Yeah, but "squares" ain't natural language; without actually busting out a grid map, not all that intuitive
No, they're jargon, which makes a difference when you're reading the book for entertainment or atmosphere, but not when you're reading it as a reference manual (which is how the 4e core rule books tended to be written) - of course as jargon goes, the 5' square as used in 2e C&T, 3.x/PF, 4e, & the 5e tactical module, can also be simply a unit of measure equal to 5' - not a hard number to work with whether you're multiplying by 5 to get feet, or dividing by 5 to get squares.
But, yes, IMHO, squares & cubes are very intuitive & easy to visualize when you don't have the luxury of a play surface. 4e's treatment of AEs as squares rather than blasts & circles & spreads & cylinders &c, was a significant simplification that way. And it's counting of distance was also very simple.
[sblock]For instance, say you want to hit an enemy atop a 20' wall that's 45' away with a spell that has a 50' range. Using feet, you break out the Pythagorean theorem, and sqrt(400 + 2025) = 49.25 ooh, just within range! good thing we didn't just eyeball it. OTOH, if you pull out the concept of counting in 5' squares, you simplify it. You don't /need/ a grid, you just work with the numbers 4 and 9 instead of 20 and 45. For instance, in the 3.5 square-counting convention, you count every-other diagonal (such as moving 'up' ) as 10' instead of 5', so as you count distance towards the top of that 20' wall, you have to count 4 diagonal squares 'up,' adding 10' to the distance so our 3.5 estimate of range would be 55' (by the RAW). You do give up a little precision for that simplification. 5e, you could go with feet, or you could adapt the optional grid rules, which work just like 3.5s, except the first diagonal counts as 10', not the second (which doesn't matter in this case, but would if it were a 15' or 25' wall). 4e just counts diagonals as one square, a further simplification, so when you look at range & elevation, the total distance is simply the greater of the two: in this case, 45'. (Oh, and if it were 1e, there'd be one burning question we'd need to know, first: is that wall out in a field, or in a cavern, because a spell with a "50' range" is really a spell with a 5" range, to scale, and that scale would be different in each case.)
Then there's areas. 4e over-simplified all areas into square/cube approximations (both burst and blast net you such areas - really, it could have been simplified into just 'area,' but there are some minor difference that I guess they thought were worth preserving). The sanity-blasting effects of Pi=4 on certain sorts of gamers probably shouldn't be made of light of, but, even net of the cost of their therapy, I think 4e gained a good deal in the simplicity department with that move. Say you want blast a band of Kobolds that are conveniently lined up well within range of a spell that affects a 10' radius. Ideally, you'd center the spell on the center of the line, and catch every kobold to 10' on either side. Unfortunately, for purposes of making this example difficult, there's also an ally you don't want to catch in the spell within 10' of that ideal target point, so you have to back it off to hit 5' behind them. Now, how many kobolds do you catch on the chord 5' from the center of a 20' diameter sphere? Simple: sqrt(100 - 75) = 8.66, or, at least, how many stand side-by-side in a line that length. But, 3.5 simplifies it for you using squares (and doesn't have small creatures occupy smaller squares) and official RAW templates of various radii, in the case of a 10' radius, centered (and 'centered' means on a corner, not a square in 3.5) 5' behind a line of kobolds affects 2 squares - only two kobolds. 4e also simplifies it using squares, but moreso, by making 10' radius spell in to a burst 1 (a 15' square) (a result of centering on squares rather than corners, again, for the sake of simplicity). A 15' square centered 5' behind a line of kobolds, of course, affects exactly as many as one centered on them, 3.
Of course, that doesn't make any edition of D&D /good/ for running TotM. If they didn't use scale inches or squares they used in-world feet, all demanding excessive precision when not working with a play surface. No, for TotM, you want a system like 13A, where ranges and areas are expressed in handy, proximate terms like 'Close.' That spell you're trying to blast kobolds with might affect 1d4 close enemies, for instance - no calculation or visualization of cubes required. Just ask the DM if the Kobolds are 'close,' roll that d4 and blast 'em. [/sblock]
(also, hexes are always to be preferred to squares for such work, anyways).
Oh, I played Champions! enough to have a healthy appreciation for hexes. The square vs hex debate's an old one. Not an important one, IMHO, but some folks have a strong preference. :shrug:
But also, 4e is the only edition I can think of that has more mechanics devoted to out of combat challenges than just using a single d20 roll to determine success or failure.
1e had non-combat resolutions that could involve d% or d6 rolls, instead of d20, so there's that. Actually, I think it more often used d% for OOC, the Thief's special abilities, for instance. 3e had contested checks (that's technically two d20 rolls) and 'complex skill checks' (which was just repeating the same roll several times to complete the task). 4e added Skill Challenges and group checks. 5e retained contested and group checks. No question that Skill Challenges were (eventually) the most signficant and full-party-involving of those more-than-a-single-d20-roll examples, of course.
