Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mephistopheles" data-source="post: 4089025" data-attributes="member: 4460">I was going to elaborate a little on my one line response anyway so I'm glad you asked. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />I think the move to a greater reliance on miniatures and a battle map has something to do with the perceived design goals of empowering players with more concrete choices and simultaneously proofing the game somewhat against "bad DMs" as much as any real requirement dictated by the complexity of the rules.For example, if the players feel that they can trust their DM the following exchange is fine:Wizard: I'd like to cast a fireball on as many enemies as possible. How many can I get?DM: Hmm, you can get 10 goblins but you might hit your allies in melee, or 5 if you don't want to risk hitting your allies.Wizard: Hmm, what about the goblin leader?DM: If you target him you'll hit him along with his 2 bodyguards.And the player then takes his pick on the basis that the accuracy isn't important, he's got a few options and his spell will make a good contribution to the outcome of the battle.By using miniatures and a battle map the arbitration shifts towards the lay of the battle map. The accuracy is greater and the player is less likely to feel that the DM is short-changing him (if he was inclined to feel that way for whatever reason).So I can agree that miniatures and a battle map have merits but I've also experienced the merits of the style of play that comes with not using them. My own experience has been that combats have become longer in real time as the battle map encourages more tactical thought and attempts to optimise actions, while combats without them gave me a greater sense of "ownership" of the combat in the imaginative sense and were a lot quicker to resolve.</blockquote>

Verification