So I'm pretty annoyed that all new maps being made for D&D products are printed on a 1 square = 10 feet grid. I know that this is supposed to be the battlemat optional edition (even though it's really not), but did they have to deliberately make it more difficult for people who still want to use a grid for combat?
So making maps out of scale is how you get to claim the combat doesn't devolve into a miniatures game? That's certainly an odd choice!
I would just go over with a permanent marker and subdivide.
Oh wait the figures do not shrink. Hmmm.
Only worthwhile reason i can think of is that the map is just really huge.
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JC of DII think we're fucked up.I know I am.Registered Userregular
For the LMoP games I'm running I've just scanned in those maps, overlaid a grid to make it 5ft squares, and printed that out. Then I cut them up into "visible" sections, which is also working great to show what the characters can or cannot see.
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HachfaceNot the Minister Farrakhan you're thinking ofDammit, Shepard!Registered Userregular
In more positive news:
Princes of the Apocalypse is a very solid adventure, certainly the best WotC has published in a long time. I picked it up on a lark, but now I expect I'll be adapting a lot from it. It'll be a snap to fit it into my homebrew world, and it's very sandboxy, so I can more or less take the stuff that's relevant to my campaign and leave the rest.
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
In more positive news:
Princes of the Apocalypse is a very solid adventure, certainly the best WotC has published in a long time. I picked it up on a lark, but now I expect I'll be adapting a lot from it. It'll be a snap to fit it into my homebrew world, and it's very sandboxy, so I can more or less take the stuff that's relevant to my campaign and leave the rest.
Yeah, I have felt something pretty similar so far from what I have read. This really should have been what they were leading with.
So making maps out of scale is how you get to claim the combat doesn't devolve into a miniatures game? That's certainly an odd choice!
I would just go over with a permanent marker and subdivide.
Oh wait the figures do not shrink. Hmmm.
Only worthwhile reason i can think of is that the map is just really huge.
I'd just go "fuck it" and explain that all of the buildings were built by gnomes and halflings and later colonised by whatever you're fighting. Overly narrow corridors are handwaved if not in combat.
Wizards did this DM round table thing, there are two episodes with different DMs (all wizards employees from what I could tell) on the D&D youtube channel. There's some useful info there.
Around the four minute mark of the first episode..
Q: What is the biggest change in this edition for Dungeon Masters?
Mike Mearls : I haven't really had to relearn too much regarding mechanics...[some incomplete sentences]...
For me, I don't really use miniatures anymore where I used them all the time in 3rd and 4th edition so it's been kind of an interesting change there. I am kinda happy not using them now. I mean I still collect them and still use them occasionally but it's no longer a default thing.
So this is the biggest change in this edition according to the lead designer.
But you list out all the spell shit in exact dimensions....that's not how you make a mapless system you jerk face!
RAWR. Mearls is so rage inducing with his answers. I really wonder how much of it is bullshit to toe the company line and how much of it is him just completely swallowing that line.
But you list out all the spell shit in exact dimensions....that's not how you make a mapless system you jerk face!
RAWR. Mearls is so rage inducing with his answers. I really wonder how much of it is bullshit to toe the company line and how much of it is him just completely swallowing that line.
He's pretty spineless. It probably a little of column A, little of column B.
But you list out all the spell shit in exact dimensions....that's not how you make a mapless system you jerk face!
I'm not sure that's really fair. I mean, they've always maintained 5e is map optional, right? And even so, exact spell dimensions don't mean you need a map, it just tells you how big things are.
Mearls is one of those designers whose presence will immediately turn me off of a project. He's the worst combination of clueless and self important.
He doesn't have any sense of the gameplay ramifications of the ideas he pushes, but he is completely sure that they're going to be awesome. They so rarely are.
Mearls is one of those designers whose presence will immediately turn me off of a project. He's the worst combination of clueless and self important.
He doesn't have any sense of the gameplay ramifications of the ideas he pushes, but he is completely sure that they're going to be awesome. They so rarely are.
Call me ignorant (cause I am) but I didn't realize he had a pedigree aside from D&D. What has he warped other than straight up D&D systems?
But you list out all the spell shit in exact dimensions....that's not how you make a mapless system you jerk face!
I'm not sure that's really fair. I mean, they've always maintained 5e is map optional, right? And even so, exact spell dimensions don't mean you need a map, it just tells you how big things are.
I propose that that means the exact dimensions are essentially useless in that scenario. People in general are just bad at understanding how big an area things really represent. How many parking spaces is a Fireball? You see parking spaces every day, surely you should be able to answer that question? If you're going to make off the cuff adjudications on how many a fireball hits you are surely familiar with it's area in everyday terms? Also the area that a person would use while fighting will need to be right at hand.
We're bad at it. Admitting this while designing a game isn't a failure, it's quite the opposite. As typical, if you want to see how to deal with this issue looking at 13th Age is a decent start. They even just corner cased in the traditional "Do you risk Fireballing the party to get all the bad guys?" thing.
But you list out all the spell shit in exact dimensions....that's not how you make a mapless system you jerk face!
I'm not sure that's really fair. I mean, they've always maintained 5e is map optional, right? And even so, exact spell dimensions don't mean you need a map, it just tells you how big things are.
I propose that that means the exact dimensions are essentially useless in that scenario. People in general are just bad at understanding how big an area things really represent. How many parking spaces is a Fireball? You see parking spaces every day, surely you should be able to answer that question? If you're going to make off the cuff adjudications on how many a fireball hits you are surely familiar with it's area in everyday terms? Also the area that a person would use while fighting will need to be right at hand.
We're bad at it. Admitting this while designing a game isn't a failure, it's quite the opposite. As typical, if you want to see how to deal with this issue looking at 13th Age is a decent start. They even just corner cased in the traditional "Do you risk Fireballing the party to get all the bad guys?" thing.
8.8 according to Wolfram Alpha btw.
Hey now I'm absolutely not saying exact dimensions are the best way to handle distances in a mapless system. We in fact agree 100% that abstracting distance in some way would be optimal for a mapless system.
But for a map optional system, exact distances are helpful, and for a mapless system, exact distances are definitely not useless, they're just not very good.
But you list out all the spell shit in exact dimensions....that's not how you make a mapless system you jerk face!
I'm not sure that's really fair. I mean, they've always maintained 5e is map optional, right? And even so, exact spell dimensions don't mean you need a map, it just tells you how big things are.
I propose that that means the exact dimensions are essentially useless in that scenario. People in general are just bad at understanding how big an area things really represent. How many parking spaces is a Fireball? You see parking spaces every day, surely you should be able to answer that question? If you're going to make off the cuff adjudications on how many a fireball hits you are surely familiar with it's area in everyday terms? Also the area that a person would use while fighting will need to be right at hand.
We're bad at it. Admitting this while designing a game isn't a failure, it's quite the opposite. As typical, if you want to see how to deal with this issue looking at 13th Age is a decent start. They even just corner cased in the traditional "Do you risk Fireballing the party to get all the bad guys?" thing.
8.8 according to Wolfram Alpha btw.
Hey now I'm absolutely not saying exact dimensions are the best way to handle distances in a mapless system. We in fact agree 100% that abstracting distance in some way would be optimal for a mapless system.
But for a map optional system, exact distances are helpful, and for a mapless system, exact distances are definitely not useless, they're just not very good.
Okay, well my initial point is that they don't have a mapless system. They have a map based system they just encourage you to play without a map while not giving you any tools to cope with the lack of a map for a system that was so clearly written to have one.
I don't even think it'd be impossible to put together some sort of hack to make it into mapless, they just haven't done it.
Fireball is arguably a spell that can be easily used in 5e without using a map. It really isn't the case for a bunch of other spells namely Hunger of Hadar or Spike Growth or any remaining zone effets (20ft radius areas mostly)
Hunger of Hadar is difficult terrain and blinds the targets if they are totally in the zone and it causes damage when an enemy ends its turn totally in the zone.
Spike growth is difficult terrain and causes damage for every 5ft a target moves in the zone.
There are no guidelines that I know of to adjucate those kind of spells without using a grid or miniatures and their usefulness is directly linked to precise measurements. If a mob is caught in the center of the zone he will need to make a double move to get out of it but one square off and only a single move is enough and it gets even more fuzzy with large or huge mobs.
Mearls is one of those designers whose presence will immediately turn me off of a project. He's the worst combination of clueless and self important.
He doesn't have any sense of the gameplay ramifications of the ideas he pushes, but he is completely sure that they're going to be awesome. They so rarely are.
Call me ignorant (cause I am) but I didn't realize he had a pedigree aside from D&D. What has he warped other than straight up D&D systems?
It's pretty much D&D and Iron Heroes, which was admittedly pretty cool at the time but looking back was mainly a beneficiary of a swell of 3E fatigue around the time of it's release.
He's been associated with some products I really liked, notably 4E, but any article he writes or talk he gives makes it abundantly clear that anything that I like that he produced he probably did by accident, or someone else slipped in after he handed it off. He struggles with basic combat math, which makes most of the things he produces incredibly frustrating for me to work with.
I think I agree with DA. If you have measurements, you either have a map to adjudicate it, or you have the DM making shit up. It has always been my experience that leaving it up to the DM varies like crazy in how powerful you are or are not, because how many targets you hit is a huge balancing factor and up to DM fiat. For example, when I have an area burst 1 spell, I have an lower and upper bound on how many medium creatures I can hit, as well as a generally expected number, and can balance the power around that. With exact dimensions but no map, it potentially becomes a bogged down argument with my DM, or the DM tells me the effect and I just hope that I find it fair.
Theatre of the mind isn't the place for "a 15 ft x 5ft cone" imo. What you should do if you are going mapless, is create a system that uses abstractions (like range categories, engagement states, etc.) and just stick to those. Then you can judge the general effect of your actions before you even bring it up with the DM, not only making turns more efficient but also having some ground rules and expectations.
Using exact measurements when we're all playing it out in our heads does not lead to immersive fun.
I know a part of my annoyance is that the "spell positioning game" is a natural outgrowth of using a mat. I do find that fun and I definitely find it more engaging than "I guess I cast fireball?" It leaves you making some choices that feel meaningful and it just happens if you use a mat and is completely impossible if you don't.
Though that spike growth spell is a great example of the being mapless being bogus.
HachfaceNot the Minister Farrakhan you're thinking ofDammit, Shepard!Registered Userregular
Never let it be said that knowledge skills are useless in my game.
On Sunday, the player characters were exploring an a cavern and came across an area submerged under 3 feet of water. Through the use of invisibility and a broom of flying, the party ranger scouted ahead and discovered that the caverns were occupied by fish people.
He gave a thorough description of the fish people to the rest of the party, and the wizard player asked if her character knew anything about this strange race.
"Roll Arcana."
She got a 23.
"They are kuo-toa. You know a lot about them..." And then it was story time with the Monster Manual for a bit. I got to the part about them worshipping the lobster-headed goddess Blidboolpoolp.
"Wait... do I know anything more about Blibdoolpoolp?"
"Try rolling Religion."
Natural 20, meaning a roll of 27.
That's when pull Monster Mythology off the shelf, and it's story time again.
Never let it be said that knowledge skills are useless in my game.
On Sunday, the player characters were exploring an a cavern and came across an area submerged under 3 feet of water. Through the use of invisibility and a broom of flying, the party ranger scouted ahead and discovered that the caverns were occupied by fish people.
He gave a thorough description of the fish people to the rest of the party, and the wizard player asked if her character knew anything about this strange race.
"Roll Arcana."
She got a 23.
"They are kuo-toa. You know a lot about them..." And then it was story time with the Monster Manual for a bit. I got to the part about them worshipping the lobster-headed goddess Blidboolpoolp.
"Wait... do I know anything more about Blibdoolpoolp?"
"Try rolling Religion."
Natural 20, meaning a roll of 27.
That's when pull Monster Mythology off the shelf, and it's story time again.
"Guys, I have an idea..."
One application of disguise self later...
I love that the god of the fish people is wearing a Sailor Moon shirt.
I think I agree with DA. If you have measurements, you either have a map to adjudicate it, or you have the DM making shit up. It has always been my experience that leaving it up to the DM varies like crazy in how powerful you are or are not, because how many targets you hit is a huge balancing factor and up to DM fiat. For example, when I have an area burst 1 spell, I have an lower and upper bound on how many medium creatures I can hit, as well as a generally expected number, and can balance the power around that. With exact dimensions but no map, it potentially becomes a bogged down argument with my DM, or the DM tells me the effect and I just hope that I find it fair.
Theatre of the mind isn't the place for "a 15 ft x 5ft cone" imo. What you should do if you are going mapless, is create a system that uses abstractions (like range categories, engagement states, etc.) and just stick to those. Then you can judge the general effect of your actions before you even bring it up with the DM, not only making turns more efficient but also having some ground rules and expectations.
Using exact measurements when we're all playing it out in our heads does not lead to immersive fun.
It's time for another edition of "Rhesus Posts About How Ars Magica is Great"!
The size and target restrictions on spells in Ars Magica are perfect for mapless combat, because there are no concrete measurements. Instead you have definitions like:
Personal - the caster
Touch - what the caster is touching
Sight - what the caster can see
Voice - how far the caster can shout
Eye - a target which has eye contact with the caster
Individual - a discrete object or single person
Arcane Connection - what the caster has a link to through stuff like a signature or lock of hair
Structure - a building
Group/Room - a single room, or a cluster of people
I've mixed up some ranges and targets there, but it's incredibly flexible and means that you don't have to worry about exact measurements. If something is much larger than normal, you just bump up the difficulty.
Can we stop calling people who use the term theatre of the mind derogatory terms please? Thank yoouuuuu.
I don't know why they made a map with 10ft increments, that sounds dumb, and completely counter to merchandising.
But just because the game lists exact feet doesn't mean you have to use a battlegrid.
You don't have to do anything.
But I'll bet you this shiny nickel that if you're not using the battlegrid you are either nerfing or overpowering a broad range of character abilities.
Edit: For example, erupting earth from the new Elemental Evil companion has better damage than fireball (if you upscale it), inflicts a more rarely-resisted damage type, and adds a significant control effect. The only thing fireball has going for it in comparison is its much larger area. If you're not using some to-scale visual representation in your game, you are probably nerfing fireball relative to erupting earth, because without precise measurement erupting earth becomes almost strictly better.
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
The problem is when you combine that with precise distances and means of effect. For example, without a grid and a general "idea", something like the Blue Dragons 60ft breath weapon (which is a line) has very different utility in "Guessing what a line is, the game" and "We have a precise grid which tells us what a line means". Balance is hugely affected in 5E based on if you use a grid or fudge things, because the game despite everything they've said is built inherently on fiddly distances and precise measurements in mind. Compare what 5E does with something that does genuinely work without a grid whatsoever like 13th Age, which gives ranges as abstract concepts (engaged, near, far etc) and everything works on those universally.
You can't argue "This game works fine without a grid" and then tell me that monsters and other things having widely different challenges based on things like how the DM interprets a 15ft cone from a 15ft line effect is sensible.
Can we stop calling people who use the term theatre of the mind derogatory terms please? Thank yoouuuuu.
Huh? Did someone insult me and I missed it?
We're not sure - the insult describes a 20ft cone, but you were standing by the door which was earlier described as 25ft away, but then you dodged that snide comment earlier so you might have moved...
I don't know what to tell you.I play the game both ways. The game works both ways. Please stop insinuatingI feel like I often see people insinuating I'm wrong or elitist because I do so. It's all I'm asking.
So what is a map? "A diagram or collection of data showing the spatial arrangement or distribution of something over an area." Anybody object to that? I think that's a reasonable statement.
If a game defines things in precise spatial relations and those things interact differently with other things based on their exact spatial relations you don't have a mapless game. You have a game that requires a map, albeit mental, and is placing the burden of maintaining, updating and communicating a perfect understanding of that map to your players directly on the DM's shoulders without giving you any assistance, advice or anything about how to do that.
A couple additional things:
I'm totally cool with mapless games. I'm saying 5th isn't one. It's a map based game that encourages you to not bother playing it right*.
"Theatre of the mind" is such a pretentious phrase.
*Right in this case meaning "In accordance with it's written rules." The Spike Growth example requires a fairly precise mental map that I've seen practically nobody be able to manage.
I don't know what to tell you.I play the game both ways. The game works both ways. Please stop insinuating I'm wrong or elitist because I do so. It's all I'm asking.
Can we stop calling people who use the term theatre of the mind derogatory terms please? Thank yoouuuuu.
I don't know why they made a map with 10ft increments, that sounds dumb, and completely counter to merchandising.
But just because the game lists exact feet doesn't mean you have to use a battlegrid.
The term "theatre of the mind" is problematic and carries too much baggage. It is designed to sound elitist. You can practically hear the smug dripping of it. You can literally replace any instance of the phrase with "imagination", not sound like you have a superiority complex, and then still meaning the exact same thing.
There's nothing wrong with going mapless, however you have fun is up to you. Maybe call it something else, though.
Edit: Also, the argument being made isn't that you're wrong for having fun playing mapless. The argument is that the designers claimed the game was made to be played mapless when it very clearly has rules that contradict that mission statement. No one is telling you that you are wrong for playing whatever way is most fun for you.
I don't know what to tell you.I play the game both ways. The game works both ways. Please stop insinuating I'm wrong or elitist because I do so. It's all I'm asking.
Edit: Ignore this, comment wasn't directed at me.
What you are doing here is not arguing in good faith whatsoever. Nowhere did I say you were wrong or elitist as some kind of blatant statement, but rather I made an actual argument based on months of play experience (including running a dungeon event involving FOUR parties simultaneously) and actual examples (notably the power of a hellhounds 15ft cone fire breath is very different to a Young Black Dragons 15ft acid breath line if you have a grid for many reasons). This kind of post is really snide sounding and dismissive, instead of actually engaging with the arguments being offered.
I don't know what to tell you.I play the game both ways. The game works both ways. Please stop insinuating I'm wrong or elitist because I do so. It's all I'm asking.
What you are doing here is not arguing in good faith whatsoever. Nowhere did I say you were wrong or elitist as some kind of blatant statement, but rather I made an actual argument based on months of play experience (including running a dungeon event involving FOUR parties simultaneously) and actual examples (notably the power of a hellhounds 15ft cone fire breath is very different to a Young Black Dragons 15ft acid breath line if you have a grid for many reasons). This kind of post is really snide sounding and dismissive, instead of actually engaging with the arguments being offered.
Sorry Aegeri that wasn't something you did. It was something someone else did further up.
It's really hard to argue "in good faith" when I'm not arguing against literal words, but instead what I feel are intended slights.
AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
If that wasn't directed at me, then ignore that post then.
I think what the issue for some of us is, especially the "frustrated DM element" around here, is how going gridless to a grid really messes with the CR of a staggeringly large amount of monsters. I've actually run a substantial amount of 5E gridless as well and I just don't think it works anywhere near as well. A good example is that new Elemental power with earthspike, which is better than fireball in every conceivable way unless you measure precise distances to make the fireball more worth while (as it affects more squares). Imagine this encounter I ran with the two Hellhounds gridless. With a grid, the players have clear, obvious ways of escaping their breath and it's kind of a puzzle in itself. Additionally, I balanced and designed the encounter with these ranges/limitations in mind, so they weren't absurdly good for their CR. Without a grid it's entirely nebulous and requires much more description, set up and clarity on my part for the same encounter to work. This is again, because 5E has infinitely fiddly bits to it like AoOs with reach, how sentinel works, how many effects, ranges, auras and so forth function.
An encounter like the above with a grid has near 0 set up because players look at it and instantly grasp the idea of "We need to spread out like this to avoid the breath easily". Without a grid I have to badly fudge things or make that encounter look entirely different to give the players a meaningful chance of avoiding the same situation. This is because we're talking about a monster that precisely hits everything in a 15 foot cone right in front of it.
Yeah, I can't imagine ever going gridless in 5E. I can't count the number of times I, or one of the players has meticulously counted out squares for line/area of effect, or movement, and had the difference of only 1 square/5' be a total gamechanger.
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I would just go over with a permanent marker and subdivide.
Oh wait the figures do not shrink. Hmmm.
Only worthwhile reason i can think of is that the map is just really huge.
Princes of the Apocalypse is a very solid adventure, certainly the best WotC has published in a long time. I picked it up on a lark, but now I expect I'll be adapting a lot from it. It'll be a snap to fit it into my homebrew world, and it's very sandboxy, so I can more or less take the stuff that's relevant to my campaign and leave the rest.
Yeah, I have felt something pretty similar so far from what I have read. This really should have been what they were leading with.
I'd just go "fuck it" and explain that all of the buildings were built by gnomes and halflings and later colonised by whatever you're fighting. Overly narrow corridors are handwaved if not in combat.
Around the four minute mark of the first episode..
Q: What is the biggest change in this edition for Dungeon Masters?
Mike Mearls : I haven't really had to relearn too much regarding mechanics...[some incomplete sentences]...
For me, I don't really use miniatures anymore where I used them all the time in 3rd and 4th edition so it's been kind of an interesting change there. I am kinda happy not using them now. I mean I still collect them and still use them occasionally but it's no longer a default thing.
So this is the biggest change in this edition according to the lead designer.
RAWR. Mearls is so rage inducing with his answers. I really wonder how much of it is bullshit to toe the company line and how much of it is him just completely swallowing that line.
He's pretty spineless. It probably a little of column A, little of column B.
I'm not sure that's really fair. I mean, they've always maintained 5e is map optional, right? And even so, exact spell dimensions don't mean you need a map, it just tells you how big things are.
He doesn't have any sense of the gameplay ramifications of the ideas he pushes, but he is completely sure that they're going to be awesome. They so rarely are.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Call me ignorant (cause I am) but I didn't realize he had a pedigree aside from D&D. What has he warped other than straight up D&D systems?
I propose that that means the exact dimensions are essentially useless in that scenario. People in general are just bad at understanding how big an area things really represent. How many parking spaces is a Fireball? You see parking spaces every day, surely you should be able to answer that question? If you're going to make off the cuff adjudications on how many a fireball hits you are surely familiar with it's area in everyday terms? Also the area that a person would use while fighting will need to be right at hand.
We're bad at it. Admitting this while designing a game isn't a failure, it's quite the opposite. As typical, if you want to see how to deal with this issue looking at 13th Age is a decent start. They even just corner cased in the traditional "Do you risk Fireballing the party to get all the bad guys?" thing.
Hey now I'm absolutely not saying exact dimensions are the best way to handle distances in a mapless system. We in fact agree 100% that abstracting distance in some way would be optimal for a mapless system.
But for a map optional system, exact distances are helpful, and for a mapless system, exact distances are definitely not useless, they're just not very good.
Okay, well my initial point is that they don't have a mapless system. They have a map based system they just encourage you to play without a map while not giving you any tools to cope with the lack of a map for a system that was so clearly written to have one.
I don't even think it'd be impossible to put together some sort of hack to make it into mapless, they just haven't done it.
Hunger of Hadar is difficult terrain and blinds the targets if they are totally in the zone and it causes damage when an enemy ends its turn totally in the zone.
Spike growth is difficult terrain and causes damage for every 5ft a target moves in the zone.
There are no guidelines that I know of to adjucate those kind of spells without using a grid or miniatures and their usefulness is directly linked to precise measurements. If a mob is caught in the center of the zone he will need to make a double move to get out of it but one square off and only a single move is enough and it gets even more fuzzy with large or huge mobs.
He's been associated with some products I really liked, notably 4E, but any article he writes or talk he gives makes it abundantly clear that anything that I like that he produced he probably did by accident, or someone else slipped in after he handed it off. He struggles with basic combat math, which makes most of the things he produces incredibly frustrating for me to work with.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Theatre of the mind isn't the place for "a 15 ft x 5ft cone" imo. What you should do if you are going mapless, is create a system that uses abstractions (like range categories, engagement states, etc.) and just stick to those. Then you can judge the general effect of your actions before you even bring it up with the DM, not only making turns more efficient but also having some ground rules and expectations.
Using exact measurements when we're all playing it out in our heads does not lead to immersive fun.
Though that spike growth spell is a great example of the being mapless being bogus.
On Sunday, the player characters were exploring an a cavern and came across an area submerged under 3 feet of water. Through the use of invisibility and a broom of flying, the party ranger scouted ahead and discovered that the caverns were occupied by fish people.
He gave a thorough description of the fish people to the rest of the party, and the wizard player asked if her character knew anything about this strange race.
"Roll Arcana."
She got a 23.
"They are kuo-toa. You know a lot about them..." And then it was story time with the Monster Manual for a bit. I got to the part about them worshipping the lobster-headed goddess Blidboolpoolp.
"Wait... do I know anything more about Blibdoolpoolp?"
"Try rolling Religion."
Natural 20, meaning a roll of 27.
That's when pull Monster Mythology off the shelf, and it's story time again.
"Guys, I have an idea..."
One application of disguise self later...
I love that the god of the fish people is wearing a Sailor Moon shirt.
R*SC: BladeCruiser
Check out my GTAV-PC custom race tracks inspired by real life racing circuits!
It's time for another edition of "Rhesus Posts About How Ars Magica is Great"!
The size and target restrictions on spells in Ars Magica are perfect for mapless combat, because there are no concrete measurements. Instead you have definitions like:
Personal - the caster
Touch - what the caster is touching
Sight - what the caster can see
Voice - how far the caster can shout
Eye - a target which has eye contact with the caster
Individual - a discrete object or single person
Arcane Connection - what the caster has a link to through stuff like a signature or lock of hair
Structure - a building
Group/Room - a single room, or a cluster of people
I've mixed up some ranges and targets there, but it's incredibly flexible and means that you don't have to worry about exact measurements. If something is much larger than normal, you just bump up the difficulty.
I don't know why they made a map with 10ft increments, that sounds dumb, and completely counter to merchandising.
But just because the game lists exact feet doesn't mean you have to use a battlegrid.
Steam ID: Obos Vent: Obos
You don't have to do anything.
But I'll bet you this shiny nickel that if you're not using the battlegrid you are either nerfing or overpowering a broad range of character abilities.
Edit: For example, erupting earth from the new Elemental Evil companion has better damage than fireball (if you upscale it), inflicts a more rarely-resisted damage type, and adds a significant control effect. The only thing fireball has going for it in comparison is its much larger area. If you're not using some to-scale visual representation in your game, you are probably nerfing fireball relative to erupting earth, because without precise measurement erupting earth becomes almost strictly better.
You can't argue "This game works fine without a grid" and then tell me that monsters and other things having widely different challenges based on things like how the DM interprets a 15ft cone from a 15ft line effect is sensible.
Huh? Did someone insult me and I missed it?
We're not sure - the insult describes a 20ft cone, but you were standing by the door which was earlier described as 25ft away, but then you dodged that snide comment earlier so you might have moved...
Steam ID: Obos Vent: Obos
If a game defines things in precise spatial relations and those things interact differently with other things based on their exact spatial relations you don't have a mapless game. You have a game that requires a map, albeit mental, and is placing the burden of maintaining, updating and communicating a perfect understanding of that map to your players directly on the DM's shoulders without giving you any assistance, advice or anything about how to do that.
A couple additional things:
I'm totally cool with mapless games. I'm saying 5th isn't one. It's a map based game that encourages you to not bother playing it right*.
"Theatre of the mind" is such a pretentious phrase.
*Right in this case meaning "In accordance with it's written rules." The Spike Growth example requires a fairly precise mental map that I've seen practically nobody be able to manage.
The term "theatre of the mind" is problematic and carries too much baggage. It is designed to sound elitist. You can practically hear the smug dripping of it. You can literally replace any instance of the phrase with "imagination", not sound like you have a superiority complex, and then still meaning the exact same thing.
There's nothing wrong with going mapless, however you have fun is up to you. Maybe call it something else, though.
Edit: Also, the argument being made isn't that you're wrong for having fun playing mapless. The argument is that the designers claimed the game was made to be played mapless when it very clearly has rules that contradict that mission statement. No one is telling you that you are wrong for playing whatever way is most fun for you.
But i still think Theatre of the Mind sounds fucking rad. I'm just gonna be mad forever that pretentious people have ruined it.
Steam ID: Obos Vent: Obos
Edit: Ignore this, comment wasn't directed at me.
What you are doing here is not arguing in good faith whatsoever. Nowhere did I say you were wrong or elitist as some kind of blatant statement, but rather I made an actual argument based on months of play experience (including running a dungeon event involving FOUR parties simultaneously) and actual examples (notably the power of a hellhounds 15ft cone fire breath is very different to a Young Black Dragons 15ft acid breath line if you have a grid for many reasons). This kind of post is really snide sounding and dismissive, instead of actually engaging with the arguments being offered.
Sorry Aegeri that wasn't something you did. It was something someone else did further up.
It's really hard to argue "in good faith" when I'm not arguing against literal words, but instead what I feel are intended slights.
Steam ID: Obos Vent: Obos
I think what the issue for some of us is, especially the "frustrated DM element" around here, is how going gridless to a grid really messes with the CR of a staggeringly large amount of monsters. I've actually run a substantial amount of 5E gridless as well and I just don't think it works anywhere near as well. A good example is that new Elemental power with earthspike, which is better than fireball in every conceivable way unless you measure precise distances to make the fireball more worth while (as it affects more squares). Imagine this encounter I ran with the two Hellhounds gridless. With a grid, the players have clear, obvious ways of escaping their breath and it's kind of a puzzle in itself. Additionally, I balanced and designed the encounter with these ranges/limitations in mind, so they weren't absurdly good for their CR. Without a grid it's entirely nebulous and requires much more description, set up and clarity on my part for the same encounter to work. This is again, because 5E has infinitely fiddly bits to it like AoOs with reach, how sentinel works, how many effects, ranges, auras and so forth function.
An encounter like the above with a grid has near 0 set up because players look at it and instantly grasp the idea of "We need to spread out like this to avoid the breath easily". Without a grid I have to badly fudge things or make that encounter look entirely different to give the players a meaningful chance of avoiding the same situation. This is because we're talking about a monster that precisely hits everything in a 15 foot cone right in front of it.
No seriously, what did someone do?