I just realised that people play D&D as a tactical game. I feel well... silly I have been running games for years and never once thought of using tokens in a roleplaying game.
I never even considered it a valid option.
If i wanted to play a tactical game I would play Battletech or other tactical games. My brother laughed when I announced this mid game and everyelse just stared at me.
No wonder people have such problems with combat taking forever. If i had to stop and set up a combat board everytime it would drive me crazy.
What ever happened to imagination and dice?
I just realised that people play D&D as a tactical game. I feel well... silly I have been running games for years and never once thought of using tokens in a roleplaying game.
I never even considered it a valid option.
If i wanted to play a tactical game I would play Battletech or other tactical games. My brother laughed when I announced this mid game and everyelse just stared at me.
No wonder people have such problems with combat taking forever. If i had to stop and set up a combat board everytime it would drive me crazy.
What ever happened to imagination and dice?
Nothing happened to it, it was just added to. There has been alot of discussion in the past about this, for me it isn't about playign pathfinder or dnd as a tactical game, its about using the rules easily and simply. Things like range, movement rates, attacks of opportunity, and flanking are far more challenging (in my experience) to use or maintain without some kind of representation.
You also have to remember that part of dnd's origins was tactical wargames. Gygax was taking the historical wargame foundation and adding to it. The minis and the physical represantation have always been a part of the game, it just became particularly pronounced in 3.0 and onwards.
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I just realised that people play D&D as a tactical game. I feel well... silly I have been running games for years and never once thought of using tokens in a roleplaying game.
I never even considered it a valid option.
If i wanted to play a tactical game I would play Battletech or other tactical games. My brother laughed when I announced this mid game and everyelse just stared at me.
No wonder people have such problems with combat taking forever. If i had to stop and set up a combat board everytime it would drive me crazy.
What ever happened to imagination and dice?
Different strokes for different folks.
So long as people have fun doing what they do, what difference does it make?
I don't, mostly because I learned how to play without them (minis were deucedly hard to come by overseas) and I tend to run a very improv game.
I do very much enjoy painting minis though, as well as making maps.
I run my game with gummy bears and oreos for monsters. Nom nom nom!
As far as I'm aware DnD has always had a tactical element, so it's not exactly a new concept. Then again, my gaming group tends to have 1 combat encounter max per 8-hour gaming session, so it's not exactly a major time sink.
I think my major issue is that i play with large parties and often have to have several people rolling at one time in order to keep the flow of the game going.
I average 4-6 players, last session I had 9. It can go very bad real quick with that many people.
vip00,
I run my game with gummy bears and oreos for monsters. Nom nom nom!
As far as I'm aware DnD has always had a tactical element, so it's not exactly a new concept. Then again, my gaming group tends to have 1 combat encounter max per 8-hour gaming session, so it's not exactly a major time sink.
If you kill something do you get to eat it?
That would be great I could work with that. :)
Instead of setting up minis and a grid I used a VTT.
It is a DMs best friend, no more worrying about keeping track of init, hit points, adding things up. The software does all this for you with a click.
Check out www.d20pro.com
Gives you the game board with little to no effort and can awesome looking maps
I haven't played with minis yet, but I have considered starting to do so. It would eliminate the need for the players to ask me "how many of the goblins can I catch in a fireball" and me having to make up some "umm, about 4 of them" answer on the fly. It would also make it easier for the players to notice flanking opportunities and the like.
But, I'm not sure if I would like to play with minis, hence my so-far reluctance to start. (plus money doesn't grow in my backyard!)
I haven't played with minis yet, but I have considered starting to do so. It would eliminate the need for the players to ask me "how many of the goblins can I catch in a fireball" and me having to make up some "umm, about 4 of them" answer on the fly. It would also make it easier for the players to notice flanking opportunities and the like.
But, I'm not sure if I would like to play with minis, hence my so-far reluctance to start. (plus money doesn't grow in my backyard!)
Minis dont have to coast you any money at all. For the first few years I played dnd, 'minis' meant a go board and go pieces/coins. The difficulties you mentioned are why I DO play with a board and miniature, but I dont get too hung up that I use the 'right' minis or that the drawings on the board are perfect (I use a dry erase board with a inch by inch grid marked out on it). It is just a tool to keep things moving smoothly.
Never used minis. In early times we just signed stuff on paper to have an idea of the position.
Now we use squared paper but that's all.
I used to love miniatures games like Bloodbowl (Orcs, yay!) but as a separate thing from RPGs.
Minis dont have to coast you any money at all. For the first few years I played dnd, 'minis' meant a go board and go pieces/coins. The difficulties you mentioned are why I DO play with a board and miniature, but I dont get too hung up that I use the 'right' minis or that the drawings on the board are perfect (I use a dry erase board with a inch by inch grid marked out on it). It is just a tool to keep things moving smoothly.
This. We found a bunch of cheap wooden disks some 1 inch some 2 inch for larger things. eventually the GM painted them in different colors with a letter and number on them to run various "unit types" and keep them organized for his sanity.
We also found some cheap thin foam in various colors to make "condition squares" for nauseated, fatigued etc. We have hundreds in 12 colors and building effects (fear and fatigue i don't remember what else), we use multiples of one color to indicate the level. The tricky thing and the one we haven't figured out yet is a good way to represent flyers in a manner where one token can be flying over another. The dice cube thing is what we are starting with with colored pony tail holders to indicate altitude, we'll see how it works after Gengis-Con.
I think after 4 years and buying a gridded battle mat that we could use with wet erase markers we are up to 30 bucks spent.
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I'm a mini addict, and my name is Calagnar.
At first it was only a few. Then painted them not for use in a game or any thing. Then there where a few more, Well ok a box or two more. There there where the mini that did not just fit right but where close. This lead to all the tools and what not to mod minis. This was a long time prosses as in years. Now I have way more mini then ill ever get to paint. Yes I still buy more. A few of my friends. They need help thats all im going to say.
Now for using them in games. It's not to make it easy on the players but for me. It removes all guessing as to where the monsters are compared to the players. It removes all guessing as to if you can or can't flank. It removes all guessing as to where you can move in one round. Mini and grid maps have removed 90% of, My charter can't be targeted becous of (fill in the blank). Or my charter can target becous of (fill in the blank). Thay have made my combats go faster. Now there is a bit of set up time to it. Gaming Paper: 1" Squares (Roll), and Gaming Paper: 1" Hexes (Roll). Thes are some of the best things to hit my game table in a long time.
I have far far FAR too many minis (I play Warhammer, too!)...
But I don't always use them. Sometimes an encounter requires knowing where everyone is and what they're doing, sometimes it doesn't. If it doesn't, then I'll skip setting up the board.
I do miss playing WHFRP for the reason that my minins could do double duty. No it really is a Bloodthirster or a swarm of Nurglings. I still have my Nurglings for swarms but most of the others are long gone.
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D&D has always been a miniatures game. 1st edition even gave movement speeds and ranges in inches (as in the number of inches you'd you'd move a miniature or measure of to find out if something was in range). Still, I didn't use minis for the longest time and just took the inch mark to mean 10' (most maps were drawn with one square = 10' back in then).
A friend of mine with a rather addictive personality and a LOT of disposable income got into minis when he started playing Warhammer and various other games. He ended up with THOUSANDS of minis. I think this was the early 90's. He wanted to use minis in his D&D game (by then, the core rules were 2nd Edition but his campaign had a LOT of house rules). I was VERY opposed but got outvoted so we gave it a try. I didn't like the 'game within the game' aspect minis seemed to add but, apparently, I was good at it (or so he commented).
By 3.0 and beyond, I really wouldn't think about running a D20 game without miniatures. Even in games where we really don't have miniature rules, we still use minis with some abstraction included... like Shadowrun. We use them to basically show where cover is and such but not for hard measurements. The GM generally still has the final say when someone asks, "Can I..." see it, reach it, hit it, etc.
Still, it is different. You gain precision but you can lose drama when you use a map and minis. When the battle grid says "Bogar absolutely can not reach the Antipaladin before he delivers his coup d'grace to the princess.", there's not much you can really do about it while a GM playing by an imaginary map in his head can wield the Rule of Cool with a lot more freedom.
Whatever works in your group is what you should use... without preaching about its superiority.
What ever happened to imagination and dice?
Accountability, and not being able to remember exactly where everyone is all the time. It also helps when you have 20 baddies, and 5 players. Tactics and imagination are not enemies. They are actually fairly related. Setting up the combat takes less than 3 minutes, and moving a mini from one square to another takes a few seconds. The dice rolling, and math is that takes the longest, and that is about of everyone's game unless they are playing amber or have made up rules that replace a lot of dice rolling, at which point we are even playing the same game anyway.
The time it takes to set up minis for an entire campaign will take less time than ONE "where is X, "wasn't i behind that" or "how'd that get to me i'm behind X" argument that i remember from 2e.
The time it takes to set up minis for an entire campaign will take less time than ONE "where is X, "wasn't i behind that" or "how'd that get to me i'm behind X" argument that i remember from 2e.
Ouch!
Firstly, remember, as others have already mentioned, that the original RPG (D&D) came from a miniatures wargame. Minis have ALWAYS been a part of it. They have been in every edition of the game, and have been manufactured by several different companies over that time. Pathfinder now has Reaper making them.
Secondly, nobody forces anybody to use them. As you already know, an RPG can be played without them. Some people prefer to play with them. I will second the call of roccojr that this should not be approached as a "my-way-is-superior" kind of thing. This is a matter of taste and enjoyment.
As to myself and the groups I play in, I have a vague recollection of not knowing exactly what to do, way back in 1982, with my rapidly growing minis collection. I painted them sometimes (badly) and made a half-hearted attempt at using terrain features, but we never remembered to really mark the action with them, so eventually they became little more than mascots - a 3D picture of your character that just stood there next to the dice. On rare occasions we used them to illustrate what happened in a contentious situation, but we just as often used graph paper and pencils to arbitrate those.
For 20 years we played without them without any serious incident.
Then, one day, I felt like painting a mini up. I enjoyed it, so I got the old ones out, and started collecting new ones. I began to first create grid-marked maps in Photoshop, then eventually graduated to full terrain features, to actual whole terrain tables.
I love the craft/hobby/artistic aspect of the hobby. It's another way of illustrating, and another way of telling the story. It is a means of artistic expression for me. My players, likewise, love the stuff I come up with. I even do requests. It's a lot of fun.
As to set up/take down, with a little prep it hardly delays battle at all. It certainly does not slow combat down as combat is happening. I find players in general make quicker decisions, having a better sense of position. What slows combat most is the same thing that always has - players zoning out when it's not their turns, and waiting until their turns to try to think up what to do next. That happened with or without the minis. But that's another thread topic.
I've been playing and DMing since 1st ed, and I've never used minis except when I do. Which is to say, almost every game I don't use them and don't put out a battle map, but on occasion there's a combat where having some sort of minis is useful for visualization.
I've recently gotten some Flip Mats, which are exceedingly nice, but the minis my players have each used to show where they are are is of their favorite (or at least most distinctive) dice, and the baddies are some of my dice. It's very easy to say, "The bright yellow d6s are all orcs" and you can even flip them with the spots up to give them numbers so players can say, "I'm shooting the third orc" and you don't have to worry about which is which.
That said, distinctive minis can be nice especially for PCs since it's easier to tell them apart.
What ever happened to imagination and dice?
In a word? Money.
First of all, as Kolokotroni said, minis don't have to cost you any money at all. I'm too cheap to buy plastic minis. For years, I used only cardboard die-cut counters. Eventually, I bought a book of Cardboard Heroes by Steve Jackson Games.
But on to my main point.
Before 3E came out, I used tactical maps and cardboard counters in roughly 5% of my battles. 95% of the battles I ran as "abstract combat," as I call it, where all the characters' positions are up to your imagination. I used maps only for special battles, or at the players' request.
When I first read the 3E Player's Handbook, I thought "No way can I run abstract combat with this! I couldn't possibly keep track of who is within 5' of whom, who is flanking whom with whom, or who can go where without provoking an AoO from whom. My memory just couldn't handle it!" Occasionally, for an ultra-simple battle in 3.X, I would try to get lazy, avoid drawing a map, and run the battle abstractly. In most cases, I would come to regret it by the end of the battle.
After playing 3E for a long time, I was astonished to learn that some people CAN run abstract combat in 3.X. Those people must have a better memory than I have.
I just realised that people play D&D as a tactical game. I feel well... silly I have been running games for years and never once thought of using tokens in a roleplaying game.
I never even considered it a valid option.
If i wanted to play a tactical game I would play Battletech or other tactical games. My brother laughed when I announced this mid game and everyelse just stared at me.
No wonder people have such problems with combat taking forever. If i had to stop and set up a combat board everytime it would drive me crazy.
What ever happened to imagination and dice?
After 15+ years of gaming I've just begun to use minis and I love them. Well not real minis but pennies and nickles and quarters actually. We lay a white board down and quickly sketch out the area. They make the game so much simpler to manage.
I mean how many times have you had a wizard use fireball in a small room and accidentally kill a fellow party member then say well if I knew that he was in there I would have cast something else. Or how often have you had a rogue say I try to jump the hole only to be told that he falls to his doom because as you said earlier (when he was in the kitchen) the hole is 40 ft wide.
Having a rough representation of your terrain and relative position to enemies and party members just makes game play that much smoother. It removes so much of the debate that can often arise in a game where everyone is imagining something very different.
That said we only really tend to use them for combat scenarios... I don't bother to sketch out inns and what not unless someone is trying to do something... usually steal the lock-box.
What ever happened to imagination and dice?In a word? Money.
I've heard that said before, but it seems to me that an RPG company might conceivably make LESS money by making battle maps necessary.
As I, and others, have said, you don't have to buy minis. A piece of square-delineated paper and cardboard counters will do. (Cardboard counters have the advantage, by the way, of allowing you to write damage figures and conditions on them.)
And I feel - contrary to some of the opinions expressed in this thread - that minis DO make a battle run more slowly... so if some company (such as Paizo) publishes modules, making adventures run more slowly means those adventures will last longer, so you don't need to buy as many modules.
In my experience the use of miniatures on a grid of squares slows down the game significantly because, like chess, players and DMs think longer about their turns in combat. And this is because the tactical difference between two adjacent squares or paths through squares can be like night and day, so the players need to choose carefully.
I've been playing 4th edition for the past few months and it is, in my assessment, even more dependent on the grid, and as a result we are happy to get two combat encounters done in one 5-hour session. I have heard the same from other 4th edition groups as well.
In 3rd edition/Pathfinder we would get about five encounters done in a 5-hour session, but I remember getting much more done in 2nd edition when "square" rules were not a part of the game.
For instance 2nd edition charging in combat is similar to 3rd edition/Pathfinder but it is not dependent on square rules like:
"If any line from your starting space to the ending space passes through a square that blocks movement, slows movement, or contains a creature (even an ally), you can't charge."
Now the drawbacks of playing without square rules are significant and have been laid out in previous posts. I tend to agree that third edition/Pathfinder represents a happy middle ground, but I have seen many combat encounters where square rules hindered more than helped. For instance, if you get in a fight with two carrion crawlers in a 15' by 15' pit, there is really no reason to break out the miniatures even though you could possibly be flanked. Or, if you are defending 10' wide bridge even though you could be charged.
I think it should be up to the DM to decide when to break out the map and use square rules; however, a lot of players will insist on the use of miniatures and square rules whenever they decide, and I think this speaks more to the erosion of DM fiat than anything.
With all that said, does any one have any ideas on handling things like flanking, attacks of opportunity, and charging without the use of miniatures on a grid of squares?
With all that said, does any one have any ideas on handling things like flanking, attacks of opportunity, and charging without the use of miniatures on a grid of squares?
The way I do it is to keep a mental image of the scene in my head, and whenever a player does something that would provoke an AoO, I tell him "That would provoke an AoO from monsters A and C. Do you still want to do that?" or something to that effect.
Charging and flanking are fairly easy. I make a judgment call on whether either option is possible based on how I see the scene.
What ever happened to imagination and dice?
Dice are still around.
Imagination in the sense you intend it... is relegated to people who are interested in the abstract, imprecise, lackadaisical approximation of a situation that play without markers brings.
I've done both. I wouldn't consider going back to mini-less play. Personally my biggest pet peeve is the word about. You step into a room and the BBEG is at the end of it, about eighty feet away. There is an observation galley with an ornate tapestry hanging from it, depicting a lion eviscerating a helpless one-eyed unicorn. The galley is about 20 feet up.
Me: "I move, then I cast a spell on him. Oh. It's Close range. Okay, 25ft plus 5ft per two caster levels. So... um... maybe I can get him, maybe I can't. My character would know."
DM: "Nope."
Me: "Drat, okay, well, then I wouldn't do that. Instead my wizard climbs up the tapestry to get a better vantage point and uses a different spell that's Medium range. I mean, assuming the tapestry's not taller than I can climb at half speed in a single move action. My character would know that."
DM: "Yeah, probably. But there's a pillar that's mostly in the way, blocking about half of your view. You'll be at a -4 penalty to hit with your spell."
Me: "Oh. That's a bad bet. I really need to hit. Okay, my wizard wouldn't do that either."
And so on.
With a nicely made battlemat, with some prop to lay things out it's really clear what your character can and can't do.
A picture is worth a thousand words. A battlemat and minis and some props are that picture. The DM is still welcome to describe the environment. Show me what the little Lego bits on the mat mean. Describe the description. Leave reality for the engineering, thanks.
To quote Are right above me, "I make a judgment call on whether either option is possible based on how I see the scene." M'kaythanx but I'd like to be able to do that for myself as a player, without playing a huge continually game of Mother-May-I with the DM.
We don't generally use squares anymore, except where they are built into a particular terrain piece. The benefit of playing straight-ahead wargames is that, in addition to cool table-size fields of fake grass and rubble, you also end up with a lot of nice templates, rulers and measuring tape. And you become really good at eyeballing distance, which speeds decision-making up considerably.
No, minis do not slow us down, and having no grid means straight-ahead measures every time, which speeds us up. No more worry about counting diagonals.
What ever happened to imagination and dice?In a word? Money.I've heard that said before, but it seems to me that an RPG company might conceivably make LESS money by making battle maps necessary.
As I, and others, have said, you don't have to buy minis. A piece of square-delineated paper and cardboard counters will do. (Cardboard counters have the advantage, by the way, of allowing you to write damage figures and conditions on them.)
And I feel - contrary to some of the opinions expressed in this thread - that minis DO make a battle run more slowly... so if some company (such as Paizo) publishes modules, making adventures run more slowly means those adventures will last longer, so you don't need to buy as many modules.
As to the first point, you really don't have to buy a published RPG to play an RPG, once the general idea is out there. Most people do, however. We're gamers, after all; we like collecting. I highly suspect that most people use some sort of hybrid between tokens and minis. And, of course, once you've started, it's much more likely that you're going to go out and purchase the Iron Golem to really put the fear of God in your players when you drop that on the gameboard, especially when that gameboard has been specially tailored to fit the adventure you're running, at the low, low cost of...
As to the second, I don't think those factors are connected. People aren't limited to owning one adventure, and I highly imagine that the period of time that mini combat slows down adventures - if it slows them down - is a non-event compared to the amount of time necessary to craft Paizo-quality adventures.
And I want to point out that I really don't want to treat this as a moral or aesthetic judgment. But I think that it's fairly clear that 3E was intended to push the tactical wargame side of D&D back into the fore, and 3.5 locked it in. I highly suspect that was a business decision looking to sell or help sell more product, because 2E, and even 1E, lacked the sort of rule fundamentals of 3E that made tactical combat a necessity. If anything else, it is one of those other elements that represent the 'videogamification' of D&D that started in 3E. Pathfinder, as heir to 3.5, has that locked in as well.
It's not good or bad. Actually, I'll go so far as to say that it's good - it has its downsides, but I personally like the upsides. Still, I don't think that it's overly cynical to suspect the motives in the initial change were not entirely devoid of market concerns.
I may have to look into some tokens for some combat usually i have maps I am using for an encounter so I generally know where everyone is at.
I love Battletech but I know how long that takes and with small kids time is precious so during games i fear i am one of those fiat GM's. Must be old school upbringing. I tend to move combat along very fast with really slow players so I can only imagine if they try to move figures around.
My brother was joking with me about the horror if we played battletech with our current group. It would take days for a minor skirmish.
I guess it all depends on the players you have. If i had a group of wargamers i could see using mini's but with what I have fiat has to do.
I think my one problem with using mini's is feeling the need to reflect terrain exactly. I am not that good of a mapmaker yet. Getting better but that is my major issue with Virtual Table games. It takes me hours of harvesting images and I lose sight of the game. ( I have been trying for 6 months to get a pathfinder game with my old group )
I once ran a 3.5 campaign on my lunch break at work. The campaign went from 1st to 9th levels before I had to move away and end it. We never used a battle grid because we didn't have time. I just learned the rules really well and made ad-hoc rulings on distance as we went.
HERE is a link to an article by Monte Cook written in 2003 about running a 3.5 campaign without minatures. Same guide lines should apply to Pathfinder with no problem.
I started without the maps and mini's but was Very glad when they started coming out and we started using them. (well- glad we started.. no clue when they started being available).
Our main issue was figuring out where everyone was and keeping it straight from round to round.
Mini's/map does make setup take a little longer (or require some prep time for the DM) but for the actual combat round it speeds it up greatly. You don't have to describe where you are and hope everyone understands- you move your mini into position.
For you groups who do not and won't use mini's/maps: how do you keep positioning straight in everyone's head?
If the wizard casts fireball how do you determine who is in range? How about range for chain lightning, haste, and all that?
This isn't a knock against that style of playing- I'm genuinely curious as to how you all keep it straight- especially with 5-6 member groups + pets/familiars/summons and such.
-S
I've done both. I wouldn't consider going back to mini-less play. Personally my biggest pet peeve is the word about. You step into a room and the BBEG is at the end of it, about eighty feet away. There is an observation galley with an ornate tapestry hanging from it, depicting a lion eviscerating a helpless one-eyed unicorn. The galley is about 20 feet up.
The important thing is to be precise in describing each room. I wouldn't use the word "about" to describe distance (except if the character would somehow be obscured from seeing the exact distance; such as in low-light or foggy conditions).
Also, not using miniatures does not automatically mean not using maps with a grid system. I use maps for virtually every encounter. Most of the time it works well (I point to where the monsters/NPCs are, the players point to where they are); it's just in situations where there is a lot of characters involved, and they're all spread around the place (whether PCs, enemies or summons) that it can become hard to remember exactly where everyone is.
We do occasionally use glass beads, dice, or similar to mark characters in such situations. It doesn't feel satisfactory though, which is why I've considered buying actual miniatures. Since I have massive OCD when it comes to collecting (if I start collecting something, I need to have all of that something), I have so far stayed out of the miniatures section in my local store.. This discussion might end up making the store a lot of money :)
I'm a recently graduated Architecture student, so whenever I ran games in college, I used CAD and photoshop to print up custom maps. My players always seemed to enjoy it. I've never spent a lick on minis though- just dice of different colors. I also don't feel the need to exclusively print my maps with grids. Some places, like market bazaars and long, narrow hallways just aren't conducive to being gridded out.
"Where on the scale of Fear and Love do you place this emotion?"
Makes about as much sense as "Do you use miniatures or do you use imagination?"
They're just not mutually exclusive.
I've seen what can happen if you don't use the mat, especially when there are many participants in the fight and/or you use area spells or effects. I've seen the mess this can cause.
I prefer using minis for that reason: It reduces the mess.
Considerations like some less-than-stellar GMs deciding how many enemies you can catch with a fireball on pure whim or depending on how much he wants to screw you over are just an afterthought.
And, of course, when I say "mini", I don't necessarily mean "little figure made of metal or plastic". And if it does, it doesn't have to be "Licensed Pathfinder miniatures depicting the exact creature it represents right now" or even "fantasy figure".
I do have them, but you can play without them without playing without the mat. Pieces of paper, coins or game markers, little pieces from board games (in our first 3e campaign, we used chess pieces for most everything. I think my character was the only one with a mini, because I got one that fitted the character reasonably well and painted it. Bottles and cans, and vases and whatever you have around will stand in for bigger enemies).
In my experience the secret to successfully playing without a map was to use a cost/reward system for actions the characters wanted to take (particularly related to movement).
As an example if at the start of combat someone says they wish to flank an enemy that they have just engaged you say "okay you can do that this round but you'll provoke an attack of opportunity, or you can do it next round without the AoO." If the person is a barbarian or monk with higher movement they can do it immediately. If they want to tumble into position they can do it immediately, etc. Same for if they want to melee attack a bad guy behind the front ranks.
As far as area effects go you adjudicate with logic and fun in mind. If the battle has just started and no one has joined in melee then a wizard should be able to get the majority of the enemy in his fireball (unless you've already established that they are very spread out). Once melee is joined you make it another cost/reward choice "You can get 8 of them in the fireball if you also hit your fighter friend or 6 of them if you don't." and so on. The melee fighters can also do things like say that they are deliberately establishing a defensive line so that the enemies are held in an area ideal for fireballing. Then anyone who tries to get past them provokes one or more AoOs and when its the wizards turn you let him hit all the baddies without hitting his friends.
This kind of thing can be hard to pull off in reality when the map says there is a gap the monsters can run through and so on. Without the map you can also give your players a great degree of freedom with things like taking cover. If they say that they're taking cover you let them and so on. You can let them add to the environment in small ways (such as cover being available).
This requires trust between the players and the DM and a DM who is more concerned about having fun than the letter of the rules, but it works perfectly well at lower levels. At higher levels it does get more difficult with summons, controlled undead, etc. The more entities you have to track the harder it is.
And, of course, when I say "mini", I don't necessarily mean "little figure made of metal or plastic". And if it does, it doesn't have to be "Licensed Pathfinder miniatures depicting the exact creature it represents right now" or even "fantasy figure".
This reminds me for those who may want figures on the cheap
there is a game I am sure some of you have seen/played called Zombies.
you can buy a bag of zombies (i think its 100 but it may only be 50) to replace or add to the amount available for the game for around 7-8 bucks
silly good price for that amount of minis
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vip00,
I run my game with gummy bears and oreos for monsters. Nom nom nom!
As far as I'm aware DnD has always had a tactical element, so it's not exactly a new concept. Then again, my gaming group tends to have 1 combat encounter max per 8-hour gaming session, so it's not exactly a major time sink.
If you kill something do you get to eat it?
I used to use Hershey's Miniatures as bad guys and when you killed one you got to eat it. But I eventually had to include a swap out rule otherwise players would make poor tactical decisions because they wanted to kill and eat the Mr. Goodbar across the room rather than the Krackle that was right in front of them. Then I switched to Hershey's Kisses and it wasn't as much of a problem since they were all the same.
I use the HELL out of minis. I've always loved having a little physical representation of my character, and it's just grown from there. Our games average around 6-7 players(besides the DM) and it would be chaos not having a graphical representations of where everyone is.
Also, as a DM, I try to make great use out of scenery, landscape, obstacles, etc. I use a lot of "Dungeon Tiles", especially the "Ruins of the Wild" set that uses above-ground outdoor terrain; Trees, high ground, hills, pits, rocks, cliffs, cover, it's all on the table and usable. My players have been making notes to add ranks into more movement based skills when they play my games lol.
For my gaming group, minis have become a commodity. I remember two years ago when I had brandished one of my miniatures (I was an avid Warhammer painter with my older brother), boldly placing it on our wet-erase board. The rest of the group gasped, took it all in, then proceeded to tell me how awesome my $3 dollar metal miniature was.
We've had to resort to using our imagination (which is not a bad thing at all considering 99.9% of games today give everything to you in the form of mind-numbing graphics and flashing lights), but if we had the dough to throw at our local game store to obtain these little pieces of heaven we definitely would.
It makes the combat and tactical situations so much smoother, which in turn helps the overall fluidity of the game.
So the main reason I'm adding to this post is because I'm starting up a miniature charity called Minis-for-Men. Of course, all proceeds go to my own gaming group. How does this benefit you? Brownies points. Spend them as you will, wherever you want.
I have a feeling that at some point, back in the 80s when some newb GM was deciding to run that newfangled game AD&D without miniatures, some gamer sat back and said, "G!@$%+mit, D&D has ALWAYS been a miniatures game, it started as supplementary rules for Chainmail, after all. It'll take FOREVER to have a combat without miniatures! Whatever happened to tactical considerations?"
For the record, I have played various versions of D&D up to Pathfinder, with and without minis--and plenty of other RPGs besides, with and without minis. There's loads and loads of room for both methods--and both methods include tactics, dice, and plenty of imagination.
I find personally for Pathfinder and its immediate predecessor, 3.5, using a grid and minis ultimately saves time FOR ME. As another poster noted (BigNorseWolf, I believe), it avoids a lot of confusion and arguments about where PCs are placed in relation to both each other and the monsters and how area of effect spells will impact a combat. However, if the GM and players can manage to do without and still have a good sense of what is going on, I am sure that is a very fulfilling experience.
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Seems to me this is largely a matter of preference and style.
I suspect mini-free combat is faster because most people who do it ignore huge chunks of the rules. Nothing terribly wrong with that but you could do the same with minis on the table. Get rid of the grid, guesstimate movement instead of measuring, ditch most attacks of opportunity, etc...
In general, I'm fine with ditching the minis but tell your players first. We had a GM who just stopped using them and suddenly half the feats a couple of our characters picked were pointless or based on guessing games of where things were.
Normally I don't use miniatures in my games. I use almost the exact system that Monte Cook suggests, with one addition.
If I'm not using the map (or if I am) I do not let players count squares to figure out exact distances or say things like "I want to make sure I'm exactly 70' away from half dragon so that if it wants to hit me with it's breath weapon it needs to take more than a 5 foot step." If it's martial based (ranges for arrow, or the above exact distance) I call for players to make a BAB check to get the tactics correct. If it's regarding spells (Such as, I want to be sure I'm in range of magic missile, or I want to hit as many orcs as I can with this fireball) I let players roll spellcraft. Overall it works for my group, YMMV.
When I find a map is the only way to go (really complex fights), I take my dice bag, turn it upside down, and build the maps out of the dozens of dice I have. (So in a fight, my d6s become the minions, my d12s are the generals, I keep track of their HP on the dice, etc..)
Just some ideas, but again for the most part, unless it's a really complex battle I don't use miniatures.
Interestingly enough my group, while we have mini's to play with for certain favorite characters, we mostly use dice instead.
As a group we have such a superfluous amount of dice and enough of them are unique to enable this. What we do is designate each person's "rolling" dice the remainder become the "token" dice with some of the most unique ones portraying the characters, and all of the matching sets of shadow run d6's and WOD d10's become the monsters with a few other unique ones become the one off baddies or NPCs
I thought I would post this as it came up in game last night.
During a walk through a old growth forest we were attacked by a war band of orcs. We had our characters minis (coins) just sitting down in the middle of the table with no map or anything. In a matter of seconds we had a improvised forest and we had begun combat. The dm grabbed a handful of dice (30+) and threw them at the table. Each die represented a tree. It set up a beautiful terrain and we were better able to visualize the combat. As the wizard I kept casting spells then using the trees to hide behind and prevent my character from getting flanked or pummeled to death. Being able to see what the terrain looks like really helps and can make life a lot easier. Is it needed? No but I sure do like it.
I use minis. I also hand-draw maps in wet erase for every one of the games. I kind of go overboard and detail in a bunch of stuff.
It's fun, immersive. It wastes my two hours a week, but, really, I do it because I want to, not because I have to.
I couldn't imagine playing without miniatures just because I'm so independent in how I think about the game board. I plan out my movements and actions round by round, decide who to provoke from and who not to provoke from, etc etc as I go. A lot of my turns are me picking up my dude, moving him, saying I did nothing and calling out the next turn (I watch dice turn by turn and ask people for their modifiers so I know what hits and what misses, so I can know what numbers I have to see on my dice to know what hits and what misses.)
Having to walk through all of that on my turn with someone else verbally would be tiresome, time-spending and confusing. I'd likely just draw a little diagram for myself anyways.