Playing without minis--what rules to change?

[Soarel]

Alright, I'll keep this short. I'm the main DM for my Pathfinder group. Everyone in the group, including myself, are also in a LARP that frequently goes on weekend camping trips in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Group wants to play RPGs during downtime, but I can't pack minis or a table to play on.

I need help playing without minis or a battle mat. From experience the only rules that need to be changed are the ones for combat movement, flanking, and spell areas. We don't use any of the Ultimate splatbooks if that matters.

1. Are these the only rules that need to be changed? If not, which others need to be?

2. How do you play without minis, if you do?

3. If the players enjoy playing without miniatures or a battle layout, should I continue games in this manner? I mainly write my own campaigns and adventures rather than using prepublished ones.

[JimboG]

Without minis or a playmat some of the core rules will obviously have to be waived, altered, or eliminated entirely. When I first played in my first few sessions we didn't use minis or anything, and it worked out great. Here are some suggestions that we used in our sessions without a playmat:

I would go ahead and assume that all characters and enemies start combat one charge action away from each other, and must use a move action to move farther away or closer. While this sort of gimps the extra movement bonuses given by certain feats and classes, without a visual representation it can get overly complicated unless you assume everyone moves roughly the same speed.

I would assume if two or more characters are in combat with the same individual enemy, then they're flanking. However, the enemies can flank the players too if one of them gets ganged up on.

For area-of-effect spells, it may be good to just assume all visible enemies are targets unless something has been specifically stated that separates one of them from the rest of the group.

I would do away with movement-based Attacks of Opportunity. That doesn't mean AoO don't still occur, but they will probably be less frequent.

Hope these help!

[ericgrau]

Attacks of opportunity and movement are going to be your big issues. It takes an extra 15 feet of movement to move around a creature without provoking, in addition to all other movement. 25 feet if he has a 10 foot reach, etc. Or in a dungeon you'll often have no way around a creature without provoking. On top of that it might often take 2 moves to reach the front line and maybe 3 to reach someone all the way in the back (more without provoking). In a small dungeon room maybe 1 and 2 (more without provoking). And ya don't forget about charging and so on.

Area effects are a good point. I've been shafted there when a DM assumed we were all together. Whereas when we position minis I'm always at least 20 feet back, especially if someone is about to do something to something in a dungeon. For this and other reasons you could ask the party about their general marching formation and use that until they say otherwise.

[Techwarrior]

We used graph paper, a 10 x 14 sheet of plastic, and a fine point dry erase market. A ruler was used to determine things like area effects and charge lines.

Went through a pack of cheap, off brand markers a month.

[weckar]

Early editions of D&D mostly functioned by this notion. Narrative becomes much more important than winning, but the gist is that you basically describe everything as a DM, and the combat options slide farther from "definitively possible" to "reasonable in the situation". In a character is in an enclosed space with an opponent, decide whether it is reasonable that they are NOT within movement distance, and work from there. Characters would need to announce things like flanking and the like, and all but the most basic attacks of opportunity will be out the window.

If that doesn't satisfy, just LARP out the combat :smallbiggrin:

[BWR]

Without a map the DM has to be far more careful in his descriptions of where things are in relation to eachother and who is doing what. I've seen too many cases (many of them my own fault) of the DM thinking one thing but the players getting another. It's possible to work around this, mostly by trusting the DM to be fair and the DM allowing the players to have favorable conditions to allow them to do what they want and not always rule in favor of the enemy. Some systems are abstract enough that so long as you don't have a lot of participants in the combat you don't really need a map, and the same holds true of 3.x - if everyone's stand still melee with a caster behind the lines, you can mostly ignore a map because you don't have to worry about range, movement, cover, etc.. Likewise, even if you have a very simple combat system, a lot of enemies and terrain means you pretty much want a map to show where things are.

[weckar]

All things considered, you'd ideally play D&D in which combat does not (or does only very very rarely) happen. Less swordplay, more intrigue.

[Reinkai]

I'm going to second the recommendation to just use a pencil and graph paper. Easy enough to carry and it's what my group uses. Just bring a dedicated eraser unless you want to end up with 50 pencils with no erasers on them.