Not using Grid / minis / pawns

[pming]

Hiya!

The PHB indicates using grid as an option. Would you play in a game that didn't ? In my limited experience with playing in a few groups minis etc seem to be expected now. Pathfinder assumes it, although 5e does not.Way back when we never did, and had a great time.I'd love to go out and drop $$ on all this stuff, but I'm a gamer on a budget

Completely opposite experience here. I would be less likely to play in a game that did use them. In my "non-limited experience" (36'ish years) and playing with quite a few groups, minis were pretty much non-existent (I think once in the last three and a half decades have I ever encountered a group that uses minis as a default).

Personally, I found mini's for use in 'absolute locations' to be...a distraction. The players are only half (or less) focused on what is actually happening as far as non-combat goes, and mostly focused on how to maneuver their mini on the grid so that they can get the best angle for an arrow shot, flask of oil throw, or spell cast. Things start to feel very video-game like to me...where a player will say "No, you can't hit me because the corner of that orc's mini blocks the line from him...by...let get the measuring tape...1mm! Ha!" (e.g., you are playing your video game and see the right leg, right arm and part of the right shoulder of a monster around a corner...but you can't target it because it's center is not in your LOS).

Anyway, we have used mini's for rough locations and for fun. When everyone has a personally painted mini of their character in front of them, sitting on the table, it just feels..."cool". But mini's as an important part of the game with regards to rules and whatnot? No and no thank you. Imagination and scribbled letters and numbers on a piece of paper is my preferred way to go.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Rod Staffwand]

My biggest problem with grid combat when I'm a player is that it doesn't feel like combat--visceral, pulse-pounding, exciting, let's get out the axes and have a throw down, combat. It feels like an artificial, almost prissy exercise in square counting and balletic coordination of game pieces. Wherein a board full of motionless figurines politely wait their turn to act ("That was a fearsome blow, good orc, but best you wait until the initiative count of seven when I shall repay you twice over!"). Out of hundreds of grid combats I've played in, maybe five were remotely memorable.

And it's not like grid combat is a foolproof depiction of what's happening:

PLAYER: I move here and attack this goblin.
DM: That's not a goblin, that's a skeleton.
PLAYER: I don't have any skeleton figures so I'm using goblins...

PLAYER: I move here and push this guy into the pit.
DM: What pit?
PLAYER: This ring here.
DM: That's a coffee stain...

PLAYER: I attack this harpy with my sword.
DM: You can't.
PLAYER: Huh? It's right next to me.
DM: It's flying 50 feet above you...

 

[The Grassy Gnoll]

I prefer gridless ToTM style, but have recently purchased some PF grid mats and I use them for fights. I find it exponentially increases the work required, as my limited dry wipe marker penmanship means drawing directly on the mat looks crappy and is time consuming. Larger dungeon exploration can be difficult too. I am looking into drawing maps on flip chart paper that is thin enough to see the grid beneath and whip them out when required, but again, time is my enemy.

I'd love to go full Mercer but just don't have the time to do it properly!

I will say that grids really help with combat, but I'm thinking that using them for exploration is too much hassle, and detracts from description and mood.

 

[The Grassy Gnoll]

I like to play with grid and minis, but I feel that pain of low budget, so I do this

I do something very similar, as I can neither afford the minis nor bear the weight of transporting them to our sessions.
I'm lucky enough to have the original Blood Bowl with the bases designed to hold cardstock figures; and I use Photoshop to make my own.

Using the neck rings from plastic drinks bottles gives them perfect sized condition indicators, too (poisoned, stunned, frightened etc).

 

[Sacrosanct]

PFFT. Those aren't low budget minis. Low budget minis are marbles, dice, drew your own tent pictures, or candy Not only for the budget minded, but back in the day you didn't exactly have a huge selection of minis that were available to use.

Now get off my lawn.

 

[Sunseeker]

My biggest problem with grid combat when I'm a player is that it doesn't feel like combat--visceral, pulse-pounding, exciting, let's get out the axes and have a throw down, combat. It feels like an artificial, almost prissy exercise in square counting and balletic coordination of game pieces. Wherein a board full of motionless figurines politely wait their turn to act ("That was a fearsome blow, good orc, but best you wait until the initiative count of seven when I shall repay you twice over!"). Out of hundreds of grid combats I've played in, maybe five were remotely memorable.

And it's not like grid combat is a foolproof depiction of what's happening:

PLAYER: I move here and attack this goblin.
DM: That's not a goblin, that's a skeleton.
PLAYER: I don't have any skeleton figures so I'm using goblins...

PLAYER: I move here and push this guy into the pit.
DM: What pit?
PLAYER: This ring here.
DM: That's a coffee stain...

PLAYER: I attack this harpy with my sword.
DM: You can't.
PLAYER: Huh? It's right next to me.
DM: It's flying 50 feet above you...

But it's not to say this doesn't happen in ToTM either. Especially the last one. We've all read the same books, yet we all imagine it a little differently. Save for things that are explained in such detail that there's no other way to visualize it. Not having visual aids means players need to commit everything to memory. Did the DM say the harpy was 50 feet up, or 30? Did the DM say we were fighting 3 kobolds, 2 bugbears and one giant crocodile or did he say we're fighting 2 kobolds, 1 bugbear and 2 giant crocodiles? Was Bob attacking the Bugbear, or the Crocodile?

I have one player who I constantly have to remind is walking in a 5' wide tunnel, otherwise he constantly attempts to move around enemies when I don't use a grid.

My biggest beef with minis is simply people moving them. Maybe next time I'll set it up where one table member, maybe one of the more tactically minded, moves the minis after the player says what they want to do.

 

[Al2O3]

I would certainly play without a grid, but having some kind of visual aid for positioning is nice. My group use Roll20, currently with me running LMoP. For the encounters where there are maps provided in the adventure I try to draw them while the characters explore, providing the positions of walls etc. I also use tokens to keep count of who is dead or not. Sometimes I even place them with approximately the right relative position to each other. Mostly however, it is just me pointing at the map and telling the players that "you can get over here" or "the monster runs over here". The players tend to describe intention, such as " I try to place a 10" cube so I include as many enemies as possible" or "I want to strike the closest enemy" or "can I hunt down that one who ran away?"

One thing this has helped with is removing the mental image of humans being 1.5m cubes that we got in 4e. For similar reasons I switch from fantasy/rule units to SI-units when I want to convey a proper image of how far/high/heavy something is.

 

[the Jester]

I would absolutely play without a grid. Heck, I run some encounters with and some without these days (though my players love the battlemat, so it's usually with). Until the end of the 2e days, we never used a battlemat or anything like it. (Or almost never.) It didn't take our fun down even a single notch.

 

[Imaculata]

I played a second edition campaign for a while where we didn't use any grids or miniatures. But it didn't take long before we noticed the need to illustrate our strategic positions, and eventually we started drawing things out. I'm not against campaigns that don't use miniatures and grids, but I do prefer the option to make it clear to the DM what my position is.

 

[fjw70]

I am comfortable with and without minis, and with and without a grid.