Claustrophobic Combat

[Person_Man]

So while playtesting my homebrew class based on movement (the Vanguard (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=240364)), I came to the realization that a majority of D&D combat for my group occurred within a very small space. Usually 20-40 ft rectangular rooms connected by 5 ft corridors. And when combat did occur in larger spaces, it tended to have a lot of interposing terrain (walls, hills, etc). And so by the second or third round combatants tended to clump together within 30 feet of each other. As you can imagine, this severely limits movement. And so a variety of class abilities that basically allows you to ignore or change the movement rules (ability to run on walls, ignore terrain, make a full attack with Spring attack, easy access to Bull Rush to move enemies out of the way, and many more).

I was wondering if other people had similar experiences? Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Are ranged attacks and movement based abilities horribly overrated? Do you have any advice on how to make combat less "sticky" and more dynamic?

[Malachei]

I'd agree, at least for dungeon settings. Even outside dungeons, actually, (official) maps are often sized about 60 x 60 ft. making it unlikely a PC can position outside an area spell's radius.

One obvious solution is to make maps larger and map sections (rooms, caverns) larger, as well.

[Keneth]

Unless you're adventuring out in the wilds or in a dungeon built by giants, this is pretty normal and it's actually how combat is supposed to look like — messy, chaotic, no space to maneuver — hence the word "mêlée". And yes, this can severely limit abilities that require more space and forces the players to think more tactically.

As for whether or not that makes such abilities overrated; No, I don't think so, since it depends too much on circumstances. For instance fly is one of the best spells in a wizard's repertoire, but to use it effectively, you need ceilings to be at least 15 or 20 feet high, which is unlikely in any closed space. Does this make the spell less desirable? No, you just need to get creative in situations where you can't just fly up 30 feet an start dropping nukes.

[Malachei]

Skill tricks can help: Nimble Charge, Walk the Walls, Wall Jumper, Twisted Charge, to name just a few.

[Telonius]

Larger combats tend to be a little bit harder to plot out if you're used to minis and battlemats. You can always treat the squares as 10 feet, but that has its own problems.

Starting anything more than 60 feet away means you're looking at bow-and-blasting duels. (Round 1: archers shoot, blasters blast, fighters either use a double move to get closer or ready against a charge. Round 2, archers shoot, blasters blast, surviving fighters engage in melee. Repeat as necessary).

I do think there's a fairly broad consensus that archery doesn't get a whole lot of support from the rules. But I also wonder whether that's a function of how seldom people are in a position where archers are shooting at them from extreme range (100 feet away or so).

[Malachei]

I do think there's a fairly broad consensus that archery doesn't get a whole lot of support from the rules. But I also wonder whether that's a function of how seldom people are in a position where archers are shooting at them from extreme range (100 feet away or so).

Absolutely. Because often, the encounter map is 60 x 60 ;)

[Cieyrin]

Absolutely. Because often, the encounter map is 60 x 60 ;)

Not to mention that we have RL limits of table space and how large our battlemats actually are. Unless you enjoy unusually large tables or playing on the floor, it's a reality gamers have to deal with somehow, which is generally to limit the size of battles. Unless they have a miniature gamer buddy with ready built terrain or they throw a lot of money into Dwarven Forge sets...

[nedz]

I used to run movement based encounters a lot back in the days of 1E and 2E, but 3.5 isn't very good for this (Don't get me started on the persuit rules:smallannoyed:). It is still possible but you are going to need a large playing area.

I have a large collection of floor tiles. The useful ones for this are 60'x40 or 60' long corridors. When everyone has run off to one end of your tiles, you pick up the empty ones and slide the other tiles across the table, placing the empty tiles at the edge where characters are going to move next. Basically you use the large tiles as figure trays. You need 9 large tiles for out doors, but only 3 corridor sections, of any given width. With more corridors lengths you can just wrap them around, which helps in the situation where someone gets left behind.

[Spuddles]

We have a lot of dungeon crawling interrupted by large outside combats involving armies of creatures. I think our battle mat is 5' x 5' for out of doors combat. That's 300' in game. Course, there are trees, hills, walls, mud pits, buildings, etc, but usually pretty open.