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<blockquote data-quote="MerricB" data-source="post: 5204331" data-attributes="member: 3586">I believe it can be done. Indeed, I do it with 4e. However......either it requires the DM to make a virtual grid in his head, or......occasionally it won't make sense if the DM were to try to plot out the movements of the opponents.In the first case, you're still using miniatures, but just in the &quot;blindfold chess&quot; manner.In the second case, you can formulate some simple rules to allow those three things to occur. To give an example - which is a fairly good representation of how I might do it, although the first case describes my &quot;combat without 'real' minis better&quot; - you can call each PC to be &quot;adjacent&quot; which can then (with a shift) be upgraded to &quot;advantage&quot; and finally &quot;flanking&quot;. Or they can forgo the shift and just move to flanking... albeit with an opportunity attack allowed.Exceptions can be added: you can't move to &quot;advantage&quot; when the monster has two of its allies adjacent to it. However, there is a basis of a system there that allows combat without minis and with a certain abstraction of movement.Whether this is actually desirable is another matter entirely. It should be noted that in AD&amp;D, by my reading of it, characters really have two states: engaged in melee or not (although disengaged includes range to the opponents). Once you're in the melee... getting out is quite unlikely. Mostly you pick an opponent and trade blows until one is dead - with missile attacks hitting random targets in the melee (DMG pg 63)... and the choice of initial opponent in melee may well be random as well (DMG pg.73)Cheers!</blockquote>

[QUOTE="MerricB, post: 5204331, member: 3586"] I believe it can be done. Indeed, I do it with 4e. However... ...either it requires the DM to make a virtual grid in his head, or... ...occasionally it won't make sense if the DM were to try to plot out the movements of the opponents. In the first case, you're [i]still[/i] using miniatures, but just in the "blindfold chess" manner. In the second case, you can formulate some simple rules to allow those three things to occur. To give an example - which is a fairly good representation of how I might do it, although the first case describes my "combat without 'real' minis better" - you can call each PC to be "adjacent" which can then (with a shift) be upgraded to "advantage" and finally "flanking". Or they can forgo the shift and just move to flanking... albeit with an opportunity attack allowed. Exceptions can be added: you can't move to "advantage" when the monster has two of its allies adjacent to it. However, there is a basis of a system there that allows combat without minis and with a certain abstraction of movement. Whether this is actually desirable is another matter entirely. It should be noted that in AD&D, by my reading of it, characters really have two states: engaged in melee or not (although disengaged includes range to the opponents). Once you're in the melee... getting out is quite unlikely. Mostly you pick an opponent and trade blows until one is dead - with missile attacks hitting random targets in the melee (DMG pg 63)... and the choice of initial opponent in melee may well be random as well (DMG pg.73) Cheers! [/QUOTE]

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