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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 5701979" data-attributes="member: 2067">Well, yeah, that's kind of the guy's point. He's all, "It doesn't make any logical sense!", and everyone else is all, "IT MAKES LOGICAL SENSE, LOOK AT REAL LIFE!", and he's all, "Okay, where does it happen in real life?", and everyone else is all, "LOL U WANT REALISM IN PIXIES." And I do this:<img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_gWQaU40PH24/TSOSVuF5fvI/AAAAAAAAKBo/FzxUm6ozKNo/s1600/facepalm111.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />It's like watching a mentally handicapped ettin debate which part of the halfling to eat first. "I'm gonna take the left flank."; "NO! THAT IS THE BEST PART!"; "Oh, okay you can have it."; "DON'T GIVE THAT TO ME IT IS THE WORST PART!"When 5e comes, as it sooner or later inevitably will, I hope one of the things they seriously get right is how to do combat without having to do the detailed simulation of a grid. [sblock=RANT MODE ON]All of these problems (and the problems with a longspear!) come from the predilection of the game to want to be HIGHLY REALISTIC about fantasy combat with wizards and dragons, so much so that it cares about what 5' box you occupy and how long your weapon is and how you cover distance.In a more cinematic combat system, none of this is an issue. Forex, in FFZ, a flying creature has a row placement just like any other: front or back. Any creature can hit them with a melee attack, regardless of what row they are in. If they're in the "back row," they just take less damage from melee attacks (and deal less damage with their own). It's described as the combat being abstract, not about exact placement or space: a fighter who whacks our flying back row pixie with a sword is described as taking a flying leap into the air, throwing his sword at the bugger, and catching it when it comes down, for instance. Or waiting until it comes within range (since everyone is constantly moving), then taking a swing at it. Yeah, that's not necessarily realistic, but it is very cinematic! It was built with the idea of extremely flexible character types in mind: you could be a sword-wielding knight, or a sentient talking dog, or a robot stuffed animal from a theme park, or...FFZ locates the strategy of combat in "role selection" (do I heal this round? Defend? Or go all out? Or incapacitate the enemy?) in initiative tricks (how many attacks do I want now? What if I need to heal later?), and in rock-paper-scissors weaknesses (Ranged attacker vs. flying critter! Mage vs. physically-resistant critter! Tank vs. Brute! Skirmisher vs. Skirmisher!) so it's a different sort of strategy, but it's still pretty strategic.D&D really has a legacy with the minis grid, and I know a lot of people heart it, and it should be preserved in some fashion, but so many compromises need to be made (as is evidenced with the Pixie) that to me, from the outside looking in, it hardly seems worth it for my games. I'd like to be able to play D&D without worrying about these fiddly bits of simulationist combat blah blah blah, because I would like a game where I could play a pixie with a longspear, or talking psionic housecat, and not have to worry that my character concept breaks the thing.[/sblock]</blockquote>

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