Squareless Combat?

[Ovinnik]

Its been stated that movement in 4e will be in 1-inch squares; 'Move 6' means you get to move up to 6 squares with a move action, etc.

Has anyone considered keeping the tactical combat part of D&D, but doing away with the squares altogether? And I don't mean by replacing it with hexes (though I personally like hexes more than squares), but go completely without and just use rulers and tape-measures? Seems like this might free up some of the rigidness in combat, not to mention solving the equal-move-diagonals problem. Plus, if you have some loose change (to serve as minis) and a tape-measure, you can do this anywhere, even if you don't happen to have your battlemap handy.

Thoughts?

 

[Larrin]

Using a measuring tape is not uncommon is many wargames (warhammer and Mageknight come to mind). Having played a lot of mage knight i can say Squares are 400 times easier to use than a ruler, espeacially when its mostly single characters moving and not a big formation (like much of warhammer is). Rulers tend to lead to overthinking, bad measuring, lost rulers, arguing over how many 10th of an inch away a character is within/out-of the range of the spell, etc. where you measure from, how bent the ruler is, how much of the base the rule can hit, did you just bump the figure out of range, these are all questions that will start to get intense towards the end of a close match. If you have a mature group that doesn't split hairs too badly, you can do it, but expect moves and actions with range to take two to three times as long, if not twenty.

In general squares are great in that they don't leave range to chance/eyeballing. They are consistant .

 

[Zaruthustran]

I've played 3.5 off the grid. It works fine for quick combats (like, say, vs. low-level mooks) or for framing the "blocking" of a tense noncombat encounter that could turn deadly at any moment. But for big fights, or important "boss" battles, I prefer to use the battlemat.

 

[Simm]

I've played by the tape and found it different but no harder than a battlemat. Some things, like the edge of ranges are more difficult but they are compensated by irregularly shaped objects no being squared off.

Admission of guilt: I entered D&D though Warhammer and 40k and most of the group I played with without a map were also Warhammer players so we were used to adjudicating. Measurement disputes.

 

[arscott]

I've used a tape for modern and future games, and it works well in those circumstances. Once you deal with Melee Combat and Opportunity Attacks on a regular basis, it gets more complicated.

 

[Nine Hands]

I ran a game at TotalCon last week where I didn't use a battlemap, just threw some counters down and counted "squares" with my finger. Relatively easy to do. In all honesty as long as you are consistent enough with the "measurement" (even if said measurement is done by the Mk 1 eyeball) the game can be easily played.