Playing Without A Map

[Person_Man]

So lets say that you want to play a game without a map, or you are using a primitive map and just want to avoid abilities that require careful positioning. You're playing on a forum, or skype, or graph paper, or you left your miniatures at home, or whatever.

What game mechanics (class abilities, spells, magic items, Feats, etc) are best suited to this style of game play?

For example, Sneak Attack is annoying to use if you aren't using a map, because it is most commonly triggered by Flanking, which requires careful positioning. By comparison, archery and ray spells are easier to use without a map, because they have long ranges and you don't have to worry about accidentally hitting your allies with a blast template.

Thoughts?

[Acidic_Cakes]

Run speeds become next to meaningless, as you will just end up saying something along the lines of, "I run up to the dragon and bash him on the nose with my sword." rather then having to measure out how many feet away it is.

[Eldan]

I honestly never saw any reason to avoid any abilities when playing without a map (in fact, I only played with a map once or twice, and didn't like it).

There's nothing stopping you from saying "I move into a flanking position" or "I block the passage so the enemies can't get past me".

Same with run speed. "The dragon is 90 feet away, so you can't reach him in this turn."

It honestly doesn't make too much of a difference.

[imneuromancer]

You may have to adjust sneak attack from rogues.

While not as optimal, I actually really liked playing a Ninja because they could go invisible for a round (IIRC) as a free action a few times a day.

Maybe give rogues the ability to "vanish" for 1 round/level (or until they attack) as a free action a certain amount of times a day (say, 3+INT or 5+INT or something) would get rid of the necessity of them having to flank and tumble and stuff.

[Flickerdart]

It's probably fair to assume that if the rogue and the fighter are both in melee range of a monster that they are flanking, so that's not really a problem.

[lorddrake]

I honestly never saw any reason to avoid any abilities when playing without a map (in fact, I only played with a map once or twice, and didn't like it).

There's nothing stopping you from saying "I move into a flanking position" or "I block the passage so the enemies can't get past me".

Same with run speed. "The dragon is 90 feet away, so you can't reach him in this turn."

It honestly doesn't make too much of a difference.

I'll have to agree here with Eldan. I played only once with a map (in more than ten years of gaming) and never took anything from the core rules because it was needed in a map grid.

I guess it depends on the players and mostly on the DM. The DM must "have" the map in his or her head. And explain clearly to players. My players didn't even liked when there was a map.

[Tyndmyr]

Warlock works pretty well. Range is mostly irrelevant to you, you can fly constantly, so hazard locations matter less. DFA is similar, though range is somewhat more limited.

[Dsurion]

Off the top of my head, it makes attack of opportunity awkward-to-not-very-useful.

[rmg22893]

Off the top of my head, it makes attack of opportunity awkward-to-not-very-useful.

Not really. You just have to remember where you are in respect to your opponents. I find that not using a map actually makes combat flow much faster.

[ShriekingDrake]

We do this quite often and have found that with a good DM it actually improves the game. We're less focused on taking time to get the squares just right. The DM manages the ranges and uses spot checks, or intelligence, etc. to decide close calls. For instance, the rogue will say "I move into a flanking position" and DM says "you won't get there until next round and you'll have to pass pretty close to the other troll." Rogue says "can I go the other way to avoid the other troll and still get there even by next round?" "Maybe, its melee, who knows, feel free to give it a try" . . .

Our games often do better that way. They are just more fun. And in the few cases where precision is warranted, the DM does a quick sketch. For instance, the DM went to town on the bridge scene in Red Hand of Doom. There it was fun to have the precision. But part of what make it fun was that we don't usually do that for a thirty by thirty room.

I think many games would go faster and have a greater sense of role-playing if we actually did a little less pen and paper.

[Yora]

It's probably fair to assume that if the rogue and the fighter are both in melee range of a monster that they are flanking, so that's not really a problem.

I like that one, havn't thought of that.

When I have really complex battles that rely on the environment, I place some dice in the middle of the table to represent where everyone is, roughly in relation to each other, but without a grid
In regular 4 on 4 or 4 on 6 encounters, I can usually do that in my head.

[MukkTB]

Sometimes my group plays without a map. Generally if it gets too complicated we switch to a map. Works just fine.