rules and I don't think that it is a good idea to develop the game for people who don't even bother to learn basic rules.

I don't like 1-1-1-1 either, but I don't think insulting people who do like it is the way to go. Especially, I don't think you'll get very far in suggesting that Ari Marmell, game designer par excellence, 'can't be bothered to learn the basic rules'.


glass.