D&D 5E Theatre of the Mind - How Are You Handling Spell Effects?

[MortalPlague]

I'd like to chime in to say that I'm also finding this thread to be useful. Very good advice in here! My groups are too in love with the battlemat to seriously consider TotM, but we did try it out during the playtest and it worked out fairly well. We'll usually use it for a battle that's not very interesting from a tactical standpoint; for instance, a band of orcs charge the party from the front. Nothing fancy, just a bit of a slugfest. Easy enough to run it TotM rather than breaking out the battlemat and miniatures.

 

[PinkRose]

Remember it isn't a binary choice either.
Back when I started running AD&D, I used pennies on a scribbled map. Not precise at all, but more exact that TotM.

Though there were incidents like this...
"Of course my rogue is hiding behind this big tree."
"What do you mean tree? That's a Pepsi stain."
"Oops. Roll for damage."

 

[MerricB]

I wander back between using miniatures and not using them. I've identified four main ways of running D&D combat - miniatures with grid, miniatures without grid, the DM keeps track of everything (Blindfold Chess), and an abstract form where not even the DM is sure of where everyone is! I've used all four at various times during my career as a DM - occasionally two forms in the same session!

When I'm not keeping exact track of where everyone is, I tend to make up numbers that sound good and favour the players - though not to the extent of causing a slaughter of the monsters unless it seems likely that should happen. So much of the numbers I choose depends on experience. If the goblins are scattered about an area twice the area of the fireball, then a fireball will likely hit half of them. How many could the spell affect if it went really well? Perhaps it gets 60-70% of that...

It's tricky though, and I'm not surprised that many players prefer to have miniatures on the table.

Cheers!