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Jan 3, 2012 -- 12:49PM, ankiyavon wrote:

I always used to track distances in 2E using a Cartesian grid.  I'd pick some arbitrary point to be (0, 0), and write everyone's distances from that arbitrary point as their coordinates.

So if the point I pick is 'the desecrated altar', and the evil priest is (4, 9) while the fighter is (4, 7) and the priest's skeletal minions are (3, 5) and (7, 9) while the wizard is at (-40, 30); a fireball is perfectly safe, it won't hit the wizard and the fighter can take it

Had a guy did the same thing. Works pretty well.

Jan 3, 2012 -- 2:00PM, Kalex_the_Omen wrote:

Jan 3, 2012 -- 11:58AM, mbeacom wrote:

We weren't trying to drop a fireball that included a bad guy but avoided a good guy 3 inches away. We all agreed that was a pretty lame abuse of the rules. We wouldn't try to do that with or without a grid.

It's not a lame abuse.  Wizards should know how to cast their spells and have at least some understanding of how to do so with the really destructive ones so as not to hurt themselves or their allies.  Wizards without that skill wouldn't last very long.  I think this is where you and I fundamentally disagree.  I play my monsters as if they were skilled enough to have survived in a harsh world long enough to face the heroes.  The heroes should be played with at least that much skill at their chosen profession.  To you being that precise all the time isn't necessary, therefore you can dispense with the RAW of every edition of D&D from 1e to 4e and be happy.  Me and my groups did that for about a year rom 1979 to 1980 and decided we needed more precision, so we read up on the rules and figured out how to implment them to provided that precision.

We definitely disagree. No doubt about it. My group never dispensed with RAW. Quite the contrary. Looking back, I kind of wish we would have. I had more fun later when I eventually did. We were very precise. But 3 inches on a fireball? No, we definitely didn't try to make that distinction. And I'll reiterate that to do so feels like an abuse of something that wild and powerful.  If you did so and enjoyed it, that's great, but it sure wasn't like any RAW I ever saw. But if you enjoyed that kind of fudging, more power to you. And certainly the idea that a magic user would NEED that kind of control to survive seems pretty ludicrous to me. I've always envisioned magic users as experimentalists, brilliant minds toying with something even they couldn't quite understand (kind of like Oppenheimer and Fermi). Much of what they do is simply unleashing raw power. Sure, they have some control, but they may die from their own power as readily as their enemies. This is what the feel of the rules conveyed to me anyway.

Jan 3, 2012 -- 2:38PM, Kalex_the_Omen wrote:

Jan 3, 2012 -- 2:14PM, mbeacom wrote:

We definitely disagree. No doubt about it. My group never dispensed with RAW. Quite the contrary. Looking back, I kind of wish we would have. I had more fun later when I eventually did. We were very precise. But 3 inches on a fireball? No, we definitely didn't try to make that distinction. And I'll reiterate that to do so feels like an abuse of something that wild and powerful.  If you did so and enjoyed it, that's great, but it sure wasn't like any RAW I ever saw. But if you enjoyed that kind of fudging, more power to you. And certainly the idea that a magic user would NEED that kind of control to survive seems pretty ludicrous to me. I've always envisioned magic users as experimentalists, brilliant minds toying with something even they couldn't quite understand (kind of like Oppenheimer and Fermi). Much of what they do is simply unleashing raw power. Sure, they have some control, but they may die from their own power as readily as their enemies. This is what the feel of the rules conveyed to me anyway.

I think we are coming to an understanding of each other, but I'm not sure if you are purposely misunderatanding some of the things I am saying or not.  Precision is gained by using the rules as written.  Tracking distance and areas with the precision that counting "game inches" provides.  Not using those tools is fudging.  I think it is okay to fudge as long as you have consensus around your table, but I've only ever seen that lead to arguments between two people who "imagined" things differently.  Maps and the precision of a grid or counting "game inches" leaves no ambiguity, thus no arguments.  The acuracy of the wizard is sort of a side topic, but does relate somewhat.  I have seen very creative placements of area damage spells, and I have seen placements that knowlingly damaged an ally because it was tactically the best move, but in all cases the player was able to make an informed decision because there was a concrete depiction of the battle.  Perhaps your players like a feeling of magic being wild and uncontrollable, and don't mind when they are injured by an ally through no deficiency of their own, but let me tell you IME your players would be in a minute minority.

As far as what AbdulAlhazred has been saying about the difference between 1e and 4e, I disagree.  If you don't mind not worrying too much about being perfectly accurate both can be played equally as well without a grid.  In the same way that a DM in 1e might tell a player that his character is in the AoE of a Fireball, so too can he hand wave that in 4e should he choose.  That DM can ignore push effects, like in Tide of Iron because if the fighter follows the target the movement is kind of a wash as long as you don't care too much that both combatants have moved a little.

" Tracking distance and areas with the precision that counting "game inches" provides.  Not using those tools is fudging. "

We tracked distance and areas with this very precision. We simply converted to feet and did so descriptively. No fudging was necessary. I've played with groups who fudged, some more than others. Its fine. At this time, with this group, we did not fudge any distances or areas etc. It wasn't that difficult. There were no arguments because we weren't "imagining things differently". We were tracking real numbers. There was no ambiguity.  The players always made an informed decision. Worst case scenario might be, the wizard asks the rogue, "Hey how many feet are you from that altar because I'm gonna drop a fireball on it?". Beings the rogue always knew his position from the previously described moves, he could quickly and accurately answer. Answer within 3 real world inches? Absolutely not. Answer within 1 game mechanics inch? Absolutely.

And I'm with Abdul on the difference between 1E and 4E.

" If you don't mind not worrying too much about being perfectly accurate both can be played equally as well without a grid."

Thats technically true but VERY misleading so some things need to be clarified.

In 1E you can run gridless VERY easily if you're willing to dispense with some accuracy (or with no loss of accuracy with a bit of DM notes and simple distance descriptions in my groups case). I would say you could play the game at about 90% or with a 10% fudge factor with next to no effort. 4E on the other hand, if you were to run without a grid would require something like (arbitrary statement alert!) a 50% fudge factor and a massive loss of accuracy because so many powers literally HINGE on the grid. Tracking descriptively the way we did in 1E is incredibly difficult in 4E. Believe me, we've tried and spent hundreds of hours testing various techniques to try to ditch the grid. As someone who is pretty good running without a grid, I can say unequivocally that 4E is vastly more challenging to track without one. How many groups have you seen in 1E handwaiving the grid? In my case it was alot, most even. I've NEVER seen a 4E group handwaiving the grid. Ever. I think this is because the ruleset is vastly more difficult to, or is nearly rendered useless without it.

We've been back and forthing on fireball, probably one of the more complicated 1E spells as far as tracking what happens spacially. Yet EVERY race and class has similarly complicated grid based capabilities in 4E, even from a very low level and even on an at will basis. Maybe in a combat in 1E you have 1 or 2 fireballs to worry about (because by then everything is dead) sorting out who's where (and once you track it, its very easy to make adjustments if the spell is used again). IN 4E, you have potentially 5-10 similarly complicated attackes every single round, with ongoing effects and conditions that make tracking 1E seem like a game for toddlers.

Jan 3, 2012 -- 3:22PM, Cassan wrote:

5e will come without requiring a battlemat I guarantee you.

While I appreciate the compliment, I firmly believe (though I have no inside info) that the next edition of D&D, whenever it arrives, will still assume the use of a battlemap, just like every D&D edition before it.  How easy it will be to not use a grid will vary, but there's no way D&D will be published that doesn't assume grid usage.