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1 year ago ::
Jan 03, 2012 - 11:07AM
#181
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You still haven't answered my question about how you figured out what monsters and characters were in the area of effect of a 1e fireball.
Everyone in the room. 1e fireballs were pretty big and the rooms tended to be very small.
No kidding. It sounds like the guy didn't play much.
Everyone is the room is a fudged approximation, not 1e RAW. And I played 1e from 1979 to 1989 (when second edition came out) every week, and often more than once a week. As if that mattered.
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.
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1 year ago ::
Jan 03, 2012 - 11:08AM
#182
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Date Joined:
Jun 15, 2010
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You still haven't answered my question about how you figured out what monsters and characters were in the area of effect of a 1e fireball.
Yes I did. We described encounters using distances. If two monsters were 10 feet or 40 feet apart, we described them as such. In the rare case the room was that large and someone wanted to make sure the right monsters were in the blast, they'd try to lure them into a choke point or something. It's not that hard.
So you fudged it using rough approximations. That's what I thought, and there is nothing wrong with that. It isn't RAW for 1e, but it could be done that way as long at accuracy isn't your goal. My point is that much more precise measures were available and assumed in 1e and nothing has really changed. You could use the same rough approximations with 4e aas long as everyone is on board with such fudging and ultimately leaving the determination up to the consensus of imagination.
No. We didn't fudge. We used real distances. You want to argue. Great. I don't. Carry on.
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1 year ago ::
Jan 03, 2012 - 11:10AM
#183
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Date Joined:
Jan 15, 2009
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No. We didn't fudge. We used real distances. You want to argue. Great. I don't. Carry on.
The volume of the slanted roofed room was what and the volume of sphere went how far down the hall way.. sure you did... hell we fudged when we used a grid.
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1 year ago ::
Jan 03, 2012 - 11:10AM
#184
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You still haven't answered my question about how you figured out what monsters and characters were in the area of effect of a 1e fireball.
When we did it, we were given the rough dimensions of the room. We knew who was engaged with the folks the wizard was trying to fireball and who was not. Generally, the DM had everyone engaged with those folks in the blast zone. Sometimes, if the room was very small, he'd declare the whole combat area was in the blast zone.
What we sacrificed in accuracy, we gained in not having to conduct impromptu geometry problems.
And there isn't anything wrong with that, but it isn't 1e RAW. It is fudging. Which is my point. As long as you were all on board with that it worked. Nothing has changed with 4e. If you want to rule that the wizard can place his fireball so that the PCs are all just outside the area of effect, fantastic! That's not RAW either, but it works just as well if everyone is on board with that kind of fudging.
And you don't need a whole new set of rules to do it. Just use Imagination-Fu and be done with it.
Kalex the Omen Dungeonmaster ExtraordinaireConcerning 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.
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1 year ago ::
Jan 03, 2012 - 11:12AM
#185
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No. We didn't fudge. We used real distances. You want to argue. Great. I don't. Carry on.
The volume of the slanted roofed room was what and the volume of sphere went how far down the hall way.. sure you did... hell we fudged when we used a grid.
We had some pretty smart guys who loved math, so we always did the geometry too. Good times! LOL
Kalex the Omen Dungeonmaster ExtraordinaireConcerning 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.
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1 year ago ::
Jan 03, 2012 - 11:17AM
#186
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Date Joined:
Jan 15, 2009
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No. We didn't fudge. We used real distances. You want to argue. Great. I don't. Carry on.
The volume of the slanted roofed room was what and the volume of sphere went how far down the hall way.. sure you did... hell we fudged when we used a grid.
We had some pretty smart guys who loved math, so we aleays did the geometry too. Good times! LOL
I had some DMs that were not well great... and didnt get to enjoying things till I was the DM, I was probably the only one in the group that got anything out of geometry and being DM well.. start me fudging and game hacking because I didnt like amnesiac wizards and 1 minute combat rounds didnt match our desired visual pacing so.. before long well it wasnt the dependents on grid that led me to other games.
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1 year ago ::
Jan 03, 2012 - 11:21AM
#187
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No. We didn't fudge. We used real distances. You want to argue. Great. I don't. Carry on.
No, I want to understand. So how did you keep track of where things were in a large melee with lots of movement going on? Did you keep a hand written list of current distances from one creature to another? Did no one ever move except to close the distance between two static lines? If you were completely accurate and didn't use a map grid, then you either have an eidetic memory, or you kept records much more invloved than a map with markers on it.
Kalex the Omen Dungeonmaster ExtraordinaireConcerning 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.
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1 year ago ::
Jan 03, 2012 - 11:25AM
#188
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Date Joined:
Jun 15, 2010
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No. We didn't fudge. We used real distances. You want to argue. Great. I don't. Carry on.
The volume of the slanted roofed room was what and the volume of sphere went how far down the hall way.. sure you did... hell we fudged when we used a grid.
We had some pretty smart guys who loved math, so we always did the geometry too. Good times! LOL
I'm one of those guys. We didn't fudge whether we used maps or not. I don't mind if people fudge. People should play the game they want. But we played RAW as much as we were able with whatever books we had access to at the time. And you didn't have to have gridded squares to do it as long as you described situations using real numbers and you worked from those numbers. Take a few notes? Sure. Grid based maps? Not required.
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1 year ago ::
Jan 03, 2012 - 11:32AM
#189
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- Forum Guide
- Hero Craftsman Gold Medalist
- Master Dungeon Master
Date Joined:
Jun 23, 2005
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And there isn't anything wrong with that, but it isn't 1e RAW. It is fudging. Which is my point. As long as you were all on board with that it worked. Nothing has changed with 4e.
4e is definitely more persnickety about distance, which is why 1-square shifts matter, but weapons didn't have reach (notwithstanding the hyper-complicated weapon vs. armor type chart) in 1e..
you don't need a whole new set of rules
Need is the worst basis for aything in a hobby that is entirely voluntary. We don't need anything. Sometimes, rules help. There's a wide gulf between RAW and Imagination-fu. Most people play somewhere in the middle... in every edition.
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1 year ago ::
Jan 03, 2012 - 11:32AM
#190
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Date Joined:
Jun 15, 2010
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No. We didn't fudge. We used real distances. You want to argue. Great. I don't. Carry on.
No, I want to understand. So how did you keep track of where things were in a large melee with lots of movement going on? Did you keep a hand written list of current distances from one creature to another? Did no one ever move except to close the distance between two static lines? If you were completely accurate and didn't use a map grid, then you either have an eidetic memory, or you kept records much more invloved than a map with markers on it.
No, you don't want to understand. THat's clear. You want to be right....or something. The way you form your questions makes it obvious. In a large melee there wasn't a lot of movement going on. A few distance notes were sometimes necessary in combats with lots of ranged attackers, but not always. Each player would keep track of their own distance from enemies or from the main melee. You don't need a photographic memory to do this. You're really reaching here. I'm not sure what your goal is to be honest. If you simply go into combat using distances in your descriptions and each player tracks a couple of numbers, it kind of takes care of itself. You clearly did not do this (and that's ok). But for some reason can't conceive of it. Your own personal limits are causing you to think a thing is impossible. ("I didn't' do it, therefore it can't be done"). And now, you're pursuing it with the vigor of an internet lawyer. It's strange.
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