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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pickaxe" data-source="post: 1007189" data-attributes="member: 10812">on feet, inches, and squaresJust a note on the Sigil's remark about Monte's statement that references to grid squares were a move in the direction of "inches".I took Monte's statement to mean that, instead of saying 5 feet, the rules would often say one square, or other such conversions from 5-foot increments to squares. There is a real difference here; measurements in feet are meant to convey a comparison to reality, such as a human will move 30 feet in 6 seconds and still get to act, whereas a dwarf will only move 20 feet. Your willingness to buy the speeds of creatures is determined by your acceptance that a certain amount of feet can be covered in a certain amount of seconds, even by a fantastic creature, something you could understand without having a battle map in front of you. References to grid squares, on the other hand, are specifically addressing a battle map type of surface.So, what about the inches, and why are inches more like squares than they are like feet? Previous editions of D&D used inches as a unit of distance because they were derived from the historical miniatures gaming world, where movement values represent the distance across the table you can move your unit of French dragoons or whatnot. (I'm less certain of this, but I imagine that the awkward time system of previous editions, where a round was a minute and a turn 10 minutes, is probably another artifact of this history.)Thus, inches, like squares, refer to the tabletop, whereas feet are meant to be comparable to what real creatures do. The fact that the Sigil instantly equates 12" with 120' (which was really 360' outdoors in 1e) reflects his familiarity with the previous historical-miniatures-based system for movement.Whether any of you think moving further towards the miniatures-only world is good or bad is another story. One additional observation I will make is that grid squares is a change of a different trajectory than tabletop inches: squares are digital, whereas inches are analog. You can easily translate your 12" movement into a move of 10 5/16", if you so choose, but the increments of your moves in 3e are basically another 5' or no more. For better or worse, with 3.0 the game has been made more like a computer game.--Axe</blockquote>

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