|
1 year ago ::
Jan 03, 2012 - 4:10PM
#211
|
|
|
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.
I could be totally off base, but I think the poster you're replying to means that 5E won't assume the use of a battlemat in the way that 3.5/4E does, but rather the way 1E/2E did. Meaning that while the game can use it, it won't be unplayable (or nearly so) without it.
Exactly.
|
|
|
|
1 year ago ::
Jan 03, 2012 - 4:11PM
#212
|
|
|
I found 1/2e unplayable without a battle map. Frag, in 1e, position mattered more than it does in 4e because the direction you were attacked from affected your AC. Your shield only covered attacks from 3 adjacent squares, and then there was the penalty for being attacked from behind (and, of course, the thief's backstab, which did require you to attack from behind).
Another day, another three or four entries to my Ignore List.
|
|
|
|
1 year ago ::
Jan 03, 2012 - 4:16PM
#213
|
Date Joined:
Jun 15, 2010
|
I found 1/2e unplayable without a battle map. Frag, in 1e, position mattered more than it does in 4e because the direction you were attacked from affected your AC. Your shield only covered attacks from 3 adjacent squares, and then there was the penalty for being attacked from behind (and, of course, the thief's backstab, which did require you to attack from behind).
It's certainly true that some people probably struggled with 1e/2e when not using a battlegrid. However, I think its universally true of 4E. I went to a lot of cons and saw a whole lot of 1E/2E played without a grid but I have yet to see 4E played without a grid at a con. Anecdotal? Sure, but I think accurate. I think this is why people have a panic attack about 4E being a board game (it isn't) because they had never seen D&D played with moving pieces the way 4E demands. Did people play 1E D&D by moving pieces on a board? Certainly. Did they play it with no pieces at all? Definitely. Do people play 4E with no pieces? Maybe somewhere, but I've never seen it. (would love to though!)
|
|
|
|
1 year ago ::
Jan 03, 2012 - 4:52PM
#214
|
|
|
Also, I'm fricken dying to play Eclipse Phase...
Yea, I can't wait to get a chance to give the system an actual play through as well. I own all the books. I absolutely love what I have read. But, I have not had a chance to play a game of it yet. As for the setting, it is so damn good I plan to write a chapter of my dissertation on it.
I read the GURPS transhuman future book, and it just wasn't far enough for me. It was like, ooo transhumanism...wait...that's just...meh, nevermind.
Then I read EP, and flipped for it. It's exactly what every transhumanist RPer has been waiting for.
Pathfinder uses an almost identical system to 4e for combat, in terms of what they use minis for. To claim otherwise is simply willful ignorance. If you can ignore minis in one, you can ignore them in the other. Panosl trolls once again.
Just to clarify, you need a battlemat in both games to handle AoO's, range, flanking, size, AoE's, zones, line of sight, line of effect, cover, concealment, movement, traps, terrain, and height. The ONLY thing 4e uses more of is forced movement. Otherwise, they're using minis for the exact same purposes. Though, Pathfinder still has more complicated movement due to the way it handles diagonal movement, making minis a must to track it properly.
This, times a million.
I hate running any edition of DnD without a mat. The game needs some actual gridless optional rules for the people that want to do it, though.
And 4e can run without a mat. It just requires "fudging" in the form of being a little imprecise.
I also wouldn't mind if there was a lot less 1-3 square forced movements in the next edition.
More sex and gender equality and racial equality shouldn't even be an argument--it should simply be an assumption for any RPG that wants to stay relevant in the 21st century.
I could say anything in D&D is silly though, because it's a silly game and we are silly people.
|
|
|
|
1 year ago ::
Jan 03, 2012 - 5:03PM
#215
|
Date Joined:
Jan 15, 2009
|
I like my mobile combat... ie things getting knocked off balance and staggering 5 feet or more thats good fun. Pressing enemies back or falling back and circling around them awesome, standing there and full attack every round boring no thanks.
|
|
|
|
1 year ago ::
Jan 03, 2012 - 5:10PM
#216
|
Date Joined:
Sep 26, 2001
|
I found 1/2e unplayable without a battle map. Frag, in 1e, position mattered more than it does in 4e because the direction you were attacked from affected your AC. Your shield only covered attacks from 3 adjacent squares, and then there was the penalty for being attacked from behind (and, of course, the thief's backstab, which did require you to attack from behind).
It's certainly true that some people probably struggled with 1e/2e when not using a battlegrid. However, I think its universally true of 4E. I went to a lot of cons and saw a whole lot of 1E/2E played without a grid but I have yet to see 4E played without a grid at a con. Anecdotal? Sure, but I think accurate. I think this is why people have a panic attack about 4E being a board game (it isn't) because they had never seen D&D played with moving pieces the way 4E demands. Did people play 1E D&D by moving pieces on a board? Certainly. Did they play it with no pieces at all? Definitely. Do people play 4E with no pieces? Maybe somewhere, but I've never seen it. (would love to though!)
I'm sure a lot of people struggled with 1e's whacky rules. 1" = 10', except when it equaled 30', except when it equalled 10', anyway. Your weapons had lengths, and reach an space required that didn't exactly map to those lengths. You needed more room to swing a two-handed sword than you did to poke with a munch longer awl pike, for instance. Theives really cared about positioning, because backstabbing was positively litteral. Every spell had a different AE, often calculated and adjudicated in different ways - Burning Hands was a 120-degree arc 6' wide, Cone of Cold was 1/2"/level long but a given width at the base (far end from the caster), so got narrower-seeming the higher level you were, Lightning Bolts rebounded, and get cracking with the spacial geometry to figure out how much of the dungeon your fireball filled.
With or without a map - pre-measured with a grid or otherwise - it was a game that generally required a lot of argument countered by a lot of DM fiat.
3.0 was much simpler and more concrete, with a game scale that actually made sense for using 25mm figures on a 1" grid, even if it did get baroque when it came to diagonals, and spell areas and weapon reaches didn't always map well. 4e made it even easier, a simple matter of counting squares for movement, range, positioning, reach and very consistent (albeit square) AEs.
So, yes, I can certainly see how getting away from a playing surface would make less of a difference with 1e (which was damn-near non-functional as written, with or without one) than with 3.0, and how it'd be even 'harder' to leave the playing surface with 4e. Going from frustratingly difficult the frustratingly difficult is not much of a change, going from concrete to arbitrary & abstract is more difficult, going from simple and straightforward to arbitrary and abstract seems insurmountable.
It's not that it's any harder to run 4e without a grid, it's that it's /so much easier/ to run it with one that you really notice what you're giving up when you try not to.
Love 4e? Concerned about its future? Join the Old Guard of 4e"You want The Tooth? You can't handle The Tooth!" - Dahlver-Nar. "If magic is unrestrained in the campaign, D&D quickly degenerates into a weird wizard show where players get bored quickly" - E. Gary Gygax
|
|
|
|
1 year ago ::
Jan 03, 2012 - 5:25PM
#217
|
Date Joined:
Jan 29, 2005
|
I sometimes say that I wish there was less forced movement, but then my Rogue flings something off of a cliff with Positioning Strike and/or Low Slash....
|
|
|
|
1 year ago ::
Jan 03, 2012 - 5:28PM
#218
|
|
|
I sometimes say that I wish there was less forced movement, but then my Rogue flings something off of a cliff with Positioning Strike and/or Low Slash....
Eh. If you want less forced movement, don't move stuff around as much. 
Another day, another three or four entries to my Ignore List.
|
|
|
|
1 year ago ::
Jan 03, 2012 - 5:40PM
#219
|
Date Joined:
Jan 29, 2005
|
I sometimes say that I wish there was less forced movement, but then my Rogue flings something off of a cliff with Positioning Strike and/or Low Slash....
Eh. If you want less forced movement, don't move stuff around as much.
That was my point. I think I want less, then I do awesome stuff with it. Then I want to slap myself for wanting less.
Ranger: I hit really hard and can take stuff down really fast!
My Rogue: I hit something once and it falls to its death. I laugh at your "damage"!
|
|
|
|
1 year ago ::
Jan 03, 2012 - 6:30PM
#220
|
|
|
My Rogue: I hit something once and it falls to its death. I laugh at your "damage"!
I see this kind of thing mentioned a lot and it puzzles me. Targets get a saving throw against falling at the point where they reach the edge of a precipice no matter how much forced movement you have to move them. Saving throws are made, at a minimum, 55% of the time. Some monsters have bonuses to saving throws, and most characters do as well. I just don't see this happening so much.
Kalex the Omen Dungeonmaster Extraordinaire Concerning Player Rules Bias
Show
Gaining victory through rules bias is a hollow victory and they know it.
The argument goes, that some idiot at the table might claim that because there is a "default" that is the only true way to play D&D. An idiotic misconception that should be quite easy to disprove just by reading the rules, coming to these forums, or sending a quick note off to Customer Support and sharing the inevitable response with the group. BTW, I'm not just talking about Next when I say this. Of course, D&D has always been this way since at least the late 70's when I began playing.
|
|
|
