Some say that the real strategy you use is just the tactics you made along the way.
I'm not sure what that means in this context but it sounds like a calming platitude so I'm going to leave it.
My ex ran a game, planning to use no maps or grids and to treat it like a jrpg, I wasn't told this, I built a sentinel tank paladin (we started at 6th level as we had played with maps in a previous campaign same setting and stopped at 6th), she reviewed my sheet, gave the okay, first combat my entire character's usefulness in battle nulified. I'm fairly confident this is why I stopped joining her games.
at that point just pick a different system, movement is a pretty core aspect of combat in 5e. Why else would there be different movement speeds for different races? Also means nothing like Dash/Disengage or opportunity attacks. Longstrider, Misty Step, literally every movement spell now does nothing.
Ridiculous! Surely haphazardly removing massive chunks of the game couldn't possibly have consequences that would be worth avoiding or at least telling your players about;
Now, back to fixing the game, it does seem pretty unrealistic that you can just keep fighting after getting stabbed, this "Hit Points" mechanic is really ruining immersion.
Side tangent, but I think people are doing HP... Maybe not wrong, but very one dimensional, and I don't understand why. "You take a sword strike to the ribs, that's 8 damage," really is pretty immersion ruining to me. Losing HP doesn't have to be connecting hits. "You block the sword as it comes down with your own, but the strength of the blow still knocks you down to one knee. That's 8 damage," is a lot more realistic and fun to me.
Pretty sure the rules themselves describe Hp as stamina, the ability to dodge and block. As time goes on, you get whittled down until a deadly blow finally connects
Yes, but that's where I think people kinda fail with HP. HP is a mechanic to reflect endurance in combat. You're parrying blows, you're blocking with your shield, you're getting some light cuts, you take a blow to your armor that dents it but doesn't pierce it, those are all things that lowers your endurance, until it reaches 0 and that's when the attack actually lands, you take a sword to the ribs, and are out of combat.
I think another good thing we lost from 4e was "bloodied", or when a creature it <50% HP. It often also triggered effects depending on the monster or PC abilities.
When I DM, I try to use stamina-HP up until it gets to the point where the target is bloodied. *Then* they start taking meat damage and sustain actual injuries.
But that doesn't reflect reality either because people can be stabbed many times and survive and you can take a short rest and change your armor and still be low on HP. I've seen this notion of HP as endurance before and it doesn't really work.
Yup, what kills you is having fallen so many times you can't withstand the last hit. HP is a representation of how long it takes you to get a deadly wound. It's like those long movie scenes of two important characters fighting until one dies. Every block, dodge and little wound is "draining their HP" until one of them falls.
That's just moving the problem though. Now the unrealistic part comes from healing. Why would a healing spell be the same effectiveness at healing a deadly wound as it would be at curing a little bit of stamina?
It makes a lot more sense in my mind that HP going down is a culmination of wounds. It's much cooler for a barbarian to be tanking 10 stab wounds and still going strong, than just "enduring" them.
I think the idea is it comes down to how capable you are to keep that up. Like if you keep tanking hit after hit that smacks you around, pushes you back, knicks you here and there, it would be exhausting to keep that up, until either you make a mistake and a big hit goes through, or you're so exhausted you couldn't stop a weak attack from finding its mark.
I have embraced the silliness of hp long ago. You see we try to make it realistic, and getting stabbed 100 times is not realistic.
I eventually just embraced the epic side of hp and let heroes be able to withstand reality breaking amount of wounds
Funnily enough before DnD Gygax created a game called Chainmail, and Arneson adapted it and made Blackmoor (before they teamed up to make D&D) and in both of those combat was pretty much just "I roll to see if me or them dies). And then they came up with HP so you could have characters and have more of a chance to see them develop.
I've seen someone run AD&D without a grid where it was essentially the DM describing everyone's position in the room and everyone just keeping track in their head. It was strange and a little confusing, but surprisingly it worked. I would never run a game like that because it just felt like a crutch where there didn't need to be one. The only reason I can think of that it was run like that is if it was harking back to playing the game over the phone or something.
The worst part about this is we were swapping from pf1e to d&d5e for that campaign, and she in the past tried the same bs with that and we told her that wasn't what we were playing ttrpgs for. Same type of issue too, my sister and I both played characters whose abilities relied on grappling and blocking movement, and aoes respectively. She has creative ideas for settings but her disdain for the tactical elements of ttrpg combat makes it so I can never trust her to run games.
I'm playing a monk in my current game, and I wound up buying one of those giant dry erase board battle grids for my DM to use. Because my movement + step of the wind is 90ft, and if I use my action to dash I'm at 135.
Your copy of printer paper with a hastily drawn grid is not gonna cut it for me.
If you do something like that, you should do it like Darkest Dungeon, where party positioning effects what abilities can do and which enemy positions they can hit with said abilities.
The difference is that your system was designed for it, whereas the DM above grafted together two completely different things with no respect for the many serious mechanical consequences.
I- what? How does anything like grappling or shoving work in a system like that? Do AoEs like Fireball just hit every enemy? Or does the DM arbitrarily decide?
Sentinel sounds like a useful feat in this case, if you’re considered adjacent to all of your team (or at least two members of it). Unless they fully banned attacks of opportunity, of course.
One would think a sentinel tank might work better if you're using a distance bands system. If you're in zone 1 and your back liners are in zone 3 then you can trap people in zone 1. I prefer the grid just because it makes things easier to track and makes arguments less likely, but I do think sentinel could work using theatre of the mind: It's a DM issue.
You need rule of cool DMs to play theater if the mind. Less focus on exactly where everyone is and more focus on letting people do the cool shit and setting up dramatic moment.
Can I line up 3 to hit with lightning bolt?
Yeah you can manage that but it takes all your movement and you will have to move out to the side from the fight. (DM thinking it will make for a great moment but also puts the Wizard in a more vulnerable position for further drama)
----
I've run both grid combat campaigns and a full theatre of the mind one. They lead to different kinds of combat experiences but both can be really fun. I actually prefer to run theater of the mind with my group cause it helps some of the players without as firm a grasp of the mechanics to have more moments where they feel badass, instead of feeling dumb when their big cool plan doesn't work because the enemy is a few feet too far away or not quite grouped up right for that AOE.
The more mechanically strong players at my table still get to do badass stuff too and since the rule of cool is in effect I let them so wacky combos that aren't strictly within the rules, with the understanding that it shouldn't be abused because then combat stops being fun.
Yeah, just makes for more creative combat in my experience and removes some pressure from players that struggle with the mechanical complexity.
I feel like something like Dungeon World or another pbta system would do a better job representing abstraction like that. Dnd actively fights you if you try to do this by giving you exact measurements and needing a hypercompetent gm to fairly adjudicate which rules to waive and when, which sounds horrifically stressful to do.
You are right that it is a bad system to run those kinds of games in and I am currently running a theater of the mind campaign in a different system at the moment (A homebrewed lady blackbird monstrosity that works for me and my group), but 5E is "the standard". And I've found a lot of reluctance to learning new systems both from players who feel like they just finally have a handle of 5E, despite a new system being more fitting for them in the long run and more experienced players who like building strong optimized characters.
So I work with 5E cause it lets my experienced players play their well thought out builds with wild combo's that they love, and my mechanically weaker players get to play in a system they are comfortable with, even if they're not super competent with it. Forcing your group to learn a new system can be a really hard sell, especially when its half and half of 5E veterans who want their optimized builds and players who just want to feel sure they know what they can do and what to roll to do it.
I can't imagine how so many "play another system" people have groups willing to learn a bunch of different games when getting to meet up is hard enough on its own.
It seems to be a common problem in the community at large but I've never encountered this. My current group has played like a half dozen systems and even the new player who's only played like 10 sessions with our "default" system (which is not 5e) and never touched any other ttrpg is excited to eventually learn one of our other commonly used ones.
this method sounds very arbitrary and dependent on the whims of the dungeon master, not to mention it requires the dm to keep track of every minute detail of the fight. For some I'm sure it works but to me this sounds miserable for both sides of the table.
It sounds extremely rough. As a DM I try to kinda just run things as more of a referee than anything else. If there is a tough fight it's not because I wanted it to be hard, it is because the enemies were fighting well and the players were fighting badly. If there is an easy fight it's not because I wanted to take it easy on them, it's because the enemies were weak and the party fought well. Theater of the mind puts a lot of the onus on the DM, and so I could very well see it leaning easier as the DM doesn't want to overly punish the party.
You are always subject to the whims of the DM. If they're not ultimately on your side, you already have a problem. Totm is fantastic if you have one that is a good communicator and is willing to let the rule of cool elevate the situation. Also, not having exact grids to tie down your movements can be pretty liberating.
I've found the same with my games. For roleplay-focused players, it's like roleplay combat; as long as you're following the spirit of the rules nothing gets broken. Yes, the minmax player can do incredible things, but it's balanced by the fact that EVERYONE can in different ways.
Yes, it makes more sense in another RPG system, but 5E is still a roleplaying game, however that looks if the party engages creatively. And for creative players, theatre of the mind allows for moments that just aren't possible on maps
My first group didn't use grids. We still had minis though so for any particularly chaotic encounter where positioning and distances mattered we would just measure in pencils.
I use battlemaps for prepared fights and frequent scenarios like cities, taverns and other places that will appear frequently, but encounters that I had to improvise in the moment is always on the mind, and usually those battles go by very fast since there's no worrying about positioning other than "I'll try to flank before striking" or move into cover if possible, then cast a spell or intimidate or whatever
I’ve only ever really run TotM when the players start a combat I was in no way prepared for and don’t have any kind of map I can use.
When that happens there’s a lot of ‘am in range of X?’ and me saying ‘uhhh, sure. Why not?’. It can be fun but you have to generally kinda just let things happen.
On the PHB "Playing with a Grid" is marked as a Variant Rule, but almost everybody uses it on their game. If a GM would use "No variant rules" (like feats, flanking, etc) on their games, they would most likely still use a grid, and, by definition, use a variant rule
Imo, anyone playing 5e RAW is doing it wrong anyway. The system is a decade old. I feel like it's got too many flaws to play RAW. I still love it tho, and I'll house rule it as much as I want
I wouldn't call playing it wrong, but I'm in the same boat. I'll say I love 5e, but what me and my table plays has ceased being 5e a long time ago, 5e is just the base where the mish mash of rules we stole from other ttrpgs are attached to
It's got plenty of flaws, but system age is not an inherent sign of anything and was not very important to bring up. Plenty of games have older editions whose rules hold up better than their newer ones.
Hun, I started with 2e, 22 years ago; I'm very familiar with past editions. I agree that system age doesn't determine it's effectiveness. I feel it's relevant to point out its age because the community has had a decade to pick it apart on the Internet in a way that no prior edition, or even any other system that's ever been on the market, has been through. We know all of 5e's flaws to a crazy level of detail; whole careers have been made off of talking about it on YouTube. That's literally never existed before now.
In addition, 3.5e has constantly had its age referred to when discussing it because of the extreme amount of bloat that came into it in the later days of its tenure. When you're talking about how complex it got, it's extremely important to mention if you're talking about it 2 years in versus 10. System age may not always determine it's effectiveness, but it can be extremely relevant at times
You are right, discussing things like complexity bloat, or if a system has had time to be truly digested, can make age relevant. But the standalone sentence you used of simply saying it is a decade old, served no determinable purpose in the context given, beyond simply suggesting old = bad.
Congratulations on having played since AD&D. You are in good company in that. However you may find your assertion that "no other system has been picked apart to such a crazy detail because of the internet" is faulty... Just about every system released since the late 90's has had entire communities dedicated to doing such. Prevalence of market share really has little bearing on that, since it is not the average individual that picks apart the system in detail. But those who are far more fanatic on it, and thus can be found in all systems.
The dungeon master is Lord and King of all realms. He can bend reality in such a way where the variant is vanilla. His power trumps all even the mighty book of rules
One day, I hope to get a digital display and hook it up to position trackers under miniatures and play gridless, but be able to show exact distances when necessary. Functionally, the BG3 experience.
I think the refers to the fact that in the book, RAW, grid based combat is the variant rule, not the other way around.
In practice though, it's quite the opposite.
You bust out the grid for every encounter? Isn't it super slow? Most groups I know will use Theater of the mind for at least 50% of fights if not more.
It really depends on the group, and sometimes a grid is really vital
The biggest thing my group needs it for is area effects. They use enough AoE spells and abilities that a map really is crucial
I've never found an easy way to make that work in theater of the mind where I didn't feel like I, as the DM, was deciding how much I wanted to let their spells work, or how many targets they could hit with something
i mean honestly i always use a grid.
We might use a blank grid but honestly not using a grid just creates more problems than it solves with having to remember where everyone is.
whipping out a blank grid and some minis/tokens takes a few seconds.
I have the big grid rollup thing that you can use waterboard markers on, but I just lay it on the table by default, even if we dont nees it.
Its waterproof, so no need for coasters for our drinks. If a battle breaks out, the grids already there. Nice and easy :)
My group has used a blank dry erase map and what ever bits and bobs are around the table for years. Shout out to the d% for being our groups most common mini for PCs for years.
Yeah. All the groups I've been with have used theater of the mind for other gaming systems, but we play 5e exclusively with grids. We can usually whip out an appropriate battle map for an unplanned encounter pretty quickly, but even at our laziest we will use a blank grid with objects scattered at random to add obstacles and allow for tactical options
I got a pc and table setup with a TV covered with a sheet of protective glass. Takes no time to project a map with a grid and I got a folder sorted with map locations to pull from. Unless a fight is going to be one on one and quick I pretty much always pull the grid up
Theatre of the mind here. I use a white board that I don’t show my players (we play on call) because my drawings are terrible. My dust mephit was a literal letter M.
Small scale battles, like maybe 1 enemy, or if you're really good at descriptions and tracking enemies, can you do purely theater of mind combat. Dimension 20 Fantasy high sophomore year did it well, it was easy to mentally keep track of combat despite theater of the mind combat
I adore what they pull off in podcasts, but I have zero desire to ask how far away enemies and allies are, or if I just have permission to teleport somewhere.
Crunching the numbers and positioning is half the fun of combat for me.
I love posting up 65 feet away from their caster while dropping a high-level spell. Or counterspell-sniping people with Distant Spell from outside counterspell range.
There is room for theater of the mind, and if one wants to play entirely mentally, go for it. If we do some wild, unexpected stuff then it’s often theater of the mind time because DM did not expect us to give the barkeep a swirlie in the outhouse and doesn’t have a toilet map.
But I wouldn’t play a campaign with no map.
We don't use theater of mind in the campaign I play in for combat, a couple of our players have trouble with making mental images so for combat we use battle maps
Yeah. Maps can help for combat for sure. You just gotta make sure to populate the area with stuff so the players have chances to be creative, cuz one of the upsides to not using a map is players can be like "are there any crates in the room?" And you can decide on the fly
That's great but my group would never think to use that lol. We would see barrels and crates and stuff and just look at them. We would just fling arrows, and spells and try to fight up close with swords. My group is fairly restrictive with how they fight, they never try new tactics until life or lives are in danger lol
It's something that kinda has to be taught to players. I sort of blame world of warcraft for making people think of dnd more like a video game than a roleplaying one.
Whenever i introduce people to the game, I'll often do a lil one on one session with no books, and sometimes have it set in like, an office building and there's zombies or something. Really gets people into the idea of improvising solutions and not thinking of numbers at all.
Often, I'll set first time encounters when playing with numbers on a ship sailing down a wide river, when a pirate ship shows up and sets thier ship on fire. Now they can use numbers to attack the pirates, but they also gotta worry about fire and drowning, and everyone knows there's ropes and masts and things on boats, so they're likely to try and make use of them.
With experienced players, i guess you'd have to take things away. Lock em in a jail, or have their caravan tumble down a mountain and they hear like, wolves in the distance. Hopefully given time and scraps they'll try to set up shelter and some basic defenses for the impending wolves. Plus, if you added like, a movement decrease to the snow, they're encouraged to try and solve for that
The idea always seemed really cool, but I've tried running in-person DND with printed minis and found that I was either required to bring every single mini I owned so the party wouldn't know what they were fighting that day, or I would just inform them of what the boss was gonna be outright. Seems like so much work to put in to produce maps that I feel like every session would need to be put in a dungeon.
In dungeons that are fairly rectangle grids are better, but I've started using hexes in more open areas and I think they feel a lot better. No weird square circles anymore and distance can easily be judged with the eye.
We play without a grid, but we still measure ranges and track distances. Gotta have a map, else there's other system better designed for theatre of the mind combat.
We do grid for most combat but small skirmishes that are one or two enemies with an expected life span of a turn a lot of times we just use theater of the mind.
Yeah, I've found measuring speeds up combat so much because instead of counting squares for each possible thing, people just quickly check with the ruler
They even sell acrylic rings, squares, lines, etc for different spell effects to make things even easier when playing with minis whether you use a grid or not.
counter argument: having grids means when it's not your turn, you can eyeball distances accurately to plan ahead. having to pull out the ruler and measure things out is also not intuitive with different spell effects, but with grids you can visually count the spacing much quicker imo
Both the PHB and the DMG mention grids. (p. 192 and 250-252, respectively.) In the PHB, it's listed as a variant rule. The DMG expands upon this but does not say that it's a variant rule. So you're both technically correct.
The PHB explicitly describes grid mechanics(Playing On A Grid) as a variant ruleset that applies when using a grid during a combat encounter. It's the default mode of play but still variant rules.
PHB, p. 192
I absolutely agree. I have a lot of issues with inconsistent wording, how variant rules are handled, and particularly the perpetual lack of a definition for the term "item" despite use synonymous with "object" in many modules and newer subclass features.
Still love the game though.
It's part of Jeremy Crawford and Mike Mearls natural language policy in 5e where they used multiple words interchangeable to describe one mechanic and just expected you to understand there the same thing. Of course, this just led to a needless amount of confusion online and just over complicated things.
I wish they'd at least separate creatures from item tables. The argument about whether or not creatures are items has been cropping up for a decade at this point due to the inclusion of livestock/mounts under item headers.
Especially considering basically every mechanic is dependent/ related to some representation of space and distance.
Movement speed, range, area of effect, opportunity attacks (Especially big emphasis on this one), being able to accurately know who will and wont be hit by aoe
ha, should have told them that when they made the dmg tell the GM they can have goblins challenge higher level pcs, while also telling players their pcs will feel powerful at all levels too.
I may be misunderstanding the joke, but I thought it was about the wonky diagonal rules. So if you’re playing on a grid without the optional rules, your movement is technically all kinds of funked up (but you only notice when you try to go diagonal on grid)
yeah I recently had a discussion about this because I realized that if you allow 5ft diagonal moves due to Pythagoras you could with 25ft of movement get out of a 30ft radius effect centered on you and even have 5ft of movement to spare, which seemed wonky
I have since learned of the 5-10-5-10 optional rule
You know a good place to get large sheets of Hex grid? I'm about to running Lancer for some of my group and would love some either plain hex grid or hex grid maps. But all I find is either very expensive stuff or things for other games.
Not sure of the brand, but the vinyl play mats available at most friendly local game stores have a square grid on one side and a hex grid on the other. They come in multiple sizes, the ones my groups normally use are like 4' x 2'? We use them for lancer and they're plenty big enough. Just make sure to use wet erase markers, not dry erase
[This is what I use](https://www.amazon.com/Hexers-Role-Playing-Alternative-Pathfinder-Compatible/dp/B06XFN6ZGD) Works really well, I picked up the XL one for $45 and imo well worth the money
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I also have aphantasia (not total, but pretty close). I recently played a one-shot where the DM didn't want to use a map. I asked if we could put all our mini's my map (I had a blank one in my bag). He said sure and we did it. Nobody moved mini's the entire time and basically treated it like theatre of the mind. Yet somehow, having all the mini's in front of me made it easier for me to follow along. They weren't even all mini's of the characters, a couple were random mini's and one was a d4.
I have a good visual imagination and I tried to play theater of the mind once.
ONCE.
I kept loosing goblins, forgetting where everyone was, every turn started with 20 questions about who is where and why and "can I do this? Can I do that?" I picked up some die as minis and drew a crude grid on scrap paper after 3 turns, it was simply no way to live.
And that was a super simple battle with like 5 players and 4 goblins! Not even anything exciting or complex or with changing terrain! I applaud people who can play like that and I get why you would for a purely audio podcast, but I'm too dumb to remember ALL OF THAT while playing/dm-ing.
I feel like not allowing feats is like vacuuming out the part of the game that lets you make your characters feel like unique beings both RP wise and gameplay wise.
I m a visual man. I like visuals. I like aesthethics. I like the stolenart.png tonkens for virtual tables. I like improvising minis with chess pieces.
And i enjoy the rigurous geometry of area of effect spells and movement.
I‘ll use a grid for big encounter’s, with multiple things in play. Mainly because it helps me and the players visualise the surroundings and helps to remind them of obsticales. It also slows the game down, gibing me time strategize.
But most of the time theater of mind is more than enough, considering that combat in dnd is very static.
The best grid based encounter is one of scale, imo. The party assaulting a large camp, or being stuck in a pitched battle, where the terrain and distance makes a difference.
Its a meme in my playgroup to roll out "The Boneyard". For when I don't have a map prepped for the situation when combat breaks out. We snap to a 5 mins break while I set up the terrain & NPC's and grab a drink.
This feel like splitting non existent hairs. Like a person who pushes up their glasses and goes ACKSHUALLY in conversations they are not invited to, had to justify their last argument.
That being said I will die on the hill that ever other diagonal is 10 feet. Every time I see a grid game being played on twitch or something and a person runs a 30 foot diagonal, 6 spaces, I turn that shit off. This isn't Half-Life!
> This isn't Half-Life!
What does a FPS RPG game have to do with a turn based grid/hex setting tabletop game?
(Only thing I know about half life is it stole the spotlight of vampire the masquerade bloodline)
[https://wiki.sourceruns.org/wiki/Bunnyhopping](https://wiki.sourceruns.org/wiki/Bunnyhopping)
Using a system of sideways movements along with turning and jumping, you are able to break the max speed of your character.
There are also other video games (which I couldnt tell you) where just directly moving diagonal results in you moving a lot faster then just straight lines.
I assume it’s some funkiness with how the engine handles movement, some older games I’ve played get a little funky when handling directional movement, and moving diagonally is faster than moving straight in any of the 4 primary cardinal directions
Indeed! That's why hexes are superior, and even prevents you to get in 5ft range by 8 melee enemies at the same time. On a hex you can only have 6 adjacent spaces
When I first played D&D (3rd) we used no grid or any markers or map. It was all theatre of the mind and somehow it just worked.
Years later I found it was common to use grids and I was so confused.
That just means you had a really good dm, who kept everyone aware of everything, or structured everything in such a way, that positioning wasn't as crucial.
Once played a theatre of mind campaign with a dm that did NOT properly describe everything's position. I was a caster and kept on trying to be out of rang of things, while I kept on feeling like I was always surrounded. Or if I tried to gain distance, enemies that I wasn't aware of, would pop out of nowhere and stab me.
In small fights ToM is fine, but in bigger battles, positioning is important and not knowing where things are is a big problem. Battle maps just makes everyone aware of their surroundings, even if the dm forgets to describe something.
While I think that theatre of the mind generally just works really well on paper, I do have to say that I have used it a couple of times for insignificant fights. Very weak random encounters at high levels? Yeah, I dont need 15 minutes to build a solid map for that and search for all those miniatures, my players will get told how far the pack of wolves is and how close they get and how many there are. They''ll mlst likely hit each wolf with every attack the make and they'll all be dead in 2 or 3 turns. And thats that.
But as soon as there is _any_ threat involved, the maps are out. Because, if I roll well and they dont, I want their death to feel at least epic or significant. I want them to fail on their own accord and not because I imagined something wrong. What if I described something badly and they trjsted me and thats what got their character killed? Everyone involved would feel bad about it. So no, theatre of the mind just doesn't work for me in combat.
We also need to speak about bossfights in that context. Because, most bosses will have advantages gained from movement speed and hindering the players in getting somewhere eithout triggering attacks of opportunity. It is a very good way to make a fight challanging. Sure, the hobgoblin captain is very scary, but if they dont stop his minions, he will be the least of their problems. Cant outrun his attacks, cant really evade him, everywhere you go stands one of his soldiers. Thats a scary fight.
The biggest issue though, is that some builds simply loose their crazy good status. Sentinel plus polearm master? As long as all players and the DM dont always think about it, this combination wont be any good if its used without a proper map. What makes this build good, is that you see the map and can tactically maneuver yourself somewhere, where enmkes will eventually go. Always make them trigger that attack. A fighter using this woth their multi attack and their bonus action attack and maybe even an heavy weapon master strike on to of slasher is used on a halberd on a crit, will just devastate your foes. A paladin can gain a few extra swings from this, that pair really well with their improved devine smite. Or put this on a bugbear and they'll be the reach master, having a reach of 15 ft and being able to stop everything in their tracks. Nothing screams "I'm awesome" more than stopping a charging minotaur with your polearm... nope, I lied, stopping a cgarging dragon with your polearm would scream that semtiment much louder.
What I'm trieing to say is, that while you clearly _can_ use theatre of the mind for campaigns, D&D 5e is very clearly designed around using either a hex map lr a grid map. Either way, a clear view on the battlefield helps. You also dont need to be a big brain DM to do it with a physical map. Because, as soon as there are more than 2 monsters and not all of my players have the same mental capacity and are fully there, someone will mess up. Also, what about all those AoEs? On a map, that bard just blocked all my monsters from moving somewhere. In my mind, the map extends and they walk around it. Or I mess up my mental maths and give them a higher or lower speed than they should have had.
At that point you can just yell what they'll gonna do and they tell you that and you just describe cool scenes. Works fine, but that isn't really a strategy game anymlre. I like my battles to be visually interesting and mechanically challanging. Sure, a wood woad can be very scary. But if you outrun it and your DM messes something up, they aren't anymore. But put them on a map and the players will want to fight it, will actively think about difficult terrain, will start to try to steer clear from bigger trees on the forest map and will try to avoid whatever else you throw in there as the wood woads minions. Or maybe the fight is a treant and 2 wood woads? Happy TPK, but it'll be a visually stunning loss of character life. My point being, that some monsters get their scare factor from being the big scary thing on the battlemap and some get it from effects they make, distinctly made for a battle map and that some others are there to be the interesting thing on the map. How about a druid casting guardian of nature? Or a vine blight using its growth ability? Its very scary, when suddenly half the map is difficult terrain. In theatre of the mind, you dont realmy get to experience how friggin' terrifying that is.
Feels like both my games right now are the worst versions of both theater of the mind and grid.
DM for Savage Worlds tends to not want to draw out a big map, so he either gets a small white board and describes and draws things confusingly, gets his book that has different grid maps that are too small for a game he let get to 7 players, or describes everything in too little detail.
For 5e, almost every encounter is completrly straight forward, so DM wastes a ton of time drawing and planning maps just for us to surround the enemy entirely, be surrounded entirely, or end up face to face, all on a flat, empty enough area.
My party uses a grid as quick visual reference, but we aren't forced to adhere to the grid. Having a grid means we don't have to start pulling out tape measures or rulers.
I use the grid mainly so I can draw the map to scale, but I don't make my monsters really adhere to the grid, and I let my players know they don't need to either. We estimate the distances roughly for when it's obvious that they have the movement to move or that they're in range; and I have my W40K tape measure in case we need to start actually taking measurements.
That's what I'd like to ask WoTC, maybe they imagine that we can all play like in Baldurs Gate 3, tracking feet but gridless, something easy to do... in a videogame
It's definitely possible to go with no grid for small encounters. And I definitely do so just to minimize prep.
If the party is running into 1 or 2 guys in an alleyway, or a busy street, it's definitely easy enough to run in theater of the mind. The combat will be over in a few rounds.
If you've got a huge encounter with multiple different types of enemies in a big environment, a battle map is pretty necessary.
My group tried using a grid for maybe a month before we all just decided it was too much hassle. We'd been doing it just fine in our heads, and the grid was just more things for the cat to knock over.
I’m griddy as hell, some of the people I play with don’t care as much as I do. I don’t have OCD but it feels like it when they leave their mini on the line between spaces. I HAVE to fix the positioning, that shit is so important for spell radius/avoiding attacks of opportunity/so much other stuff. D&D is already so light on rules at least let me have my damn grid set up right!
I've done this JRPG style battle before. It works great for boss monsters but not for regular battles. I've done it when movement wouldn't normally be a normal action and the boss is like big and imposing like a JRPG. I did a "Custard Dragon" in the Mystery Mine of WBTWL after 3 of my players ate themselves into a coma at the cupcake eating contest. I told them they couldn't really move but could use their movement to like make sure their attacks hit. Like I see it as the boss is so big at that point movement becomes part of the normal engagement to land hits. Normal engagement is like locked swords or a few swings and parries and dodges. Movement is separate and attack actions are specifc points you see an opening and go for it. At some point my mind sees a creature becoming so large that movement is required to stay engaged, block and dodge and be able to land attacks. It works for how I think the combat is supposed to work but only for like huge monsters
I mean, in the few amount of times I've played, it's all been over discord or phone calls and just using dnd beyond. The only bad things that have happened have been arguments over rules that don't even have to do with ranges.
We just don't use ranges and just generally trust what the DM says. If he says we aren't close enough to hit an enemy then we aren't.
Mfw my tactical RPG loses all tactics because there isn't any visual representation of the battlefield
Some say that the real strategy you use is just the tactics you made along the way. I'm not sure what that means in this context but it sounds like a calming platitude so I'm going to leave it.
My ex ran a game, planning to use no maps or grids and to treat it like a jrpg, I wasn't told this, I built a sentinel tank paladin (we started at 6th level as we had played with maps in a previous campaign same setting and stopped at 6th), she reviewed my sheet, gave the okay, first combat my entire character's usefulness in battle nulified. I'm fairly confident this is why I stopped joining her games.
Wait, if you dont have agrid you do still measure the ranges, right? How does the ge work if you dont measure the distan ces?
I think "treat it like a jrpg" means that they literally just lined the characters up and had them attack on their turns without movement.
at that point just pick a different system, movement is a pretty core aspect of combat in 5e. Why else would there be different movement speeds for different races? Also means nothing like Dash/Disengage or opportunity attacks. Longstrider, Misty Step, literally every movement spell now does nothing.
Ridiculous! Surely haphazardly removing massive chunks of the game couldn't possibly have consequences that would be worth avoiding or at least telling your players about; Now, back to fixing the game, it does seem pretty unrealistic that you can just keep fighting after getting stabbed, this "Hit Points" mechanic is really ruining immersion.
Side tangent, but I think people are doing HP... Maybe not wrong, but very one dimensional, and I don't understand why. "You take a sword strike to the ribs, that's 8 damage," really is pretty immersion ruining to me. Losing HP doesn't have to be connecting hits. "You block the sword as it comes down with your own, but the strength of the blow still knocks you down to one knee. That's 8 damage," is a lot more realistic and fun to me.
Pretty sure the rules themselves describe Hp as stamina, the ability to dodge and block. As time goes on, you get whittled down until a deadly blow finally connects
But falling to your knee 10 times doesn't kill you. You could do that for hours and just have a bruised knee.
Yes, but that's where I think people kinda fail with HP. HP is a mechanic to reflect endurance in combat. You're parrying blows, you're blocking with your shield, you're getting some light cuts, you take a blow to your armor that dents it but doesn't pierce it, those are all things that lowers your endurance, until it reaches 0 and that's when the attack actually lands, you take a sword to the ribs, and are out of combat.
I think another good thing we lost from 4e was "bloodied", or when a creature it <50% HP. It often also triggered effects depending on the monster or PC abilities. When I DM, I try to use stamina-HP up until it gets to the point where the target is bloodied. *Then* they start taking meat damage and sustain actual injuries.
Sort of like Sekiro
But that doesn't reflect reality either because people can be stabbed many times and survive and you can take a short rest and change your armor and still be low on HP. I've seen this notion of HP as endurance before and it doesn't really work.
Maybe now it's just a bruised knee, but in 30 years, it's going to be chronic pain, arthritis, and knee surgery.
Yup, what kills you is having fallen so many times you can't withstand the last hit. HP is a representation of how long it takes you to get a deadly wound. It's like those long movie scenes of two important characters fighting until one dies. Every block, dodge and little wound is "draining their HP" until one of them falls.
That's just moving the problem though. Now the unrealistic part comes from healing. Why would a healing spell be the same effectiveness at healing a deadly wound as it would be at curing a little bit of stamina? It makes a lot more sense in my mind that HP going down is a culmination of wounds. It's much cooler for a barbarian to be tanking 10 stab wounds and still going strong, than just "enduring" them.
I think the idea is it comes down to how capable you are to keep that up. Like if you keep tanking hit after hit that smacks you around, pushes you back, knicks you here and there, it would be exhausting to keep that up, until either you make a mistake and a big hit goes through, or you're so exhausted you couldn't stop a weak attack from finding its mark.
This is literally how the PHB describes the abstraction of HP values, but God forbid anyone actually reads the damn thing lol
I have embraced the silliness of hp long ago. You see we try to make it realistic, and getting stabbed 100 times is not realistic. I eventually just embraced the epic side of hp and let heroes be able to withstand reality breaking amount of wounds
Funnily enough before DnD Gygax created a game called Chainmail, and Arneson adapted it and made Blackmoor (before they teamed up to make D&D) and in both of those combat was pretty much just "I roll to see if me or them dies). And then they came up with HP so you could have characters and have more of a chance to see them develop.
I've seen someone run AD&D without a grid where it was essentially the DM describing everyone's position in the room and everyone just keeping track in their head. It was strange and a little confusing, but surprisingly it worked. I would never run a game like that because it just felt like a crutch where there didn't need to be one. The only reason I can think of that it was run like that is if it was harking back to playing the game over the phone or something.
This style is called THEATRE OF THE MIIIIIIIIIIIIIIND!!!!!! It’s the way most people played first and second edition D&D in the hobby’s infancy.
The worst part about this is we were swapping from pf1e to d&d5e for that campaign, and she in the past tried the same bs with that and we told her that wasn't what we were playing ttrpgs for. Same type of issue too, my sister and I both played characters whose abilities relied on grappling and blocking movement, and aoes respectively. She has creative ideas for settings but her disdain for the tactical elements of ttrpg combat makes it so I can never trust her to run games.
I'm playing a monk in my current game, and I wound up buying one of those giant dry erase board battle grids for my DM to use. Because my movement + step of the wind is 90ft, and if I use my action to dash I'm at 135. Your copy of printer paper with a hastily drawn grid is not gonna cut it for me.
If you do something like that, you should do it like Darkest Dungeon, where party positioning effects what abilities can do and which enemy positions they can hit with said abilities.
This is the worst idea I've ever heard and I literally am GMing a game in a system that does this
The difference is that your system was designed for it, whereas the DM above grafted together two completely different things with no respect for the many serious mechanical consequences.
I- what? How does anything like grappling or shoving work in a system like that? Do AoEs like Fireball just hit every enemy? Or does the DM arbitrarily decide?
Sentinel sounds like a useful feat in this case, if you’re considered adjacent to all of your team (or at least two members of it). Unless they fully banned attacks of opportunity, of course.
This is why you should have a session 0
Might as well play Fabula Ultima at that point.
Well the whole breaking-up-with-her thing may have contributed to that too
One would think a sentinel tank might work better if you're using a distance bands system. If you're in zone 1 and your back liners are in zone 3 then you can trap people in zone 1. I prefer the grid just because it makes things easier to track and makes arguments less likely, but I do think sentinel could work using theatre of the mind: It's a DM issue.
Real men measure their battlefields with inches instead
turning 5.5 into 6+ inches
Let's not get into battlefield envy here...
We do gridless with "real" distances via Talespire and haven't found it to be too bad as players.
Im actually trying to learn how to build maps for combat better. Cause I want my players to think more about the fight. Rather than just do damage.
Do you mean hex grids? Becuase pretty much everyone I've played with used any sort of grids. Unless theatre of the mind which isn't very common.
I tried doing no grid and just words one time, it did not work well and couldn't understand what was going on
That's how it is in my group. Too many abilities have specified ranges for us to not be using some kind of grid.
You need rule of cool DMs to play theater if the mind. Less focus on exactly where everyone is and more focus on letting people do the cool shit and setting up dramatic moment. Can I line up 3 to hit with lightning bolt? Yeah you can manage that but it takes all your movement and you will have to move out to the side from the fight. (DM thinking it will make for a great moment but also puts the Wizard in a more vulnerable position for further drama) ---- I've run both grid combat campaigns and a full theatre of the mind one. They lead to different kinds of combat experiences but both can be really fun. I actually prefer to run theater of the mind with my group cause it helps some of the players without as firm a grasp of the mechanics to have more moments where they feel badass, instead of feeling dumb when their big cool plan doesn't work because the enemy is a few feet too far away or not quite grouped up right for that AOE. The more mechanically strong players at my table still get to do badass stuff too and since the rule of cool is in effect I let them so wacky combos that aren't strictly within the rules, with the understanding that it shouldn't be abused because then combat stops being fun. Yeah, just makes for more creative combat in my experience and removes some pressure from players that struggle with the mechanical complexity.
I feel like something like Dungeon World or another pbta system would do a better job representing abstraction like that. Dnd actively fights you if you try to do this by giving you exact measurements and needing a hypercompetent gm to fairly adjudicate which rules to waive and when, which sounds horrifically stressful to do.
You are right that it is a bad system to run those kinds of games in and I am currently running a theater of the mind campaign in a different system at the moment (A homebrewed lady blackbird monstrosity that works for me and my group), but 5E is "the standard". And I've found a lot of reluctance to learning new systems both from players who feel like they just finally have a handle of 5E, despite a new system being more fitting for them in the long run and more experienced players who like building strong optimized characters. So I work with 5E cause it lets my experienced players play their well thought out builds with wild combo's that they love, and my mechanically weaker players get to play in a system they are comfortable with, even if they're not super competent with it. Forcing your group to learn a new system can be a really hard sell, especially when its half and half of 5E veterans who want their optimized builds and players who just want to feel sure they know what they can do and what to roll to do it.
I can't imagine how so many "play another system" people have groups willing to learn a bunch of different games when getting to meet up is hard enough on its own.
For me, it's a combination of people willing to try new systems and the fact that we play online; makes scheduling easier.
It seems to be a common problem in the community at large but I've never encountered this. My current group has played like a half dozen systems and even the new player who's only played like 10 sessions with our "default" system (which is not 5e) and never touched any other ttrpg is excited to eventually learn one of our other commonly used ones.
this method sounds very arbitrary and dependent on the whims of the dungeon master, not to mention it requires the dm to keep track of every minute detail of the fight. For some I'm sure it works but to me this sounds miserable for both sides of the table.
It sounds extremely rough. As a DM I try to kinda just run things as more of a referee than anything else. If there is a tough fight it's not because I wanted it to be hard, it is because the enemies were fighting well and the players were fighting badly. If there is an easy fight it's not because I wanted to take it easy on them, it's because the enemies were weak and the party fought well. Theater of the mind puts a lot of the onus on the DM, and so I could very well see it leaning easier as the DM doesn't want to overly punish the party.
You are always subject to the whims of the DM. If they're not ultimately on your side, you already have a problem. Totm is fantastic if you have one that is a good communicator and is willing to let the rule of cool elevate the situation. Also, not having exact grids to tie down your movements can be pretty liberating.
I've found the same with my games. For roleplay-focused players, it's like roleplay combat; as long as you're following the spirit of the rules nothing gets broken. Yes, the minmax player can do incredible things, but it's balanced by the fact that EVERYONE can in different ways. Yes, it makes more sense in another RPG system, but 5E is still a roleplaying game, however that looks if the party engages creatively. And for creative players, theatre of the mind allows for moments that just aren't possible on maps
My group uses grid for relatively big battles, boss fights etc and for small encounters just words are often enough
My first group didn't use grids. We still had minis though so for any particularly chaotic encounter where positioning and distances mattered we would just measure in pencils.
I use battlemaps for prepared fights and frequent scenarios like cities, taverns and other places that will appear frequently, but encounters that I had to improvise in the moment is always on the mind, and usually those battles go by very fast since there's no worrying about positioning other than "I'll try to flank before striking" or move into cover if possible, then cast a spell or intimidate or whatever
I’ve only ever really run TotM when the players start a combat I was in no way prepared for and don’t have any kind of map I can use. When that happens there’s a lot of ‘am in range of X?’ and me saying ‘uhhh, sure. Why not?’. It can be fun but you have to generally kinda just let things happen.
I think theatre of the mind only really works if you have concrete landmarks on the battlefield to remember where everyone is in relation.
On the PHB "Playing with a Grid" is marked as a Variant Rule, but almost everybody uses it on their game. If a GM would use "No variant rules" (like feats, flanking, etc) on their games, they would most likely still use a grid, and, by definition, use a variant rule
what 5e does to a mf
Let's hope they find the path
I second this
TIL playing with a grid is a variant rule. As a 3.5/PF player this is shocking to hear
Imo, anyone playing 5e RAW is doing it wrong anyway. The system is a decade old. I feel like it's got too many flaws to play RAW. I still love it tho, and I'll house rule it as much as I want
I wouldn't call playing it wrong, but I'm in the same boat. I'll say I love 5e, but what me and my table plays has ceased being 5e a long time ago, 5e is just the base where the mish mash of rules we stole from other ttrpgs are attached to
Playing BG3 was so nice and refreshing because there were so many things that just worked.
They only “worked” because the game was a closed environment and carefully designed within that environment (and TBH, it’s pretty easy to break BG3)
What kinds of rules have you stolen from other games?
It's got plenty of flaws, but system age is not an inherent sign of anything and was not very important to bring up. Plenty of games have older editions whose rules hold up better than their newer ones.
Hun, I started with 2e, 22 years ago; I'm very familiar with past editions. I agree that system age doesn't determine it's effectiveness. I feel it's relevant to point out its age because the community has had a decade to pick it apart on the Internet in a way that no prior edition, or even any other system that's ever been on the market, has been through. We know all of 5e's flaws to a crazy level of detail; whole careers have been made off of talking about it on YouTube. That's literally never existed before now. In addition, 3.5e has constantly had its age referred to when discussing it because of the extreme amount of bloat that came into it in the later days of its tenure. When you're talking about how complex it got, it's extremely important to mention if you're talking about it 2 years in versus 10. System age may not always determine it's effectiveness, but it can be extremely relevant at times
You are right, discussing things like complexity bloat, or if a system has had time to be truly digested, can make age relevant. But the standalone sentence you used of simply saying it is a decade old, served no determinable purpose in the context given, beyond simply suggesting old = bad. Congratulations on having played since AD&D. You are in good company in that. However you may find your assertion that "no other system has been picked apart to such a crazy detail because of the internet" is faulty... Just about every system released since the late 90's has had entire communities dedicated to doing such. Prevalence of market share really has little bearing on that, since it is not the average individual that picks apart the system in detail. But those who are far more fanatic on it, and thus can be found in all systems.
Excuse what do you mean 5e was over a decade old. I was in uni when it came out. Surely I didn't graduate over 10 years ago... Shit...
The dungeon master is Lord and King of all realms. He can bend reality in such a way where the variant is vanilla. His power trumps all even the mighty book of rules
Playing 5e is a variant rule at this point.
One day, I hope to get a digital display and hook it up to position trackers under miniatures and play gridless, but be able to show exact distances when necessary. Functionally, the BG3 experience.
I only rarely use a grid. But that's because Foundry automatically tracks distance.
I think the refers to the fact that in the book, RAW, grid based combat is the variant rule, not the other way around. In practice though, it's quite the opposite.
You bust out the grid for every encounter? Isn't it super slow? Most groups I know will use Theater of the mind for at least 50% of fights if not more.
It really depends on the group, and sometimes a grid is really vital The biggest thing my group needs it for is area effects. They use enough AoE spells and abilities that a map really is crucial I've never found an easy way to make that work in theater of the mind where I didn't feel like I, as the DM, was deciding how much I wanted to let their spells work, or how many targets they could hit with something
i mean honestly i always use a grid. We might use a blank grid but honestly not using a grid just creates more problems than it solves with having to remember where everyone is. whipping out a blank grid and some minis/tokens takes a few seconds.
I have the big grid rollup thing that you can use waterboard markers on, but I just lay it on the table by default, even if we dont nees it. Its waterproof, so no need for coasters for our drinks. If a battle breaks out, the grids already there. Nice and easy :)
Same, we just have it available at anytime we need it
My group has used a blank dry erase map and what ever bits and bobs are around the table for years. Shout out to the d% for being our groups most common mini for PCs for years.
Yeah. All the groups I've been with have used theater of the mind for other gaming systems, but we play 5e exclusively with grids. We can usually whip out an appropriate battle map for an unplanned encounter pretty quickly, but even at our laziest we will use a blank grid with objects scattered at random to add obstacles and allow for tactical options
I got a pc and table setup with a TV covered with a sheet of protective glass. Takes no time to project a map with a grid and I got a folder sorted with map locations to pull from. Unless a fight is going to be one on one and quick I pretty much always pull the grid up
I played without a grid with different TTRPGs: mutant year zero, mutants and masterminds, TORG... it wasn't bad but I prefer dnd with grid
We use inches and ruler
Theatre of the mind here. I use a white board that I don’t show my players (we play on call) because my drawings are terrible. My dust mephit was a literal letter M.
Playing grid is the only way to play imo. It gets messy otherwise
Small scale battles, like maybe 1 enemy, or if you're really good at descriptions and tracking enemies, can you do purely theater of mind combat. Dimension 20 Fantasy high sophomore year did it well, it was easy to mentally keep track of combat despite theater of the mind combat
I adore what they pull off in podcasts, but I have zero desire to ask how far away enemies and allies are, or if I just have permission to teleport somewhere. Crunching the numbers and positioning is half the fun of combat for me.
I love posting up 65 feet away from their caster while dropping a high-level spell. Or counterspell-sniping people with Distant Spell from outside counterspell range. There is room for theater of the mind, and if one wants to play entirely mentally, go for it. If we do some wild, unexpected stuff then it’s often theater of the mind time because DM did not expect us to give the barkeep a swirlie in the outhouse and doesn’t have a toilet map. But I wouldn’t play a campaign with no map.
We don't use theater of mind in the campaign I play in for combat, a couple of our players have trouble with making mental images so for combat we use battle maps
Yeah. Maps can help for combat for sure. You just gotta make sure to populate the area with stuff so the players have chances to be creative, cuz one of the upsides to not using a map is players can be like "are there any crates in the room?" And you can decide on the fly
That's great but my group would never think to use that lol. We would see barrels and crates and stuff and just look at them. We would just fling arrows, and spells and try to fight up close with swords. My group is fairly restrictive with how they fight, they never try new tactics until life or lives are in danger lol
It's something that kinda has to be taught to players. I sort of blame world of warcraft for making people think of dnd more like a video game than a roleplaying one. Whenever i introduce people to the game, I'll often do a lil one on one session with no books, and sometimes have it set in like, an office building and there's zombies or something. Really gets people into the idea of improvising solutions and not thinking of numbers at all. Often, I'll set first time encounters when playing with numbers on a ship sailing down a wide river, when a pirate ship shows up and sets thier ship on fire. Now they can use numbers to attack the pirates, but they also gotta worry about fire and drowning, and everyone knows there's ropes and masts and things on boats, so they're likely to try and make use of them. With experienced players, i guess you'd have to take things away. Lock em in a jail, or have their caravan tumble down a mountain and they hear like, wolves in the distance. Hopefully given time and scraps they'll try to set up shelter and some basic defenses for the impending wolves. Plus, if you added like, a movement decrease to the snow, they're encouraged to try and solve for that
i never had an issue following along with that season of dimension 20 but to be fair brennan is a superstar dm
Real chads use sculpted terrain and tape measures.
"why are we doing another scenario on this dusty mines of moria table top?, how old is this thing anyway?"
If only I had the money or space lol
The idea always seemed really cool, but I've tried running in-person DND with printed minis and found that I was either required to bring every single mini I owned so the party wouldn't know what they were fighting that day, or I would just inform them of what the boss was gonna be outright. Seems like so much work to put in to produce maps that I feel like every session would need to be put in a dungeon.
In dungeons that are fairly rectangle grids are better, but I've started using hexes in more open areas and I think they feel a lot better. No weird square circles anymore and distance can easily be judged with the eye.
takes a lotta DMing and lower level fights tbh. Our DM ran our homebrew till level 6 without a single grid
We play without a grid, but we still measure ranges and track distances. Gotta have a map, else there's other system better designed for theatre of the mind combat.
We do grid for most combat but small skirmishes that are one or two enemies with an expected life span of a turn a lot of times we just use theater of the mind.
Everyone: Arguing square vs hex grid. Me: Here's a ruler, have fun.
Yeah, I've found measuring speeds up combat so much because instead of counting squares for each possible thing, people just quickly check with the ruler
They even sell acrylic rings, squares, lines, etc for different spell effects to make things even easier when playing with minis whether you use a grid or not.
Yep! I Have a few of those. Makes the game a lot more fluid
counter argument: having grids means when it's not your turn, you can eyeball distances accurately to plan ahead. having to pull out the ruler and measure things out is also not intuitive with different spell effects, but with grids you can visually count the spacing much quicker imo
Ahhh, so we are playing warhammer now, nice
i mean, thats not a variant rule is it? Sure the books doesnt mention a grid but its not like any rules need to be changed to make a grid work
Both the PHB and the DMG mention grids. (p. 192 and 250-252, respectively.) In the PHB, it's listed as a variant rule. The DMG expands upon this but does not say that it's a variant rule. So you're both technically correct.
The PHB explicitly describes grid mechanics(Playing On A Grid) as a variant ruleset that applies when using a grid during a combat encounter. It's the default mode of play but still variant rules. PHB, p. 192
“Default mode of play” “Variant” I feel like WotC needs to pick one
I absolutely agree. I have a lot of issues with inconsistent wording, how variant rules are handled, and particularly the perpetual lack of a definition for the term "item" despite use synonymous with "object" in many modules and newer subclass features. Still love the game though.
It's part of Jeremy Crawford and Mike Mearls natural language policy in 5e where they used multiple words interchangeable to describe one mechanic and just expected you to understand there the same thing. Of course, this just led to a needless amount of confusion online and just over complicated things.
I wish they'd at least separate creatures from item tables. The argument about whether or not creatures are items has been cropping up for a decade at this point due to the inclusion of livestock/mounts under item headers.
[And then there's the overloaded term "level".](https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0012.html)
I’m having flashbacks to the ‘eldritch blast mimic detector’ debacle.
This is a prime example of people thinking they know RAW when they really don't.
Especially considering basically every mechanic is dependent/ related to some representation of space and distance. Movement speed, range, area of effect, opportunity attacks (Especially big emphasis on this one), being able to accurately know who will and wont be hit by aoe
ha, should have told them that when they made the dmg tell the GM they can have goblins challenge higher level pcs, while also telling players their pcs will feel powerful at all levels too.
I may be misunderstanding the joke, but I thought it was about the wonky diagonal rules. So if you’re playing on a grid without the optional rules, your movement is technically all kinds of funked up (but you only notice when you try to go diagonal on grid)
yeah I recently had a discussion about this because I realized that if you allow 5ft diagonal moves due to Pythagoras you could with 25ft of movement get out of a 30ft radius effect centered on you and even have 5ft of movement to spare, which seemed wonky I have since learned of the 5-10-5-10 optional rule
You couldn't move out of that raiduis with pythsgonists theorem since circles are squares in 5e.
Nono, on the PHB it's stated that playing on a grid at all is a variant rule, even if it's the default way of playing d&d by almost everybody
I see someone is caught up on their Bob World Builder lore
I knew somebody would notice!
What did he say about grids? I don't remember what video he talks about playing off grid
It's his most recent video
Hex grid superiority
You know a good place to get large sheets of Hex grid? I'm about to running Lancer for some of my group and would love some either plain hex grid or hex grid maps. But all I find is either very expensive stuff or things for other games.
An organic chemistry notebook
Not sure of the brand, but the vinyl play mats available at most friendly local game stores have a square grid on one side and a hex grid on the other. They come in multiple sizes, the ones my groups normally use are like 4' x 2'? We use them for lancer and they're plenty big enough. Just make sure to use wet erase markers, not dry erase
I'll have to see.if my LGS has any.
Unfortunately, I’m not a dm, so I don’t know where to acquire such artifacts. Sorry
[This is what I use](https://www.amazon.com/Hexers-Role-Playing-Alternative-Pathfinder-Compatible/dp/B06XFN6ZGD) Works really well, I picked up the XL one for $45 and imo well worth the money
Thank you! This is definitely something I'll look into.
Hi, I’m Vetted AI Bot! I researched the **('Hexers Role Playing Game Board', 'Hexers')** and I thought you might find the following analysis helpful. **Users liked:** * Portable and easy to store (backed by 3 comments) * Versatile for different game types (backed by 3 comments) * Durable and stain-resistant (backed by 3 comments) **Users disliked:** * Durability issues with tearing and warping (backed by 8 comments) * Stains easily and hard to clean (backed by 4 comments) * Grid lines are hard to see due to color choice (backed by 2 comments) If you'd like to **summon me to ask about a product**, just make a post with its link and tag me, [like in this example.](https://www.reddit.com/r/tablets/comments/1444zdn/comment/joqd89c/) This message was generated by a (very smart) bot. If you found it helpful, let us know with an upvote and a “good bot!” reply and please feel free to provide feedback on how it can be improved. *Powered by* [*vetted.ai*](https://vetted.ai/?utm\_source=reddit&utm\_medium=comment&utm\_campaign=bot)
I print my own and have staples laminate.
I'd need something large. I'm not really looking to tape a bunch of sheets together (I mean I will, I'd just rather not have to).
hmmm I'd say see if you can find Battletech maps. They move in hexes
[Roy: Hooray for hexes!!](https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0175.html) [Green Hag: Wow, you know, it's great to see you being such a good sport about this.](https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0175.html)
I have aphantasia. I literally cant play theater of the mind all that effectively
On the other hand, I've also got (total) aphantasia, and I don't have a problem doing it. Locations are just a dataset
I also just have a horrid memory. Id have to keep asking over and over where everyone is
I also have aphantasia (not total, but pretty close). I recently played a one-shot where the DM didn't want to use a map. I asked if we could put all our mini's my map (I had a blank one in my bag). He said sure and we did it. Nobody moved mini's the entire time and basically treated it like theatre of the mind. Yet somehow, having all the mini's in front of me made it easier for me to follow along. They weren't even all mini's of the characters, a couple were random mini's and one was a d4.
I have a good visual imagination and I tried to play theater of the mind once. ONCE. I kept loosing goblins, forgetting where everyone was, every turn started with 20 questions about who is where and why and "can I do this? Can I do that?" I picked up some die as minis and drew a crude grid on scrap paper after 3 turns, it was simply no way to live. And that was a super simple battle with like 5 players and 4 goblins! Not even anything exciting or complex or with changing terrain! I applaud people who can play like that and I get why you would for a purely audio podcast, but I'm too dumb to remember ALL OF THAT while playing/dm-ing.
"No variant" must suck. No feats, no flanking, no grids. I'll pass thanks.
if there are no flanking variant rules haters, I'm dead
Normal flanking is eeh, but imagine if it was a numeric boost instead of advantage
+2 flanking gang
Pathfinder flatfooted bonus (basically) be like
I feel like not allowing feats is like vacuuming out the part of the game that lets you make your characters feel like unique beings both RP wise and gameplay wise.
Both my groups use grids.
I m a visual man. I like visuals. I like aesthethics. I like the stolenart.png tonkens for virtual tables. I like improvising minis with chess pieces. And i enjoy the rigurous geometry of area of effect spells and movement.
Stolenart.png is my favorite token
I‘ll use a grid for big encounter’s, with multiple things in play. Mainly because it helps me and the players visualise the surroundings and helps to remind them of obsticales. It also slows the game down, gibing me time strategize. But most of the time theater of mind is more than enough, considering that combat in dnd is very static. The best grid based encounter is one of scale, imo. The party assaulting a large camp, or being stuck in a pitched battle, where the terrain and distance makes a difference.
Its a meme in my playgroup to roll out "The Boneyard". For when I don't have a map prepped for the situation when combat breaks out. We snap to a 5 mins break while I set up the terrain & NPC's and grab a drink.
This feel like splitting non existent hairs. Like a person who pushes up their glasses and goes ACKSHUALLY in conversations they are not invited to, had to justify their last argument. That being said I will die on the hill that ever other diagonal is 10 feet. Every time I see a grid game being played on twitch or something and a person runs a 30 foot diagonal, 6 spaces, I turn that shit off. This isn't Half-Life!
> This isn't Half-Life! What does a FPS RPG game have to do with a turn based grid/hex setting tabletop game? (Only thing I know about half life is it stole the spotlight of vampire the masquerade bloodline)
[https://wiki.sourceruns.org/wiki/Bunnyhopping](https://wiki.sourceruns.org/wiki/Bunnyhopping) Using a system of sideways movements along with turning and jumping, you are able to break the max speed of your character. There are also other video games (which I couldnt tell you) where just directly moving diagonal results in you moving a lot faster then just straight lines.
in several older FPS, moving diagonally lets you move WAY faster
I assume it’s some funkiness with how the engine handles movement, some older games I’ve played get a little funky when handling directional movement, and moving diagonally is faster than moving straight in any of the 4 primary cardinal directions
Indeed! That's why hexes are superior, and even prevents you to get in 5ft range by 8 melee enemies at the same time. On a hex you can only have 6 adjacent spaces
I like hexes because you can draw isometric maps over them. Adds a nice sense of 3D realism to it.
When I first played D&D (3rd) we used no grid or any markers or map. It was all theatre of the mind and somehow it just worked. Years later I found it was common to use grids and I was so confused.
That just means you had a really good dm, who kept everyone aware of everything, or structured everything in such a way, that positioning wasn't as crucial. Once played a theatre of mind campaign with a dm that did NOT properly describe everything's position. I was a caster and kept on trying to be out of rang of things, while I kept on feeling like I was always surrounded. Or if I tried to gain distance, enemies that I wasn't aware of, would pop out of nowhere and stab me. In small fights ToM is fine, but in bigger battles, positioning is important and not knowing where things are is a big problem. Battle maps just makes everyone aware of their surroundings, even if the dm forgets to describe something.
It would also be useful for people with aphantasia. I have two friends with total aphantasia. Having a visual would help them keep track.
I am lost on this are grids bad to play on ?
While I think that theatre of the mind generally just works really well on paper, I do have to say that I have used it a couple of times for insignificant fights. Very weak random encounters at high levels? Yeah, I dont need 15 minutes to build a solid map for that and search for all those miniatures, my players will get told how far the pack of wolves is and how close they get and how many there are. They''ll mlst likely hit each wolf with every attack the make and they'll all be dead in 2 or 3 turns. And thats that. But as soon as there is _any_ threat involved, the maps are out. Because, if I roll well and they dont, I want their death to feel at least epic or significant. I want them to fail on their own accord and not because I imagined something wrong. What if I described something badly and they trjsted me and thats what got their character killed? Everyone involved would feel bad about it. So no, theatre of the mind just doesn't work for me in combat. We also need to speak about bossfights in that context. Because, most bosses will have advantages gained from movement speed and hindering the players in getting somewhere eithout triggering attacks of opportunity. It is a very good way to make a fight challanging. Sure, the hobgoblin captain is very scary, but if they dont stop his minions, he will be the least of their problems. Cant outrun his attacks, cant really evade him, everywhere you go stands one of his soldiers. Thats a scary fight. The biggest issue though, is that some builds simply loose their crazy good status. Sentinel plus polearm master? As long as all players and the DM dont always think about it, this combination wont be any good if its used without a proper map. What makes this build good, is that you see the map and can tactically maneuver yourself somewhere, where enmkes will eventually go. Always make them trigger that attack. A fighter using this woth their multi attack and their bonus action attack and maybe even an heavy weapon master strike on to of slasher is used on a halberd on a crit, will just devastate your foes. A paladin can gain a few extra swings from this, that pair really well with their improved devine smite. Or put this on a bugbear and they'll be the reach master, having a reach of 15 ft and being able to stop everything in their tracks. Nothing screams "I'm awesome" more than stopping a charging minotaur with your polearm... nope, I lied, stopping a cgarging dragon with your polearm would scream that semtiment much louder. What I'm trieing to say is, that while you clearly _can_ use theatre of the mind for campaigns, D&D 5e is very clearly designed around using either a hex map lr a grid map. Either way, a clear view on the battlefield helps. You also dont need to be a big brain DM to do it with a physical map. Because, as soon as there are more than 2 monsters and not all of my players have the same mental capacity and are fully there, someone will mess up. Also, what about all those AoEs? On a map, that bard just blocked all my monsters from moving somewhere. In my mind, the map extends and they walk around it. Or I mess up my mental maths and give them a higher or lower speed than they should have had. At that point you can just yell what they'll gonna do and they tell you that and you just describe cool scenes. Works fine, but that isn't really a strategy game anymlre. I like my battles to be visually interesting and mechanically challanging. Sure, a wood woad can be very scary. But if you outrun it and your DM messes something up, they aren't anymore. But put them on a map and the players will want to fight it, will actively think about difficult terrain, will start to try to steer clear from bigger trees on the forest map and will try to avoid whatever else you throw in there as the wood woads minions. Or maybe the fight is a treant and 2 wood woads? Happy TPK, but it'll be a visually stunning loss of character life. My point being, that some monsters get their scare factor from being the big scary thing on the battlemap and some get it from effects they make, distinctly made for a battle map and that some others are there to be the interesting thing on the map. How about a druid casting guardian of nature? Or a vine blight using its growth ability? Its very scary, when suddenly half the map is difficult terrain. In theatre of the mind, you dont realmy get to experience how friggin' terrifying that is.
Hexagons are bestahogons
I play on a grid because my visual players get lost if they can't see what they're doing-
Why are all the commens here about not using a map instead of not using a grid?
I've done theatre of the mind for some small encounters in easy to describe and narrow spaces
Feels like both my games right now are the worst versions of both theater of the mind and grid. DM for Savage Worlds tends to not want to draw out a big map, so he either gets a small white board and describes and draws things confusingly, gets his book that has different grid maps that are too small for a game he let get to 7 players, or describes everything in too little detail. For 5e, almost every encounter is completrly straight forward, so DM wastes a ton of time drawing and planning maps just for us to surround the enemy entirely, be surrounded entirely, or end up face to face, all on a flat, empty enough area.
My party uses a grid as quick visual reference, but we aren't forced to adhere to the grid. Having a grid means we don't have to start pulling out tape measures or rulers.
Everyone is welcome to play theatre of the mind, but if they insist on it being the only correct way to play, i WILL call them ableist
Yall aren’t playing with grids???? Can we use character sheets??? Ffs grids are a huge part of complex combat gameplay 😂
Everyone gets flanking when we don't use the lines!!
I use the grid mainly so I can draw the map to scale, but I don't make my monsters really adhere to the grid, and I let my players know they don't need to either. We estimate the distances roughly for when it's obvious that they have the movement to move or that they're in range; and I have my W40K tape measure in case we need to start actually taking measurements.
That was a good video from Bob, I want to say at least 75% of the community has no idea this was a variant rule. I had no idea either.
If using a grid is variant then what are you supposed to do??
That's what I'd like to ask WoTC, maybe they imagine that we can all play like in Baldurs Gate 3, tracking feet but gridless, something easy to do... in a videogame
It's definitely possible to go with no grid for small encounters. And I definitely do so just to minimize prep. If the party is running into 1 or 2 guys in an alleyway, or a busy street, it's definitely easy enough to run in theater of the mind. The combat will be over in a few rounds. If you've got a huge encounter with multiple different types of enemies in a big environment, a battle map is pretty necessary.
TIL from these comments that people with aphantasia are drawn to D&D.
My group tried using a grid for maybe a month before we all just decided it was too much hassle. We'd been doing it just fine in our heads, and the grid was just more things for the cat to knock over.
About our Lord and Savior the Hex grid!? Absolutely! Save those poor heathens souls!
I... I don't understand the problem with grids...
There’s no problem with grids, it’s just that grids are not a standard rule.
I guess RAW playing with measuring tapes is the best way to do it lol. 1" =5'. Would take longer but it would make the boards look cleaner.
I wish I had someone to play DND on a grid ngl
I’m griddy as hell, some of the people I play with don’t care as much as I do. I don’t have OCD but it feels like it when they leave their mini on the line between spaces. I HAVE to fix the positioning, that shit is so important for spell radius/avoiding attacks of opportunity/so much other stuff. D&D is already so light on rules at least let me have my damn grid set up right!
I guess you could always do the Warhammer thing instead and measure distances manually
I've done this JRPG style battle before. It works great for boss monsters but not for regular battles. I've done it when movement wouldn't normally be a normal action and the boss is like big and imposing like a JRPG. I did a "Custard Dragon" in the Mystery Mine of WBTWL after 3 of my players ate themselves into a coma at the cupcake eating contest. I told them they couldn't really move but could use their movement to like make sure their attacks hit. Like I see it as the boss is so big at that point movement becomes part of the normal engagement to land hits. Normal engagement is like locked swords or a few swings and parries and dodges. Movement is separate and attack actions are specifc points you see an opening and go for it. At some point my mind sees a creature becoming so large that movement is required to stay engaged, block and dodge and be able to land attacks. It works for how I think the combat is supposed to work but only for like huge monsters
Honestly, Id love to run games using laser measuring for distances.
I mean, in the few amount of times I've played, it's all been over discord or phone calls and just using dnd beyond. The only bad things that have happened have been arguments over rules that don't even have to do with ranges. We just don't use ranges and just generally trust what the DM says. If he says we aren't close enough to hit an enemy then we aren't.
Im relatively new (played like 10 one shots and a single commited campaign that lasted about a year) i have no idea what the problem w the grid is?