What are your feelings on combat mats?

[Strider The Ranger]

On Mats

Maraxle- on mine, wet erase markers work quite well. Just make sure to not let them sit too long. SO if you need that mark on the map, erase it every so often and re-apply it.

On that note, I also like mats. I think it provides a good strategic visualization of the battle. I completely hear your arguments that it dulls down the game and can make the game less about imagination. But in my experience, this actually wasn't the case. I also found that it made the players less irksome to one another because the mage doesn't always end up fireballing them.
I've also found it extremely easy to work with on larger battles. It was always so hard to remember all the positions of 100 people without it. Now with the map, its not that hard.
As to the imagination thing, encourage your players to visualize the battle rather than just seeing the pieces. Toss in exciting descriptions and I'm sure it'll be just as fun.

 

[Dextolen]

I have played many different rpgs, with and without minis/mats/etc. Some work fine but 3rd edition requires tabletop representation, with measurements.

If you are playing 3rd edition D&D without a mat, graph pad or in the least a ruler, you and your fellow players are really not playing 3rd edition.

1. Too many character abilities, spells and such absolutely depend on knowing where you are in relation to your opponent and environment. Flanking, attacks of opportunity, reach, jumping, cleaving, weapon ranges, spell effects ALL depend on the grid.

2. Narrative combat comes down to "the most talkative player is most effective". Not everyone can describe their combat in descriptive detail.

You are cheating your players and yourself if you don't use them, if only during combat.

 

[mmu1]

I think battle mats and miniatures are the only way to fly. They actually allow for tactical combat, instead of a huge game of cops and robbers with a few die rolls thrown in.

While I'm a big supporter of describing your actions in creative ways, there's no reason why you can't do that AND use a battle mat and minis for clarity... Because the problem with having character do "cool" things without needing to roll for them is that, more often then not, it means giving them some kind of advantage (usually in terms of extra actions, mobility, or getting around the fact that they're actually completely inept in some area), in effect penalizing people who either don't feel like hamming it up or simply can't be quite as "cool" and colorful in their descriptions - this sort of stuff is what XP bonuses for good or interesting role-playing are for.

And while I'm sure there might be groups in which this kind of play works quite well, I've seen it abused enough times, that it's not going to make its way into my game... Clearly defining where everyone is and what they're affected by keeps things fair, keeps the DM from marginalizing the more quiet players, and people trying to do algebra when figuring out where to center a spell or arguing for half an hour how to stand in front of a door is only a problem if you can't control your own game.

 

[S'mon]

Re: Re: What are your feelings on combat matts?

Oh, and we like to leave the figures of the defeated foes laying prone on the mat so we can see the devastation our mighty heroes have wrought!

Always a good reason for using minis.
I always use minis & floorplans for D&D these days, but I don't use a battlemap - some of the GMs at Gencon UK used them and I thought they looked really ugly. If all it is is some black felt tip lines scrawled on a matt, I'd rather do withour. I like GW dungeon floorplans, 3D doors, wirebrush trees, the works.

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

What I meant was that in some cases, continually using the mat instead of relying on great description meant that I felt I was falling into the trap of looking at some lines on a piece of paper and basing my actions on that rather than applying my imagination to the combat at hand. This, of course, is partly my fault, but the mat can encourage that type of thinking if it's overused.

My personal preference would be for a game that didn't use the mat apart from either big, or really important battles, or battles that had a very specific scenario (say, a battle on a bridge over a lava pool) that required everyone to know exactly where they stood, so to speak.

But mostly the campaigns I play in get by without one.

 

[Zappo]

I love mats! I use whiteboards and erasable markers, and I use them for all battles (well, unless it's one character against one other in a flat plain), as well as to better explain the environment.

My quick and schematic drawings hardly limit anyone's imagination, but they do provide all the mentioned advantages. No more "but I thought he was...", different speeds become more important, and the combat is overall faster. All of that is magnified when the environment itself is complex or hostile. I can draw walkways, lava pits, whatever.

While they are certainly not neede, they sure help a lot.

 

[evil_rmf]

Never used mats in DnD, or AD&D 1E. When I decided to give 3E a try, I bought one. So far, It's been pretty handy for resolving flanking, etc... As a DM, it has made me play some of the monsters smarter.

I too, have had some of the fretting over maneuvers. I solved that with one phrase: "make up your mind now."

That has seemed to solve the problem. The players think through battles now, without agonizing over every step.

Overall, I'd say that the mat has been a success, but can't decide if we would miss them if we weren't using them.

 

[Aluvial]

I use a huge dry-erase board with a 1" grid on it. It takes up most of the table and is good for combat. I don't have any problems with metabattling.

As for loss of imagination, I'm not sure I can trade the functionabillity of line of sight, character placement (NO! I was over here, I thought YOU were over there!), and general confusion is causes with AoO's in the new system.

I NEVER used miniatures until this version of the game and my combats were rich and detailed. I thought that the new rules were designed for miniatures and I balked at the cost. It always falls to me to supply the creatures. But then I started to have multiple LARGE battles in a gaming session instead of one battle over two and half sessions. The value of the new rules and the clearness of character placement I think enhances my Player's imaginations. They see there little mini scaled next to ogre's chargeing and they think, "Oh crap, we're in for it."

In the old game without mats and mini's they would have said, "Oh, ogres, ok, let's get this over with," even if it was a dangerous encounter.

As far as I'm concerned, mats (or in my case, huge dry-erase board) has only helped me get through combats quicker and easier, there isn't as much rules confusion, and combats move much, much quicker

Aluvial

 

[KnowTheToe]

It has been so long since I had not used a mat, I nearly forgot that you could play without one. The tactical rules of strict 3E require you to use a mat or a tape measure/ruler.

Mats can lead to meta battleing, especially when avoiding AoO or dropping area effect spells, but overall really adds a visual dimension to combat that I have come to really appreciate.

 

[kengar]

I always use the mat, too much in the rules requires exact distances. I'm also a mini painter, so I have that much more excuse to pull out the latest batch of baddies I've been painting.

That said, I wish I had the time and space to make more scenery. I'd love to set up wargame-style "Terrain" and have folks not sweat the "grid" and measure distances with a tape. Like in Chainmail, there'd be no "pre-measuring", of course; "Oh, you charge the troll? OK, let's see, (zip! goes the tape measure) nope! You can't quite reach him this round. Who's next!"