Room Sizes...

[Mistwell]

I like that Mike's Formula in the link a lot:

Optimum Encounter Area = (Area of PC's x PC Speed) + (Area of NPC's x NPC Speed)

 

[Celebrim]

I think your formula is a bit wonky. Unless the characters are only moving in one dimension.

Yeah, I'm not perfectly happy with it either, but I was trying to quickly make the point that charges and doubles moves increased the area a skirmisher would like to have.

(Highest speed of all figures on map)^2 + (sum of all speeds) + (sum of all spaces).

That runs into problems too. Think of the fight space added to the room if you add a 5x5 figure with a base speed of 6. Assuming there is already a speed 6 creature in the fighting space, he gets the 25 spaces for himself, and 6 spaces leftover to move into.

Mike is right about Sum(<fighting space> * <creature space>) being a term. The question is, 'How much fighting space is optimal?' And, 'Just what does 'optimal' mean?'

As far as 'Highest speed of all figures on map', I've been thinking that way as well, but more along the lines of establishing a minimum independent of the number of combatants. For example, it seems like that regardless of what else is in the room, a skirmisher wants a space of at least (<base length> + 2 * <speed>)^2. But it seems reasonable that we don't need that much space per figure. Using this gives us a 18x18 room for Mike's combat. But that seems a little high to be 'optimal'. Maybe its because now we are making things too comfortable for a skirmisher.

 

[Nom]

In D&D, most combat occurs indoors ("dungeons"). In RL, most combat occurs out of doors, because indoors is just too small and cramped relative to the size of even melee weapons.

As an interesting contrast, consider a squash court and your living room. Relative to most sports, squash takes up a tiny amount of space. But you couldn't fit the floor area of a squash court in most living rooms, let alone the height.

From personal experience, I can tell you that it's almost impossible to swing a badminton racquet (about the same size as a squash racquet) in most bedrooms without risking hitting some wall. Replace 'racquet' with 'sword' and you get the idea.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

this is very, very true.

Fitz

 

[Celebrim]

In D&D, most combat occurs indoors ("dungeons"). In RL, most combat occurs out of doors, because indoors is just too small and cramped relative to the size of even melee weapons.

As an interesting contrast, consider a squash court and your living room.

I think a more interesting contrast would be with the size of a fensing piste.

It's also interesting that the squash court is roughly the size of a traditional D&D room - 21' x 32', with 15' ceiling. It's also large enough to place three fensing piste in it, albiet of slightly shortened length.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

The only problem with the Fencing piste is that you are restricted to this narrow line. Most D&D combat (in my in-game eyes) involves a lot of running, tumbling, slashing, ducking, crashing, bashing... All the "ings" you can think of.

Thus don't really think it is best contrast, I would say actually in some regards a Basketball court be really good idea for the size of a battle, perhaps if larger more width. Lots of running, jumping, ocassional knocking down, throwing, etc.

 

[KarinsDad]

From personal experience, I can tell you that it's almost impossible to swing a badminton racquet (about the same size as a squash racquet) in most bedrooms without risking hitting some wall. Replace 'racquet' with 'sword' and you get the idea.

Not in a 12 foot tall room. An overhand swing works fine without a lot of side to side room.

And, at least a third of PCs do not swing a sword. Spells, bows, many thrusting weapons and even monk attacks do not necesarily take up that amount of room. Historic battles even up into the 19th century had formations of soldiers standing shoulder to shoulder with various thrusting and projectile weapons.

Plus, modeling a sword hitting a wall is not part of DND. It is assumed that weapons hit other objects like furniture, walls, and ceilings, but it is ignored in the rules.

We used to use a "square or hex" is equal to one meter years ago and it allowed for 9 medium sized opponents in a 10x10 empty room (the size of many bedrooms without furniture). It's no more unreasonable than most RPG rules.

 

[Celebrim]

The only problem with the Fencing piste is that you are restricted to this narrow line. Most D&D combat (in my in-game eyes) involves a lot of running, tumbling, slashing, ducking, crashing, bashing... All the "ings" you can think of.

Which is fine, but I associate all of that with amateur theatrics. So in my game eyes, the combat in D&D involves very little that's showy, very little that is big or telescoped, and alot of simply sticking the sharp end in something and killing it.

My point was simply that highly active combat could in fact occur in a small space. I should probably also point out that a boxing ring - generally 16' x 16' and not larger than 20' x 20' - is smaller than a squash court. Squash is played on a small court so far as ball games go, but not on a particularly small surface for combat sports.

Thus don't really think it is best contrast, I would say actually in some regards a Basketball court be really good idea for the size of a battle, perhaps if larger more width. Lots of running, jumping, ocassional knocking down, throwing, etc.

Yes, this definately seems to be the model that 4E is moving us toward.

 

[Nom]

Not in a 12 foot tall room. An overhand swing works fine without a lot of side to side room.

Even a 12' ceiling is pretty high. Most modern ceilings are about 8'. And I know from personal experience that an 8' ceiling doesn't give you a lot of room to swing a racquet, even using a cramped swing. (The real estate agent was very generous and gave us a new lampshade for free.)

My point was simply that highly active combat could in fact occur in a small space. I should probably also point out that a boxing ring - generally 16' x 16' and not larger than 20' x 20' - is smaller than a squash court.

Still, 16' x 16' is larger than most bedrooms. And that's for unarmed opponents one-on-one in a static fight. Heck, I've been in houses smaller than 16' x 16'. Well, colonial era shacks might be more accurate.

But D&D doesn't really do close-up fighting. I could imagine a system where each square was 0.5m / 2-3 ft in size, everyone has 2 square reach, and there are rules for being "close" (ie adjacent). But that's probably more complexity than a game like D&D cares about.

The main advantage is that you could have a tangible tactical difference between full-size melee weapons (sword, mace, axe, ...) and daggers / grappling. And that you could use maps that actually seem vaguely to scale, as long as you don't mind an emphasis on "down and dirty". As it stands, a budget hotel bedroom (for example) takes only a single square on the tactical map, as does a 6 person dining setting (table + 6 chairs). On a 5 ft. map, most furniture is best modelled as simply "difficult terrain".

 

[Surgoshan]

Perhaps a down and dirty hotel fight like that might be better modeled using the skill system?