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Message: <blockquote data-quote="KidSnide" data-source="post: 6334115" data-attributes="member: 54710">First, consider whether TotM is the best way to run combats with tactically minded players.  I prefer TotM to battlemaps, but that's because I don't like spending time waiting for my players to count squares or figure out which one is better.  If your players do that quickly and efficiently, TotM has less benefit.That being said, you have two major options.  One is to have a "rough battlemap" that describes the relative position of the characters without worrying too much about scale.  If a character wants to AoE on an cluster of targets, you let any plausible arrangement work.  The second option is just to be generous and offer interesting choices.  If the bad guys attacked from the front, they let the PCs get them all.  If the bad guys are surrounding the PCs, then let an AoE affect a good chunk of the bad guys.  I would also offer choices about whether you are willing to include the PCs to get more bad guy targets.  You might say: you can get two goblins playing it safe, a third if you're willing to put the fighter in the AoE or all the goblins if you're willing to ground zero the sleep spell in the middle of the party.Either way, "saying yes" is the key technique of TotM.  If the player wants to perform a maneuver or AoE trick that sounds plausible, then let it work.  If the scheme doesn't really match the situation, but is cool and isn't totally implausible, let the character roll an athletics check (for a physical maneuver) or a spellcasting stat check (for a magical manipulation) to see if they can pull it off.-KS</blockquote>

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