D&D 3E/3.5 What impact would 4E movement have in 3.5

[Ruined]

Hi guys. I'm enamored with what we've heard about the simpler movement system in 4E, where all diagonals cost 1 square/5 foot, the same as horizontal and vertical moves. I know over the years we've gotten used to counting 5', 15', 20', 30', but it's jarring at times and slows play down.

So I come to you to see what you think the repercussions would be if I were to adopt the system where all movements from one square to the next equal 5 feet. I mentioned it to my players in passing. One seemed to think that the higher movement characters (monks, barbarians) would excel much more with this ruling, but I'm not sold.

Any ideas?

 

[Triangleman27]

Personally, I always had a low opinion of the thick wargame influence of D&D and I commend WotC for alleviating it.

Heck, I was you I wouldn't even be using graph paper maps.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

Well it should make things faster even if parts of it are counter-intuitive.

Personally I'll stick with hexes for indoors and short tape measures for outdoor adventuring.

 

[Herzog]

I prefer hexes myself (for outdoors too)

However, all the groups I play with use squares, and I have to agree the diagonal movement rules tend to slow things down. Even worse when some part of those diagonal moves are across difficult terrain.....

I'd go with hexes if I were you...

 

[Archade]

Back when 3.0 came out, I did outdoor encounters with measuring tapes and my Warhammer terrain ... it didn't work too badly.

I had to eyeball threatened areas, and I gave people saving vs templated effects a +2 if they were only partially in the blast zone, but otherwise, it was fine.

 

[RangerWickett]

Circles would be square. A 20-ft. radius fireball would be have straight lines for its edges, because drawing out 20 ft. from the center would create a line.

 

[evilbob]

The biggest changes, in my opinion, would be to three things: reach, AoE spells as RangerWickett mentioned, and contrary to what your friend said - slow moving characters.

Most D&D battles - and this is a huge generalization, but I think it's pretty fair to include "most" as a qualfier here - are not played in large, expansive areas, but in small, cramped ones. Castles, dungeons, forest clearings, buildings... These are your battlefields. Ironically, battlefields are not.

This means that fast characters won't care, because they're already fast enough. They can already get all the places they need to go, so it won't really effect them. Slow characters, on the other hand, will have a boost. Suddenly the 20' movement cleric will be able to GET to the person who's down; now the fighter can close on the mage; etc. It won't be huge, and if they're dropping it in 4E the 4E guys obviously didn't think it was big enough to matter, but there you go. Halflings rejoice.

AoE spells will not be square, which is just odd-looking, but that's not really any more odd-looking than the huge cut-out you have to use just to judge them now. In fact, it should speed up AoE placement because everyone will know what it will look like, easily. Big plus. Although AoE spells will also be much bigger, which will give them a boost.

And it will mean that reach will be even more powerful. Now, you won't be able to skate diagonally into a creature with a 10' reach without an AoO. This means, since most players are medium or smaller and most monsters are medium or larger, that monsters will also get a boost. Again, it's not much, but it will be there. (And in 4E they're changing AoOs a lot, so maybe that fixes this balance issue somehow.)

Personally, I don't think I would mind the change, because I don't think it will hurt many things and I think the ease in bookkeeping is worth it. However, I can see it honestly being a bit of an issue in a game where the players are all used to counting a certain way: you're going to end up wasting just as much time early on re-counting as you'll save for quite some time using the new way.

 

[Ruined]

Thanks Evilbob (and the others who chimed in). Those are the mechanics that I was really looking for. I'll see if my players are up for the adjustments.