Yora
2013-03-12, 07:50 AM
Two things that always bothered me with 3rd Edition was the use of feet and the reliance on squares. Nobody outside the US uses feet, here in Germany almost nobody has the slightest clue how much a foot is. The official German translation went with 1,5m squares, but that way you always end up with weird half-meters. If the grid is going to be ditched anyway, there is no need to stick with that and instead I want to make everything be measured in full meters.
The idea is to have a system where distances are more eyeballed than measured. Getting away from minitures is all that it's about. Players simply say "I want to bull rush him into the chasm" and the GM says "that would be about 3m you have to push him. Or a simple "we both flank him" or "he's about 50m away, that means -4 to hit with your shortbow", or "the corridor is about 3m wide, I position myself so anyone who wants to pass me has to go through my threatened space".
Now directly converting to the next closes meter value would create some complications, like when you have a medium size character being slowed down by armor by a different number of meters than a small size character. Preserving the ease of just slapping 5 or 10 feet to any distance is something I want to keep.
Speed:
The most common base distance is 30 feet. This is much closer to 9m, but for the reason mentioned above, and because dividing by 3 is stupid, I will instead go with 10m. 5m increments would be too large, so 2m it is. That's also quite close to 5ft. Correct conversion is not the goal. Instead the goal is to allow for easy quick and dirty conversion to meters.
So I propose this as a start:
{table=head]Feet|Precise meters|Adjusted meters
10 ft.|3m|2m
15. ft|4.5m|4m
20 ft.|6m|8m
30 ft.|9m|10m
40 ft.|12m|12m
50 ft.|15m|14m
60 ft.|18m|16m[/table]
Yes, this means that characters with a speed of 20ft. are effectively sped up to 25 ft., and those with 30 ft. speed bumped up to 33 ft. I'm not quite sure what to do with small characters with reduced speed. 4m would be more precise but going with 6m would be more streamlined rules and easier to remember.
Reach:
D&D works with squares, I propose to instead go with radii from a point.
A radius of 0,5m around the point a character stands on, is the ocupied space. This is treated the same as an occupied square. In case it matters, a character occupies a circle 1m across.
Doing some quick moch-ups with a long stick, you could hit a person with a sword or axe about 2m away when you make a lunging step forward. 1,5m does actually seem are much more reasonable distance, but a character is assumed to move within his occupied space/square anway. So I would say the reach of a medium size character without a reach weapon should be set as 2m radius This would be the threatened space, which works just like threatened squares. Accordingly, the reach of a creature would be converted using the following table:
{table=head]Feet|Precise meters|Adjusted meters
5 ft.|1,5m|1m (small)
5 ft.|1,5m|2m
10 ft.|3m|2m (small)
10 ft.|3m|3m
15 ft.|4,5m|4m
20 ft.|6m|6m[/table]
It's easy: Base reach is 2m. Small characters get -1m, a reach weapon +1m.
Attacks of Opportunity:
Usually, AoOs are provoked if you leave an enemies threatened square. Without squares, that of course does not work. The simple solution is to say that you provoke an AoO when you leave an enemies threatened space. This does allow you to circle an enemy without provoking, which is not possible on a grid. However, the idea of AoO for leaving threatened squares is that you turn your back to your enemy. If you just circle strafe around him, not provoking seems quite sensible. If you are flanked and want to circle one of the two enemies, you will leave the other ones threatened space and provoke AoO from him. That's good enough, I think.
Ranged Weapons:
This is quite easy since they refer to the weapon table anyway and there isn't really anything to calculate:
{table=head]Feet|Precise meters|Adjusted meters
10 ft.|3m|4m (dagger)
(15 ft.)|(5m)|(4m)
20 ft.|6m|6m (shortspear)
25 ft.|7,5m|8m
30 ft.|9m|10m (javelin)
40 ft.|12m|12m
50 ft.|15m|14m (sling)
-|-|16m
60 ft.|18m|18m (shortbow)
70 ft.|21m|20m (comp. shortbow)
-|-|22m
80 ft.|24m|24m (light crossbow)
90 ft.|27m|26m
-|-|28m
100 ft.|30m|30m (longbow)
-|-|32m
110 ft.|34m|34m (comp. longbow)
120 ft.|37m|36m (heavy crosbow)[/table]
For simplicity I am going with 4m range for 10ft. range weapons because 2m range is the reach of normal melee weapons. If there is every any ranged attack with a distance of 15ft. it can also be treated as 4m. This is one case where two distances of different squares result in the same meter-distance.
Spells:
This one is easy:
{table=head]Range|ft.|meters
Close|25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels|10m + 1m/level
Medium|100 ft. + 10 ft./level|30m + 3m/level
Long|400 ft. + 40 ft./level|100m + 10m/level[/table]
Close range is now increased every level instead of every 2 levels, but that makes the actual distances quite close together.
With medium range I am going with 3m steps this one time.
Long range is actually quite a bit shorter than originally, but steps of 10m are simpler than steps of 12m and at those distances precise measurements are irrelevant anyway. Who ever said "damn, if I had one more level, I could reach them with my long-range spell, but I can't afford to move towards them for one more round"?
Combat Maneuvers:
If you bull rush someone and push him back by 5ft. or anything similar, go with 5ft. = 2m.
Falling damage:
This one is completely arbitrary to begin with and DMs rarely know the precise height of anything unless they designed it to be a specific height. People mostly complain that falling damage is too low, so I would say make it 1d6 damage for every 2m.
Jumping
Make it 1m for every 5 points of the dice result. This is shorter than originally, but characters start to jump incredible distances very soon anway, so that's no real problem.
For high jumps, make it 0.5m for every 5 points, or even 10cm for ever point if you want to.
You also get a +4 bonus or penalty to Jump checks for every 10 ft. above or below 30 ft. of speed. Given the standard speeds of 8m, 10m, and 12m, I say make it +/-4 for every 2m.
5. ft step
Make it a 1-meter-step and everything is golden. With a 0,5 radius occupied space, two characters can stand only as close as 1m away from each other and at 2m they would be out of reach. So no problem here.
And I think that should cover almost anything. Is there anything important that is still not adressed?
The idea is to have a system where distances are more eyeballed than measured. Getting away from minitures is all that it's about. Players simply say "I want to bull rush him into the chasm" and the GM says "that would be about 3m you have to push him. Or a simple "we both flank him" or "he's about 50m away, that means -4 to hit with your shortbow", or "the corridor is about 3m wide, I position myself so anyone who wants to pass me has to go through my threatened space".
Now directly converting to the next closes meter value would create some complications, like when you have a medium size character being slowed down by armor by a different number of meters than a small size character. Preserving the ease of just slapping 5 or 10 feet to any distance is something I want to keep.
Speed:
The most common base distance is 30 feet. This is much closer to 9m, but for the reason mentioned above, and because dividing by 3 is stupid, I will instead go with 10m. 5m increments would be too large, so 2m it is. That's also quite close to 5ft. Correct conversion is not the goal. Instead the goal is to allow for easy quick and dirty conversion to meters.
So I propose this as a start:
{table=head]Feet|Precise meters|Adjusted meters
10 ft.|3m|2m
15. ft|4.5m|4m
20 ft.|6m|8m
30 ft.|9m|10m
40 ft.|12m|12m
50 ft.|15m|14m
60 ft.|18m|16m[/table]
Yes, this means that characters with a speed of 20ft. are effectively sped up to 25 ft., and those with 30 ft. speed bumped up to 33 ft. I'm not quite sure what to do with small characters with reduced speed. 4m would be more precise but going with 6m would be more streamlined rules and easier to remember.
Reach:
D&D works with squares, I propose to instead go with radii from a point.
A radius of 0,5m around the point a character stands on, is the ocupied space. This is treated the same as an occupied square. In case it matters, a character occupies a circle 1m across.
Doing some quick moch-ups with a long stick, you could hit a person with a sword or axe about 2m away when you make a lunging step forward. 1,5m does actually seem are much more reasonable distance, but a character is assumed to move within his occupied space/square anway. So I would say the reach of a medium size character without a reach weapon should be set as 2m radius This would be the threatened space, which works just like threatened squares. Accordingly, the reach of a creature would be converted using the following table:
{table=head]Feet|Precise meters|Adjusted meters
5 ft.|1,5m|1m (small)
5 ft.|1,5m|2m
10 ft.|3m|2m (small)
10 ft.|3m|3m
15 ft.|4,5m|4m
20 ft.|6m|6m[/table]
It's easy: Base reach is 2m. Small characters get -1m, a reach weapon +1m.
Attacks of Opportunity:
Usually, AoOs are provoked if you leave an enemies threatened square. Without squares, that of course does not work. The simple solution is to say that you provoke an AoO when you leave an enemies threatened space. This does allow you to circle an enemy without provoking, which is not possible on a grid. However, the idea of AoO for leaving threatened squares is that you turn your back to your enemy. If you just circle strafe around him, not provoking seems quite sensible. If you are flanked and want to circle one of the two enemies, you will leave the other ones threatened space and provoke AoO from him. That's good enough, I think.
Ranged Weapons:
This is quite easy since they refer to the weapon table anyway and there isn't really anything to calculate:
{table=head]Feet|Precise meters|Adjusted meters
10 ft.|3m|4m (dagger)
(15 ft.)|(5m)|(4m)
20 ft.|6m|6m (shortspear)
25 ft.|7,5m|8m
30 ft.|9m|10m (javelin)
40 ft.|12m|12m
50 ft.|15m|14m (sling)
-|-|16m
60 ft.|18m|18m (shortbow)
70 ft.|21m|20m (comp. shortbow)
-|-|22m
80 ft.|24m|24m (light crossbow)
90 ft.|27m|26m
-|-|28m
100 ft.|30m|30m (longbow)
-|-|32m
110 ft.|34m|34m (comp. longbow)
120 ft.|37m|36m (heavy crosbow)[/table]
For simplicity I am going with 4m range for 10ft. range weapons because 2m range is the reach of normal melee weapons. If there is every any ranged attack with a distance of 15ft. it can also be treated as 4m. This is one case where two distances of different squares result in the same meter-distance.
Spells:
This one is easy:
{table=head]Range|ft.|meters
Close|25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels|10m + 1m/level
Medium|100 ft. + 10 ft./level|30m + 3m/level
Long|400 ft. + 40 ft./level|100m + 10m/level[/table]
Close range is now increased every level instead of every 2 levels, but that makes the actual distances quite close together.
With medium range I am going with 3m steps this one time.
Long range is actually quite a bit shorter than originally, but steps of 10m are simpler than steps of 12m and at those distances precise measurements are irrelevant anyway. Who ever said "damn, if I had one more level, I could reach them with my long-range spell, but I can't afford to move towards them for one more round"?
Combat Maneuvers:
If you bull rush someone and push him back by 5ft. or anything similar, go with 5ft. = 2m.
Falling damage:
This one is completely arbitrary to begin with and DMs rarely know the precise height of anything unless they designed it to be a specific height. People mostly complain that falling damage is too low, so I would say make it 1d6 damage for every 2m.
Jumping
Make it 1m for every 5 points of the dice result. This is shorter than originally, but characters start to jump incredible distances very soon anway, so that's no real problem.
For high jumps, make it 0.5m for every 5 points, or even 10cm for ever point if you want to.
You also get a +4 bonus or penalty to Jump checks for every 10 ft. above or below 30 ft. of speed. Given the standard speeds of 8m, 10m, and 12m, I say make it +/-4 for every 2m.
5. ft step
Make it a 1-meter-step and everything is golden. With a 0,5 radius occupied space, two characters can stand only as close as 1m away from each other and at 2m they would be out of reach. So no problem here.
And I think that should cover almost anything. Is there anything important that is still not adressed?