3.5 combat over IMs?

[Sciina]

Recently, I've been thinking of trying to start a game with a couple of my friends over Skype or Live Messenger, but I keep thinking of one problem, combat. Since 3.5 combat pretty much requires a grid to use it, how can you do it on these? Any suggestions?

[Morbis Meh]

I will leave this (http://www.rptools.net/index.php?page=downloads#MapTool) here for you. This will solve all of your problems have your friends download the same version as you and you will be set. If by chance your modem is acting up and not allowing people to connect to your server then download this (http://hamachi.en.softonic.com/) which creates a virtual network that you and all of your friends can join if they download it as well. hope this helps!

[ufis]

https://docs.google.com/

Create a spreadsheet on google docs, share it with everyone. Hell, it even has it's own little chat functionality that you can use.

Edit: changed it to https

[begooler]

If everyone is put off by downloading software and learning how to use it:
...then they are lazy...
Google drawing works pretty well for combat. No one has to download anything or spend five minutes learning anything either.

Edit: 1. Ninja'd. 2. I'd be happy to share a link by PM to the character sheet our group uses for Google.

[Zaq]

One of my first games of 3.5 took place over AIM. It was . . . difficult, to say the least, but possible. The real kicker is getting a consistent mapping effect going (there's no shortage out there, but you still have to actually do it) . . . and dealing with immediate actions, though that's less of a problem than in 4e, simply because there are fewer.

[Krazzman]

You need a what?

We played about 3 years without one and only in certain bossfights, we thought about using one.

You can still take the spreadsheet thing from google to give examples about how the terrain looks or something like that.

Just use your imagination.

Have a nice day,
Krazzman

[Zaq]

You need a what?

We played about 3 years without one and only in certain bossfights, we thought about using one.

You can still take the spreadsheet thing from google to give examples about how the terrain looks or something like that.

Just use your imagination.

Have a nice day,
Krazzman

"Just using your imagination" is all well and good if you just want to roll d20s at each other until someone falls down, but if you want any sort of tactical combat at all (say, flanking, or tripping, or area effects, or charging, or having multiple targets, or taking/avoiding AoOs, or . . .), you need a map of some kind. It's what the game is designed for.

I'd no sooner play without a map than I would without dice. (An automatic die-roller counts.)

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I will leave this (http://www.rptools.net/index.php?page=downloads#MapTool) here for you. This will solve all of your problems have your friends download the same version as you and you will be set. If by chance your modem is acting up and not allowing people to connect to your server then download this (http://hamachi.en.softonic.com/) which creates a virtual network that you and all of your friends can join if they download it as well. hope this helps!

Neither of these programs tend to like Linux, unfortunately.

Hamachi *can* be done, I think, but no one has done the coding to make MapTools work yet, and it is compounded by the fact that there's already a linux program called MapTool.

[Eldan]

In my experience, combat works just fine without a grid, tactical movement included. You'll have to wing a few things, along the lines of "I move away from him" and "Is he in reach?", but it works well enough over Skype. I've done it for years.