BryonD said:
Here is why I am not "getting" your point.
If you really believe these things to be wholly true you are either fooling yourself or unaware of what you are missing. You are taking out a significant section of the combat rules. It is impossible to maintain the full value of the tactical aspect of the game if the scaling becomes a subjective matter maintained individually by each person playing in accordance with their own individual imagination. The most brilliant and benevolent DM in the world can not maintain an objective track of whether every combatant is within range of charging every possible other and has a clear line in which to charge. When AoOs occur. Who has a chance to cleave or great cleave. Just saying, "I move into range to charge next turn." "Oh, OK" or "Sorry you can't" may be every bit as fun as using an objective scale, but it is not the same tactically.
The combat section of 3E IS a mini wargame.
And just to go into broken record mode for a moment, I'll say again that I don't think reducing the focus on any of these things makes the game even slightly less fun and I can completely understand how pointing the PH default level of focus on the could actually reduce the fun for some people. But if I say, "OK, fine, you like a less tactically strict game.", I can't see why you start protesting.
Our game doesn't lose anything in the area of tactics, we don't skip or change rules, I freely admit that we use maps and diagrams. We just don't use the grid or the minatures. Why is it such a far reach that we can deal with the distance problem with out having a grid, or that we can figure out the radius of a fireball without the grid. It's already been stated that the grid is just a estimation, that it isn't exact either so why is it such a stretch that we can game without having a grid in front of us. We have no problem with distance or attacks of opportunity or cleave, we maintain a very objective view of what is going on whether we have a map or not. The last game we played had three different charge attacks in it that went off without a problem, we had a running battle with a invisible stalker that carried over onto three different levels of a tomb, there was sprinting and charging and area attacks, there was flanking and attacks of opportunity, there was a attempted grapple lots of bow fire and I could go on and on, for all of this we used the rules in the book.
Players handbook Pg. 116 diagram of example of combat, no grid on the map. Pg. 122 Threatened area and flanking, no grid; pg 123 Ranged weapon attacks, no grid;Pg 138 grenade like weapons, no grid; pg 149 spell area, no grid; Pg 181 burning hands, no grid; pg 185 color spray, no grid; pg 204 Fireball, no grid. Finally pg 227 Meteor swarm patters ther is a grid but the overlays on the grid are round and don't actually conform to the grid spaces. Page 117 Minatures: "When you use minatures to keep track of where characters and monsters are, use a scale of 1 inch = 5 feet." No mention of a grid there, just a scale from inches to feet. Pg 126 Minatures: "use minatures to show the relative positions of the combatants. It's a lot faster to place a minature where you want your character to be than to explain (and remember) where your character is relative to everyone else." Well that sort of sounds like your point but where is the mention of a grid? it says "relative position" well by that I could just put pennies on a table that are roughly where everybody would be standing. Oh wait here it is Pg 130 "The Dungeon Masters guide has guidelines for using a tabletop grid to regulate movement, position, and related issues." The grid is so important to the combat rules in the Players handbook that they didn't even include them in the book? I mean if these rules must use a grid to be right so why do they only mention it once by saying to check another book for that. I tell you what you find one rule in the Players handbook that states that a grid must be used with this rule or it will not work and I will agree with what you are saying. Just one rule that says you must use the grid for this, there is no other way to use this rule but with a grid.
Dungeon Masters Guide: "While this is a game of imagination, props and visual aids can help everyone imagine the same thing, avoid confusion, and enhance the entire game play experience. IF you use minatures or counters as described in Chapter 1: Dungeon Mastering, use the following guidelines to assist tactical-level play." Lot of cans and ifs in there but no must or only. Heck it even gives a scale for using the minatures without the grid in the DMG too. I agree with what is said in the books about the grid I am not arguing that it can't help people in these situations I am just arguing against the statement that you can't play the game without the grid unless you change or ignore the rules of combat. We use the rules in the Players handbook as they are written, exactly as they are written.
Yes it does seem that there is a definate slant towards using minatures in the books, but up until I started looking a few minutes ago I thougth it was much greater myself, minatures are rarely mentioned and the grid gets 3 pages in the DMG, that's it. I really think you think we are just sitting around a table saying "I hit the Orc" without any idea what things look like. I have said it in every post so far and I'll say it again, In large battle situations we will use a rough drawn map or a scratch sheet of paper. In Important battles we do use a visual aid, we just don't use a measuring aid. Heck sometimes if it's a really convoluted fight we will put our initials on the map where our characters are standing. Why is it so hard for you to believe that we can figure out distance good enough just by eyeballing a map to make the rules work? Why is it so hard to believe that the DM can keep track of who is standing where when 4 characters fight one dragon in a cave, in his head; or that we can get though a encounter that last three rounds of combat without measuring out every single move we make on a grid.
Your use of the term "number crunching exercise" tells me that you do not understand what you have left out.
Actually where you got that quote from was where I was talking about descriptions not the grid. That statement was not about the grid argument. Maybe I shouldn't of used that term but what I meant to say in the simplist way I can think of is this: "Keeping the game interesting for the players is more important than keeping the game in precise scale."
I am an engineer and I crunch numbers a lot. Sometimes I even enjoy it.
I am a industrial hygienist and a safety engineer, My Dad is a welding engineer, my uncle is an engineer and my Mom's has dated a engineer for 20 years. My Grandfather holds a patent on a design for a nuclear car engine that he got in his spare time just for something to do after he retired. My grandmother was a secretary in Oak Ridge for one of the scientist who worked on the Manhatten project during World War 2. What does all this have to do with grids in a game or how you describe the contents of a dungeon to your players?
I use a grid and I have never done anything anywhere near number cruching during tactical combat. It almost like you are saying you don't like watching TV because the water is to cold. I'd reply "What water?" Well, my reply here is, "What number crunching?" How can there be to much when there isn't any?
I apologise for using the term number crunching, but your attack on that one little term instead of the actual meaning I was trying to get across means one of two things; you didn't get what I was saying or you are just nit-picking on one term in a paragraph. I don't care if you number crunch or not during tactical combat, that had nothing at all to do with what I was trying (and obviously failing) to say, I never said or even implied that you have to number crunch during tactical combat I said that D&D "is not a number crunching exercise." You keep dragging my statements into a anti grid stance or into a negative attack on how you game, they are not. I am just stating that content is what is important, tactical situations are a small part of the game, that is unless you are only gaming for the fights and care little or nothing for the story of why you are fighting or how you got there to start with. It is not a part of the pro/con arguement it is a statement explaining why I think the whole argument is way overblown and basically unimportant.
So, bottom line, I think you had a bad exerience or two with someone using a grid and now you have a flawed view of what that really means.
I love Battletech, used to play quite a bit in college, I would kill for somebody to game Mekton with me, I thoroughly enjoy tactical games such as Axis and Allies(in ten years I've never been beaten) and Supremacy, I never tried Chainmail and I never got to play Warhammer as my friend who played it moved away before I could try it. Some of my friends want to try Heroclix (same friends that disliked the grid in D&D). I love computer games that are tactical like Panzer General and will play a good strategy game for days or weeks even. I am in no way against tactical games or games that use a grid. It has nothing to do with not liking that style of game.
When we used the grid it took away from the players immersion into their characters, they started to play out moves in a way that had little to do with how their characters would think and gave them a view their characters would not have, not to mention it allowed them to sit and study a situation that in the game would only last 6 seconds. It just became a distraction. Yes maybe we could of given it more of a chance and maybe if we had gamed with it for months we could of gotten used to it, but we figured why bother we know what we are doing without it, not to mention we normally play in a living room while sitting on couches and recliners, a huge grid map does not work well in that enviroment, a scribbled map on a clipboard that we can pass around the room works just fine. Our "bad" experience had nothing to do with not liking a tactical game, it was all about it changing the way we got into our characters during combat (most of my group do {or did} theater, they really get into their characters.) The grid became a distraction from the game instead of a helpful tool. It did not change the way our game went nor did it change the way we used the rules, it was just a distraction to the role playing aspect of our game.
Heck, go back to the Monte column that YOU, brought up as evidence. His conclusion, it doesn't hurt anything, but you do have to give up some of the tactical rules. Which is exactly what I have been saying.
Yes and I am saying that you don't need the grid and the minatures to use every rule in the book as they are written. I am not saying you can play the whole game with everybody making up combat in their head, I am saying that a rough map on a sheet of notebook paper and some common sense will work just as well and that most combat is either so quick or so easy you don't even need that. Everybody seems to be combining the grid with the map and that has nothing at all to do with what I am saying. There is nothing wrong with a rough map or a diagram to insure there is no confusion but I can estimate the difference between five feet and ten feet on a rough sketch on old notebook paper close enough without having to have a grid to measure it, and if combat is only going to last 2 or 3 rounds or we are fighting one huge creature in a cave then who cares if you are 7 feet away or 9 feet away when you charge I can do it in my head and not loose anything from the game.
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