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

[Lackhand]

If by this, you mean the same distance along multiple paths in the direction of a spline, I was toying with a way, but hadn't had the time to really sit down and think about it.

If one regards each 60 degree turn as an extra unit of movement (i.e. one has to slow up a bit to turn a corner), and also allowed movement through half hexes along a spline, then this might just resolve the issue.

But, I haven't had time to carefully consider it. Thoughts anyone?

Isn't most straight-line movement on (any) grid going to be modeled via a lot of turns? In the hex grid, isn't this particularly egregious with 90 degree motion consisting of chained 60 degree turns?

Maybe if you had the character declare some "intention" direction, and moving more than 60 degrees off of their "intention" in a round causes a hit, or forces them to take another move action (or equivalent)?

 

[Hussar]

As I said way back, you can get up in arms about this all you like. In play this is going to have very little effect. At the absolute best, it allows a PC to move ten more feet in a round. That's it.

To be fair though, I've never been one for rules=physics either.

 

[nem z]

Yes, that is exactly what I meant, and Lackhand seems to be thinking along the same lines as the solution I came up with.

I was considering saying a player 'commits' to a direction if they travel in two hexes in a row on the same directional axis, taking a 1 space penalty each time they recommit to a different axis in the same move.

That sure isn't an elegant and/or clear wording, though.

It would likely make much more sense if facing rules were also included, with a justification that if you take two consecutive drifting steps on the same axis you effectively have changed your facing. I'd probably also add a feat/power that allows you to ignore this restriction.

 

[Hussar]

I do love the irony though of people declaring that this change is the final straw in the simulationist camel's back. I mean, D&D combat has always been pretty abstract and we've generally never had any problems with it. People really don't come in 5 foot cubes, for example, but, other than some quibbles about horses, we usually don't care. Initiative and the idea of taking turns in combat is entirely gamist, but, hey, that's groovy, we live with that.

But, apparently, the beloved 1-2-1 ruling, that wasn't even consistently applied in 3e (after all, how big is a huge creature? What happens if you rotate the base 45 degrees?), creates this depth of experience that I was totally unaware of previously.

 

[Geron Raveneye]

I do love the irony though of people declaring that this change is the final straw in the simulationist camel's back. I mean, D&D combat has always been pretty abstract and we've generally never had any problems with it. People really don't come in 5 foot cubes, for example, but, other than some quibbles about horses, we usually don't care. Initiative and the idea of taking turns in combat is entirely gamist, but, hey, that's groovy, we live with that.

But, apparently, the beloved 1-2-1 ruling, that wasn't even consistently applied in 3e (after all, how big is a huge creature? What happens if you rotate the base 45 degrees?), creates this depth of experience that I was totally unaware of previously.

And I'm kinda sure that, if you search back to the introduction of the 3.5 changes to the online gaming public, you'll see plenty of similar threads where the sense/nonsense of cubic creatures is discussed.

We're not talking about what we individually will do with this "new" official core rule will do. Personally, I happily ignore a big heap of little detail rules in 3.X, including the whole minimap subgame it has brought to the table. If I was going to play 4E outright, this version of "how to describe a (relatively) continuous world and movement therein in quantums of 125 cubic feet cubes" would be right on top of my "don't bother" list. My group doesn't have problems with guessing at spell effects, movement and maneuvers come from descriptions of the situation and use relative points from those descriptions, and distances are usually ruled-by-thumb.

This thread here simply takes the principles of a new core rule and tries to extrapolate what it says about the general outlook on the game to come. And to be honest, a game that is supposed to describe reality with its rules a bit more consistently and (sacrilege) more realistic than say Stratego or Chess, but takes a tone of "for ease of play, we will ignore the fact that a grid is supposed to describe space instead of shaping it, and install this silly rule that flies in the face of normal geometrical understanding, because none of the players we want to play this game will care anyway" simply looks like it's not giving a bother about the effect that simple rule might have on the rest of their game world...or those players who are interested enough to realize it, and don't really like it. In other words, those that usually are called the "vocal minority" here.

Again, except if we can see D&D turn into a 100% boardgame here that describes every distance possible in squares, this rule will create a complete disconnect between physical reality in a non-combat situation and physical reality in a combat situation. Since I assume we won't see D&D - The Boardgaming with 4E, we will get a lot of situations in a game where people deal with standard euclidean geometry in their roleplaying, simply because that is what we deal with in real life, and it will be transferred to every inplay situation. Except for combat, where all of a sudden space is anisotropic, and your speed is greater in one direction than in another, without you having changed it yourself. Fireballs will take a cubic shape, as will any effect with a radius spread, and there will be plenty of players who will try to use this difference to their utmost advantage (D&D seems to cultivate those ).

If that stuff is nothing worth noticing to you, okay...I don't want to get drawn into a "game rules as physics" discussion here (that's what the other thread is there for after all). But simply handwaving it away with a laugh and wondering how people can get offended by something so "small" is not exactly looking at the whole picture either.

 

[Haffrung Helleyes]

There have always been people in the D&D community for whom the rules didn't matter very much.

I doubt very much that a person who was happy with 2nd edition D&D will have any problem with 1/1 diagonal movement.

Likewise, a dramatist who views D&D primarily as a thespian exercise, and really doesn't care much about combat won't care either.

But I , and many others like me came to D&D from systems like RuneQuest and GURPS and Hero. We started out with D&D, then switched to those systems because we thought they had better rules, then came back to 3rd edition when it came out with a rigorous rules system that met our needs.

We don't automatically go to 4E, because the rules system does matter to us.

Fortunately, we have a multitude of choices if 4E doesn't pan out as a replacement. The easiest choice is to stay with 3E, a system in which most of us have invested hundreds or thousands of dollars, which easily has enough high-quality adventures and supplements to tide us over all the way to 5E.

Ken

 

[BryonD]

I do love the irony though of people declaring that this change is the final straw in the simulationist camel's back.

For me it is pretty much another cinder block on the greasy stain that was once a camel.

I mean, D&D combat has always been pretty abstract and we've generally never had any problems with it. People really don't come in 5 foot cubes, for example, but, other than some quibbles about horses, we usually don't care. Initiative and the idea of taking turns in combat is entirely gamist, but, hey, that's groovy, we live with that.

There is a difference between shades of gray abstractions, particularly for things that represent activity over time, and being flat out wrong in regard to fixed values.

But, apparently, the beloved 1-2-1 ruling, that wasn't even consistently applied in 3e (after all, how big is a huge creature? What happens if you rotate the base 45 degrees?), creates this depth of experience that I was totally unaware of previously.

Huh? First of all, with no facing a creature wouldn't be turned 45 degrees at any time anyway. But even if you did, the size of a huge creature would still be exactly 15 feet per side regardless of how you place the mini on the table. Which is completely unlike running on a diagonal, in which case the distance actually changes.

As to "creating" an experience, that is a complete misunderstanding of the point.
For those of us who find 1/2/1/2 to be really really simple and resulting in virtually no errors or game delays, the explicit addition of blatant error introduces a constant distraction from the depth of experience. The game doesn't create the experience, the players do that. But a game can screw it up and a good game stays out of the way as much as it can.

To compare this to initiative or spacing is absurb. It is easy to imagine that initiative is simply a representation of continuous activity and it is easy to imagine that a large snake (the extreme of not a square) could be moving and adjusting continuously in a given area. These abstraction all encompass very reasonable possibilities. It is not possible for 28 feet to turn into 20 feet just because you change point of view. You have moved from covering a range to simply being wrong.

Would I like a more accurate system than even 3.5? Sure. That'd be great. But the value is there and it works. This change does nothing but add absolute error in exchange for nothing but a "simplicity" that I find to be of flat zero merit and even a bit of an insult to the mental agility of the people I game with.

 

[Nom]

As to "creating" an experience, that is a complete misunderstanding of the point.
For those of us who find 1/2/1/2 to be really really simple and resulting in virtually no errors or game delays, the explicit addition of blatant error introduces a constant distraction from the depth of experience.

Could you quantify "blatant"?

Using any form of grid creates a quantisation effect.

Using a primary only grid creates a further effect where distance along a "diagonal" is 1/(cos grid_angle/2) longer than euclidean distance.

Using a 1.5 diagonal square grid adds a measuring deviation where distance along a diagonal is (on average) 1.5/sqrt(2) longer than euclidean distance. For very short distances, this deviation can increase to x1.5. Off the four axes, distances are around +10% longer than euclidean distance.

Using a Chebeyshev grid adds the opposite measuring deviation: diagonals are x1/sqrt(2) shorter than euclidean distance.

Which of these deviations are "blatant" and which are not? What determines when a deviation becomes "blatant"? What is the mathematical basis for this metric?

My experience has been that if the mechanic is easy enough the player adapts. The "diagonal = +1" mechanic used in Mage Knight Dungeons seemed odd to me at first, but after a few games I didn't even notice it. In contrast, after several years of D&D / D&DM I still notice the 1.5 diagonal mechanic because it is inconstant. Holding that 'carry' bit in my head has a surprisingly high mental cost.


The only way to avoid deviations from euclidean geometry is to remove the grid entirely. At which point you have a new set of tradeoffs, including where to measure distance from (center / any corner / each corner / ...) and how "large" moving and stationary pieces are considered to be.

Tangent: at what distance does measuring become quicker than counting? My gut feeling is that from about 10-15 squares the time taken to set up the ruler is less than the time taken to actually count the squares. Of course, counting time is roughly linear with number of squares, dropping to zero for distances up to about 3 squares. In contrast, measuring a long distance is only a little longer than measuring a short distance. Any gridless rules would be advised to write the mechanics such that there is no need for short-distance measurement.

 

[Delta]

Actually, I have a question. Was this rule in 3.0 too? Because I never noticed the 1-2-1 movement till we switched to 3.5, which means I would have overlooked this rule for a couple years too if it was in 3.0.

- It was not explicit in the 3.0 core rulebooks.
- It was implicit in the shape of spell diagrams in the 3.0 rulebooks.
- It was asserted publicly by several designers shortly after the 3.0 release, and included in the 3.0 FAQ.

 

[fnwc]

But, as I said. It's old school solution invented in times when you had to be able to GM in small rooms, without tables, on moving trains and in other, less than comfortable, places.

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