2007-08-31 No Minis

I would like to collect some house rules that help me run combat without miniatures that don’t require a rebalancing of the skills and feats available in D&D 3.5. When I wrote 2007-07-17 In Character I had already seen Monte Cook’s article on running 3rd ed D&D without miniatures. It’s basically all common sense. There’s not much else to add:

*Cover**: When in doubt, let them have cover if they can explain why they should have. This probably means that most archers will shoot into melee and their targets will always gain soft cover from friends or foes. This weakens archers a bit.

*Difficult Terrain**: When in doubt, let there be difficult terrain. Whenever combatants step off the road or into rooms full of stuff – assume rubble, chairs, bushes, and so on. This makes armor, Tumble, and Mobility more important, since you’re always making a move and provoke attacks of opportunities.

*Flanking**: If A wants to get a flanking bonus against B, check for numerical superiority: Anybody that attacked either A or B or was attacked by A or B in the previous round is counted. If A has more allies involved in this fight than B, then A will find a way to flank B. The most trivial situations is when A and a friend attack B. Clearly A has numerical superiority.

Complex example: If A1 attacks B1, B2 attacks A1, A2 attacks B2, and B3 attacks A3, and A4 attacks B3, this is how you would draw it:

  A1 - B1
     \
  A2 - B2

  A3 - B3
     /
  A4

In the group A1, B1, A2, B2, nobody has numerical superiority, and their group is not connected to the A3, B3, A4 group. In that second group, A3 and A4 are flanking B3.

Too complicated?

#RPG #thoughts

Comments

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Personally I just wing it and imagine the combat is a fight scene from a movie. I toss around +2 bonuses (occassionally more) like they’re candy for great moves (sometimes with a -2 penalty to something else, sometimes not). If a Rogue says they want to sneak up and backstab, if they make the roll and cinematically it works, I go for it. If not, they can wait in the shadows for a round or two. No biggie. Attacks of Opportunity, Flanking, etc, isn’t mentioned at all.

I know it’s Mutants & Masterminds rather than D&D, but I strongly recommend ploughing through this thread to find terrific examples of how to run combats. Pure inspiration.

this thread

– GreyWulf 2007-08-31 11:08 UTC

GreyWulf

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The thread has 375 pages!! :page: :page: :page: :page: :page: :page: :page: :page: :page: :page: :page: :page: :page: :page: :page: :page: :page: :page: :page: :page: :page: :page: :page: :page: :page: :pearl: 8D

I’ll be following some of the links to “fights”. 😄

– Alex Schroeder 2007-08-31 12:21 UTC

Alex Schroeder

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As I said before, it weakens all characters with faster movement...

– madalex 2007-09-01 18:34 UTC

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Yes. But as far as I am concerned, that’s not a big drawback. It also strengthens all characters with 20ft movement rate. And that’s ok, too.

– Alex Schroeder 2007-09-01 21:14 UTC

Alex Schroeder