D&D 4E Non-Euclidean Geometry in 4E?
- Thread starter Reaper Steve
- Start date
Jeff Wilder
First Post
Again, this isn't simply an abstraction. You can't divorce this stupid rule from in-game reality. Where you call a distance "one square" or "five feet" doesn't matter ... what matters is that if "one square" isn't always approximately the same as "one square," time-space goes Cthulhu.
Consider: You're Fred Fighter, adventuring in a dungeon with Roger Rogue. There's a corridor that forks, so you explore. The DM tells you that both rooms are 5 squares by 5 squares, but one is diagonal to the other. (The DM is looking at his cool WotC 4E adventure, with blown-up encounter maps, pre-placed monsters and traps, and so on. Or he's looking at his own pre-drawn map. Whichever.)
Roger isn't too confident in his trapfinding skills, so he asks Fred to tie a 25-foot piece of rope to his belt and hold on from outside as Roger searches the rooms. Just to start, Roger walks to the far wall of each room. 5 squares, right?
Does the rope reach that far in the orthogonal room?
Does the rope reach that far in the diagonal room?
If the answer to both is "yes,"
If the answer to one of those questions is "no,"
Those are "yes or no" questions, and both answers have bizarre, space-time warping repercussions that are actually observable to the people that inhabit the universe in question. That's just ... too much.
It's not the simple, fudgeable abstraction of a diagonal 5-foot step, or one free diagonal "realignment" along the grid during movement, or cheating a tiny bit for creatures with 10-foot reach. It's not the absolutely necessary abstraction of discrete spaces for creatures to occupy or of cyclical, turn-based actions.
The 1-1-1-1 rule is deliberately and unnecessarily introducing huge errors into what had been a simple and reasonably accurate simulation ... errors so huge that no person in the game universe with an average intellect can possibly fail to notice them. Dwarves really will build their fortresses aligned to The Great World Grid, or some such, in order to get maximum ability to defend. Adventurers really will work out and use tactics that differ depending on whether an encounter is closing on diagonals or not.
If that doesn't bother people -- or at least seriously amuse people; for me it's both -- there's just not much more to say.
(It's worth pointing out, though, that in two recent and active polls:
(1) 4E adopters outnumber 4E rejectors by 4-to-1, yet
(2) People prefer 1-2-1-2 movement by more than 2-to-1. (And that's not counting people who would rather use hexes than use squares at all, at least some of whom have come around to that because of 1-1-1-1 movement.
So it's not 4E-haters that are rejecting this rule. (I wasn't a 4E-hater until this rule.))
Consider: You're Fred Fighter, adventuring in a dungeon with Roger Rogue. There's a corridor that forks, so you explore. The DM tells you that both rooms are 5 squares by 5 squares, but one is diagonal to the other. (The DM is looking at his cool WotC 4E adventure, with blown-up encounter maps, pre-placed monsters and traps, and so on. Or he's looking at his own pre-drawn map. Whichever.)
Roger isn't too confident in his trapfinding skills, so he asks Fred to tie a 25-foot piece of rope to his belt and hold on from outside as Roger searches the rooms. Just to start, Roger walks to the far wall of each room. 5 squares, right?
Does the rope reach that far in the orthogonal room?
Does the rope reach that far in the diagonal room?
If the answer to both is "yes,"
Then both rooms must be 25 feet square, right?
So "one square" must have an actual, in-game, "real" distance meaning, right?
Yet the room built along the diagonal is twice as large as the other room. Roger knows it's twice as large, because if he wants to search square-by-square, he has to search twice as many (thus twice as long) in the diagonal room.
If the answer to one of those questions is "no,"
Then it's absolutely, observably true -- from the characters' perspective -- that they're able to move faster when moving in certain direction. (Presumably diagonally.)
Those are "yes or no" questions, and both answers have bizarre, space-time warping repercussions that are actually observable to the people that inhabit the universe in question. That's just ... too much.
It's not the simple, fudgeable abstraction of a diagonal 5-foot step, or one free diagonal "realignment" along the grid during movement, or cheating a tiny bit for creatures with 10-foot reach. It's not the absolutely necessary abstraction of discrete spaces for creatures to occupy or of cyclical, turn-based actions.
The 1-1-1-1 rule is deliberately and unnecessarily introducing huge errors into what had been a simple and reasonably accurate simulation ... errors so huge that no person in the game universe with an average intellect can possibly fail to notice them. Dwarves really will build their fortresses aligned to The Great World Grid, or some such, in order to get maximum ability to defend. Adventurers really will work out and use tactics that differ depending on whether an encounter is closing on diagonals or not.
If that doesn't bother people -- or at least seriously amuse people; for me it's both -- there's just not much more to say.
(It's worth pointing out, though, that in two recent and active polls:
(1) 4E adopters outnumber 4E rejectors by 4-to-1, yet
(2) People prefer 1-2-1-2 movement by more than 2-to-1. (And that's not counting people who would rather use hexes than use squares at all, at least some of whom have come around to that because of 1-1-1-1 movement.
So it's not 4E-haters that are rejecting this rule. (I wasn't a 4E-hater until this rule.))
Last edited:
Elder-Basilisk
First Post
Tell me which of these scenarios you would rather see happen in a dungeon.
1.
"We cannot hold them here; we must fall back!"
[Sounds of fighting, rapid cut scenes as the characters retreat from their large rectangular room. The characters reach a room with a narrow, ornamental staircase; the leader turns and shouts as he guts an advancing orc]
"Here we shall make our stand. Archer, Mage, ascend to the balcony! Jozan and I shall hold the stair; in these narrow quarters, few may stand against many"
2.
"We cannot hold them here; we must fall back!"
[Sounds of fighting, rapid cut scenes as the characters retreat from their large rectangular room. The characters reach another room, similar to the first except that it is laid out at an angle on the battlemap; the leader turns and shouts as he guts an advancing orc]
"Here we shall make our stand. Archer, Mage, stand behind us! Jozan and I shall hold the line; with this alignment of the grid, few may stand against many!"
It's an exaggerated example, of course, but the idea of pushing forward or retreating into a room that is aligned differently to the grid in order to gain an advantage is a pretty horrible one. But you can bet that figuring out how to align battles to your advantage on the grid is going to be a significant 4.0 combat skill.
1.
"We cannot hold them here; we must fall back!"
[Sounds of fighting, rapid cut scenes as the characters retreat from their large rectangular room. The characters reach a room with a narrow, ornamental staircase; the leader turns and shouts as he guts an advancing orc]
"Here we shall make our stand. Archer, Mage, ascend to the balcony! Jozan and I shall hold the stair; in these narrow quarters, few may stand against many"
2.
"We cannot hold them here; we must fall back!"
[Sounds of fighting, rapid cut scenes as the characters retreat from their large rectangular room. The characters reach another room, similar to the first except that it is laid out at an angle on the battlemap; the leader turns and shouts as he guts an advancing orc]
"Here we shall make our stand. Archer, Mage, stand behind us! Jozan and I shall hold the line; with this alignment of the grid, few may stand against many!"
It's an exaggerated example, of course, but the idea of pushing forward or retreating into a room that is aligned differently to the grid in order to gain an advantage is a pretty horrible one. But you can bet that figuring out how to align battles to your advantage on the grid is going to be a significant 4.0 combat skill.
hong said:
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
Where this gets really screwy, of course, is when the dungeon isn't all conveniently designed to 90-degree corners. A 45-degree bend in the hallway that then leads to several rooms at the same angle changes things completely! 
(and I don't even want to think about twisty passages and random caverns...)
The problem is more fundamental than whether a 5' move = a 7.5' move depending on which direction you're going. The problem is the game's insistence on you always ending up right in the middle of a 5x5' square. Do away with that insistence...in other words, do away with the grid as a vital part of the game...and things become much simpler.
Lanefan
(and I don't even want to think about twisty passages and random caverns...)The problem is more fundamental than whether a 5' move = a 7.5' move depending on which direction you're going. The problem is the game's insistence on you always ending up right in the middle of a 5x5' square. Do away with that insistence...in other words, do away with the grid as a vital part of the game...and things become much simpler.
Lanefan
Jhulae
First Post
ainatan said:
Um.. Again, I'm not seeing anywhere about *mapping* rooms at 1-1-1-1 whatever. A 20' room, whether drawn diagonally or not is going to be 20' on a side. Whether the characters can move faster across that room diagonally is a function of the 1-1-1-1 movement rule, not a function of the room's dimensions.
Hussar
Legend
Sir Sebastian Hardin said:
For the love of God!!! Do try to actually understand what I'm saying.
It doesn't matter if you have facing to do what I'm proposing. Place a 3x3 mini on a grid so that it fits overtop of 9 squares. Perfect fit.
Now, rotate that mini 45 degrees so that the corners line up with the corners of 3 squares, not the sides. Suddenly, your mini is bigger.
Or, are you saying that a huge mini cannot fit down a 15 foot wide 45 degree corridor without squeezing?
