Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Silveras" data-source="post: 1649976" data-attributes="member: 6271">I was thinking about this in light of the variant in Unearthed Arcana that returns facing to the game. The conclusion I reached is that, while facing was eliminated in order to make combats more abstract and simple, the counter-intuitive factor has undone that benefit. Removing facing and squaring the areas made sense to represent the idea that the creature was constantly in motion during the fight. However, even ignoring the problem that miniatures *have* a facing inherently... people think in terms of faced movement. The flanking rules require 2 people to set up a flanking situation solely because there are no natural &quot;flanks&quot; to find, for example. You can never strike &quot;from behind&quot; because there is no &quot;behind&quot;. When you picture the actions of your character, you do not imagine him/her as a cylinder or sphere ... you picture a person, moving in a particular direction. True, s/he may look about in other directions, but generally you envision movement in terms of: I advance - moving forward at normal speedI back up - moving backward, slower and feeling your way because you are not looking where you are goingI sidestep - moving sideways, so as not to present your back or flanks to your foesNone of this is relevant with a lack of facing in combat. I have no problem with the use of square areas (or, really, squares represnting circular areas), as I do think creatures move about and try to maneuver to keep their backs clear, etc. I do think removing facing created more &quot;suspension of disbelief&quot; issues than it helped simplify things, though.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Silveras, post: 1649976, member: 6271"] I was thinking about this in light of the variant in Unearthed Arcana that returns facing to the game. The conclusion I reached is that, while facing was eliminated in order to make combats more abstract and simple, the counter-intuitive factor has undone that benefit. Removing facing and squaring the areas made sense to represent the idea that the creature was constantly in motion during the fight. However, even ignoring the problem that miniatures *have* a facing inherently... people think in terms of faced movement. The flanking rules require 2 people to set up a flanking situation solely because there are no natural "flanks" to find, for example. You can never strike "from behind" because there is no "behind". When you picture the actions of your character, you do not imagine him/her as a cylinder or sphere ... you picture a person, moving in a particular direction. True, s/he may look about in other directions, but generally you envision movement in terms of: I advance - moving forward at normal speed I back up - moving backward, slower and feeling your way because you are not looking where you are going I sidestep - moving sideways, so as not to present your back or flanks to your foes None of this is relevant with a lack of facing in combat. I have no problem with the use of square areas (or, really, squares represnting circular areas), as I do think creatures move about and try to maneuver to keep their backs clear, etc. I do think removing facing created more "suspension of disbelief" issues than it helped simplify things, though. [/QUOTE]

Verification