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

[rgard]

Good luck with those circles in 4th edition. Hope you like your circles square.

Funny!

 

[Intrope]

I wished they had gone with an offset-square grid; same advantage as a hex map, but easier to draw a square building on!

Maybe in 5e

 

[Shadeydm]

The first and most obvious problem I can think of when using the 1-1-1-1 diagonal rule:
Blue is the Wizard.
Green is the Fighter.
'X' is the monster, his speed is 30 ft. or 6 squares.

In 3.5 the monster, in order to attack the Wizard in the same round, needs to go through the Fighter.

Using 1-1-1-1 rules, it can go around the Fighter, probably provoking an 'opportunity attack',

Or he can just go really around the fighter, provoking no 'opportuniy attacks'!!!!

Man, it's gonna be hard to be a defender in this game...

What about flanking?

Excellent point!

 

[Ruin Explorer]

That's all one can ask. It would make a lot of threads here a lot shorter, though, if everyone did that.

Yeah, and after twenty years of RPGs and wargames, sometimes some of us know when a rule is going to cause trouble, and thus it's not worth giving it "a fair shot". I believe this is such a case.

I can see why they did it, and I'm not so offended by the square spell effects, but unless your players are dumb, and you're willing to play dumb, this will make a mockery of any kind of attempt to block movement or get in the way, and generally provoke a lot of idiocy. I know my players will work out strategies to utilise this quirk within approximately three minutes of finding out it exists, so unless it blows 4E up in a shower of fragments to remove it, I think I'll be going with 1.5 cost diagonals. My players are smart enough to abuse diagonals, they're smart enough to add the most simple fraction

 

[Raduin711]

Man, it's gonna be hard to be a defender in this game...

What about flanking?

Good point. If the fighter were moved just 1 square forward that could knock off a square of movement from the monster, but that isn't much. At least he is cutting off a charge, but that is about it.

However, I don't think all is lost on the defender just yet.

One thing is Defender abilities, which are obviously a rogue element we can't account for just yet.

Another is that maybe all this means is a change in strategy. I remember back when we played 1-1 and I played the wizard... I always tried to stay at least 30 feet away from the monsters, and out of direct lines. When my short range spells got just a few feet beyond 30 it was very nice. But I had learned to stay far enough away that few enemies got that far. (maybe the DM was being nice, but I don't think so...)

Wait and see perhaps.

 

[Khaim]

The range of a 3e fireball cast by a 5th level Wizard is 700 ft. (Yes, I know they've probably nerfed that in 4e. I'm using this by way of example.) That's 140 squares, of course.

A party is travelling along a road that runs North - South, and the DM has aligned his battlemat accordingly. In the distance, they see a band of Orcs, at just over 800 feet away.

Under the new rules, the Orcs are either well out of range of the fireball or well within range, depending on whether they are to the north of the party or to the north-west.

(In fact, per the new rules, the new 'diagonal' range of that fireball is 985 feet.)

These new rules are a spectacularly bad idea.

No, I think the bad idea is assuming that distance is still calculated using the L² norm instead of the L^Inf norm, as is clearly the case for squares.

L^Inf is a perfectly valid metric. I think it's high time a fantasy game decided to change the laws of time and space for easy of gameplay. I would have also accepted L¹.

For those that are interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lp_space.

Edit: Or, more specifically, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chebyshev_distance. I would still suggest the higher math, mind you.

 

[Khaim]

The first and most obvious problem I can think of when using the 1-1-1-1 diagonal rule:

The only problem I see is that the wizard, despite his 18 Int, doesn't understand the basic geometry of the imaginary world he lives in well enough to know that he should be diagonally behind the fighter.

What about flanking?

What about it?

 

[Kwalish Kid]

I believe that technically, the space of the grid is a manifold. Each square is locally Euclidean, but boost transformations in certain directions are greater than those in other directions.

I`m at home with the flu and a book on the subject of manifolds and such transformations, so I may sit down and work out the mathematics of the geometry as an exercise.

 

[Raduin711]

I can see why they did it, and I'm not so offended by the square spell effects, but unless your players are dumb, and you're willing to play dumb, this will make a mockery of any kind of attempt to block movement or get in the way, and generally provoke a lot of idiocy. I know my players will work out strategies to utilise this quirk within approximately three minutes of finding out it exists, so unless it blows 4E up in a shower of fragments to remove it, I think I'll be going with 1.5 cost diagonals. My players are smart enough to abuse diagonals, they're smart enough to add the most simple fraction

I don't think this is a question of dumb or smart. I think there are plenty of reasons to go to 1-square diagonals that don't have to do with questioning someone's mental prowess. I think it is a question of whether or not it is worth the hassle.

I personally think strategy will still prevail with 1 square diagonal movments. It just won't be the same. As they say, YMMV.

 

[HeinorNY]

The only problem I see is that the wizard, despite his 18 Int, doesn't understand the basic geometry of the imaginary world he lives in well enough to know that he should be diagonally behind the fighter.

What about it?

The question about flanking should not be there, It was another point I woudl make, and I forgot to delete it