Gallows just ran our first session using his battlemap houserules - must say my impression as a player is that it worked out GREAT ...

I used to be a bit sceptical of how combat worked in 3rd edition - leaning towards preferring 2ed for roleplay & D&D for combat, but this time it was a perfect blend where it just meshed really nicely with combat being fluid, tactical, interesting and easy to picture in my mind.

I used to sometimes feel combat in 3rd edition was very complicated without really giving any of the satisfaction of feeling it was more than simply rolling a pile of dice each time it was your turn - Now Im a convert - I hereby proclaim 3rd better than D&D and 2nd combined (as long as the above rules are utalized!!) so many of the action cards just makes much more sense now, while at the same time the visualization is much better making combat overall just more interesting ....

As a sidenote, we decided to add an additional houserule whereby any dead bodies were left on the ground ....creating difficult terrain in the hex(es) they drop in - impact on actual tactics was rather minimal - but it just made it look great ...gave the feeling of carnage when the bodies started to pile up, until in the end we (4 PCs and 2 town guards we had managed to persuade to come along to investigate what turned out to be the final showdown of the chapter) found ourselves standing among 12 dead enemies ... - amazingly we managed to keep the watchmen alive with only my character going down ....but luckily having his eye saved by some rapid healing (It was my only crit, so not above thresshold for the permanent injury) Btw. anyone ever wronder how come loosing an eye gives -2 to Fel tests but not to balistics or observation?? - I cant help thinking of Moshe Dayan, he doesnt strike me as having had his charisma horrible mangled by loosing an eye?!

I've played with a lot of gamers who prefered grids, for different reasons. A couple were powergamers, tactitians, people who took the joy from position and movement in a clear, concrete way. Some were really great roleplayers who prefered to see the minis, doing great descriptions in paralel of strategic aspects.

To me, grids strain my imagination. When I still GMed D&D, it was I who suggested we started to use grids, because we could see clearer what was going on and I guess I felt we could have more tactical joy in our games. After some time, it wa sI again who suggested we stoped using it. I noticed our games were too much about what was going on at the grid, that is, it was like the grid had become the reality of the game, and we weren't imagining so much any more.

But I think that is not because I'm a roleplayer, a great imaginative guy; quite the contrary. Sometimes I saw people giving great descriptions and choosing because of the way they felt their characters saw the world, and not because of what was more effective in terms of rules. I think I'm quite the tactitian, actually, and I tend to get caugh in that aspect and lose the greater aspect in terms of joy to me: imagining and roleplaying.

So, I guess it's simply the matter of what works best for you.

I felt strange about WHFR 3ed distance system at first. It seemed like a grid, without advantages. Then I fell in love with it. It liberated my imagination and still kept good care of the more practical things in a battle, i.e., what you need to know to see if you can hit or get away from the guy, use your special ability and all that.

But I don't think WHFR 3ed was the first to use this system. Have you ever read or played 3:16 - Carnage Amongst the Stars ? I guess it was developed before 3ed. It uses a very simillar system - the difference being that in 3:16 distances are always measured related to the aliens. It's just one of the simplest game systems you'll find - and very, very cool.

Pedro Lunaris said:

Funny - Initially I felt the opposite ... at first I thought it was a great compromise between free for all winging it ...and using a grid ...but then I started that the complex actions did not come into their own and compared to simply winging combat the fact that the mechanic is so specific rather limited it - for this reason I really prefer either using a grid OR just running it free form without the mechanic of 'engagments' .... ei. how I was used to running 2end edition.

D&D5e to ditch a combat grid? I'll believe that when I see it (not saying it won't happen, simply that I'll put no stock in it until it does).

I played for years without grids or minis, using the old-school, poor-man's route of simple hand-drawn maps when description and imagination seemed insufficient (which was a fairly rare event).

I gave D&D3e three years to sell me on the value of the 5-foot grid map and it didn't turn out well. I witnessed the influence on gameplay that happened around me and realized that I was not where I wanted to be.

To be bluntly honest, though I had high hopes for WFRP3e's abstract system, it was by only the third session that I realized *as written* it was also not working for me.

Ultimately, it was my experience with TSR's "Marvel Super Heroes" RPG, reawakened by my reading of the design at work in "Spirit of the Century" and "The Dresden Files RPG" that finally brought me some form resolution to the "mapping debacle" that has been draped about the hobby...the idea of "Areas" or "Zones". It is that concept that found its way into my WFRP3e games (and, indeed, many other RPGs besides).

If I had may way, I'd like to see D&D5e go the way of "Areas/Zones". I'm sure it won't happen but it would be a delightful surprise.

The beauty of combat-mapping for me lies somewhere between the oppression of a world divided into 5-foot cubes and the utter whimsy of a world with no metics at all.

Pedro Lunaris said:

This was close to my experience as well. I call this the "slamming your fingers in the door"-effect...the notion that there are two detached realities at work in the game, 1) the one that is happening on the grid and 2) the one that is happening off the grid. When the transition or translation between those two experiences is jarring or unituitive, it becomes a noticable artifact of gameplay and feels like you're "slamming your fingers" every time that transition occurs...metaphorically speaking, of course.

Boehm said:

I agree it worked very well. Never going back to the abstract system, that I have defended for a year now. But using the mat and very simple rules added so much to the cards and general feel of combat.

As for losing an eye not influencing combat. When using ranged weapons it's customary to close one eye when aiming. As for observation I guess the game just follows a Hercule Poirot logic of squinting being an advantage

Generally the severe injuries that hit statistics are **** nasty and a good reason to watch the total rating of all your crits so you don't end up with something bad. If you get to 10, then you know that the next crit could possibly instantly kill you... if it's a head shot.