To grid or not to grid. New staff blog . April 11

[sheadunne]

I switched to 3x specifically for grid combat. I'd hate to lose it now.

 

[dkyle]

For me, ideally, it would be possible to scale from quick, easy theater of the mind fights, all the way to full-blown 4E-style set pieces. My biggest concern as a DM, though, is not invalidating the character building choices the players made, and screwing them over by putting them in a simple combat where they can't use all their abilities properly.

One way to resolve that would be to scale the stakes down, along with the combat complexity. Have the simple combats be about resource consumption, with no chance for character death (but if the simple combat starts swinging against the party to the point where death should be a possibility, then switch to the complex system to resolve the rest of the combat). This could also tie into supporting CaW approaches; with enough preparation and planning, even a boss encounter could end up being a simple fight.

 

[Mengu]

Whatever is appropriate for the scenario. In my 4e game, I have used TotM, I have used abstractions to where I turned combat into skill challenge, I have used zone systems (though I didn't realize they were called that), and I of course typically use the full on battle grid.

I think I would like it better if multiple methods of resolution were an option in the core of the game. I think each conflict deserves a different time commitment and corresponding approach. Skirmishes that are meant to just deplete some resources but not pose a major threat should be tactically simple to deal with, and fast to resolve, so TotM would work great for those. A battle that involves rescuing children from a burning orphanage while under attack by flaming skeletons during an earthquake while a pyromancer wraps the building in fire, might be best dealt with using a zone system. A stop-the-ritual type battle that involves multiple enemies, a damsel in distress, and some explosive components and traps laying about the room, might be best dealt with on a grid, so everyone knows precisely where the traps, explosives, damsel, ritual caster, and enemies are.

I guess I'd be a proponent of using the right tool for the job.

 

[I'm A Banana]

For me, precision helps, rather than detriments, my creativity, and makes everything run much faster and more fluidly, and makes for a much more interesting mental picture. It's one of those things that varies heavily between individuals. All the more reason for options, I suppose.

Yeah, it's one of those things that isn't really a rational desire one way or the other, but is really an emotional, subjective thing. I'm probably never going to convince anyone that loves their minis-and-grid that my abstract cinematic awesome is as awesome as I think it is. Likewise, no one is going to convince me that plastic and measuring tape is going to help my game.

It's a way-of-thinking kind of issue. Some people want that specificity and detail, and have trouble having fun without it. Others cannot stand being tethered to the plastic, and have trouble having fun WITH it.

Which is why everything needs to be a choice. Even minion skirmishes need to be able to be done with minis, and even big, epic, strategic battles need to be done without. It's hard to say "This battle needs minis, this battle doesn't," because as far as I'm concerned, NO battle needs minis, and as far as others are concerned, EVERY battle could use minis.

There's no One Right Way To Do It. It needs to be variable at each level.

 

[Savage Wombat]

I always gird. You can't have stuff flapping around under your armor while you're trying to fight, you'll ...

Oh, wait, never mind.

 

[dkyle]

Which is why everything needs to be a choice. Even minion skirmishes need to be able to be done with minis, and even big, epic, strategic battles need to be done without. It's hard to say "This battle needs minis, this battle doesn't," because as far as I'm concerned, NO battle needs minis, and as far as others are concerned, EVERY battle could use minis.

The problem is that mechanics that work well for ToM are inherently easy to use with a grid as well, but mechanics that work well with a grid can be very hard to use fully in ToM. So a single game that supports both can really only be a ToM game. I don't like minis just for the sake of minis; I like the mechanics that grids allow, that rely on precise positioning.

Of course, we could have different sets of mechanics, for ToM and grid, but that adds a lot of complication to the game design, and to playtesting for balance. My concern is that 5E will end up with a bullet point of "you can use minis if you want!", but take the easy route and design everything to be accessible in ToM.

 

[Gundark]

Not sure if you intended it as such, but this is a valid issue.

I also have a completely sincere question that came to me as I was reading the "whatever works for the situation" proposal. If you're using TotM for the battles that don't require much precision or thought and grids for more complex ones, then presumably these TotM battles are ones that the DM is sure the players are going to win. So, my question is, why have such battles that amount to minor speed bumps at all? Isn't it just a way of drawing out the inevitable "Orcs charge you from around the corner, but you kill them easily. What do you do now?" If all that stands between "orcs attack" and "you kill them" is a few dice rolls, while other battles require significantly more time and effort, why have the simpler ones at all? Why not make every combat encounter equally complex (if not equally difficult)?

Or is the suggestion instead: All combat should be difficult, but some is straightforward (e.g. orcs charge you from the other end of a long hallway) while some is complex (necromancer down below, skeleton archers swinging from the chandeliers up top, difficult terrain + environmental hazards around)?

While valid, it also runs into a problem that we saw in past editions. If all combats are difficult do they become complex? Do we face analysis paralysis as a wrong move could end up being bad? Ultimately do combats begin to drag and we get caught up in the grind again?

I also can see your point. With the 4 hit point mooks is it even worth rolling initiative? It is if there is say 20 of them, but if not...it is kind of a waste of time to go into combat either with TotM or Grid to kill the two 4 hp goblins guarding the pie.

Maybe there needs to be some kind of narrative method, or some kind of abstract dice roll against some kind of DC. This roll represents how the battle went. A totally bad roll means that you killed the mooks fast but someone takes damage and the rest of the dungeon is alerted to the party's presence, a close failure means that you killed the mooks and someone takes a damage roll, and success on the roll means mooks are dead without the party expending much in the way of resources.

Not everybody would find this desirable, but it does help to fix the "why bother?" aspect of speedbump encounters.

 

[Lanefan]

Ever since day 1 we've used minis on a chalkboard with a permanent grid drawn on it; however, the grid is in 10' square scale rather than 5' as it's intended more as an aid to mapping and visualization. (and, it's 50% easier to draw!)

3e's manner of insisting only one person can occupy a 5' square (as opposed to, say, 3 people fighting side by side in a 10' passage), and 4e's desire to cubify everything and count squares rather than feet, both fall in the category of grid-over-logic as far as I'm concerned.

Lanefan

 

[Steely_Dan]

I/we never used grids/minis until 3rd Ed (been playing since 1987), then we felt we had to, I have had fun with grids/minis for 12 years, but have grown a bit disillusioned with them (4th Ed, which is great in many ways, just became too much, really felt like i was playing a skirmish board-game at certain times).

Totally digging this Zone deal (definitely want to implement some zone type action the next time I run a session).

 

[Agamon]

I've used grid and minis since I started back in '81. But it's come to a point where I just don't want to any more. If I want to play something tactical, there are a great many board games that are much better at it than any version of D&D. And I think I've been spoiled there, as I've gotten bored with long tactical combats in my RPGs, as they just don't stack up. I prefer something shorter, simpler and more descriptive, and I'm glad DDN will have a no minis option, that assures that I'll give it a try during the playtest.