Going Gridless

[Larkas]

I've long considered going gridless/miniatureless in 3.X, mostly because encounters are frequently full of chess-like considerations and rules-lawyering in my main group, but also because I feel it forces players out of an imaginary world into a representative one, i.e., people will believe that what they see in the battle map is all that is going on all around them, and that what's drawn is really all the details there are.

However, 3.X seems to be very dependent on grids to work properly, specially due to AoOs. I was kind of hopeless. Maybe I should find another system best suited to my needs? 2E certainly did that, and there are are quite a few OS systems I've been meaning to try out.

Anyhow, I recently stumbled upon a post on stackexchange claiming that 3.0 was designed to be usable both with and without miniatures. I've been playing this version pretty much since it came out, so I know that not many assumptions regarding the battle system were changed in the transition to 3.5, and to Pathfinder after that. So however 3.0 was supposed to play without miniatures should probably apply to 3.X as a whole.

I started digging for information, and found out that that design decision was apparently advocated by Monte Cooke. A lo and behold, he did post a piece on how to go miniatureless in his blog (https://web.archive.org/web/20080516064412/http://www.montecook.com/arch_dmonly21.html). He points out that the main issues of doing it relates to AoOs (as I suspected), flanking, range/areas and LoS. He does, however, post some advice on how to handle it.

The advice seems mostly solid. I might try my hand at it soon. Do you seen any other obvious issues of going gridless, and how to handle it?

[Grod_The_Giant]

It can be hard to remember where everyone is in relation to everything, especially in a game with turns as long as 3.5 tends to give you.

[Larkas]

It can be hard to remember where everyone is in relation to everything, especially in a game with turns as long as 3.5 tends to give you.

That's part of the problem, I think. In my experience, turns tend to drag on way longer than they should partly because of the grid.

However, I guess that a solution is using a fast hand drawn map, with dots for everything just to remember this kind of stuff. I remember using that back in the days of 2E, and it didn't bring the kind of "representativeness" brought about by grid battle maps in 3.5.

[Squirrel_Dude]

Going gridless and removing miniatures are two different things. The former is much more easily achieved than the latter. Honestly, I wouldn't want to play any game that had as complex a combat system as d20 systems tend to have without miniatures or some kind of mat. Going gridless, and simply use distances is certainly possible and I've played that way before.

To go gridless, all you need is a more acute sense of space, more exact floorplans and maps. Instead of saying that a space is 10 squares by 8 squares, you need to say that it is 48 ft by 42 ft. Honestly though, that isn't much of change because all movement and distances in 3.X are done in 5 ft. increments.

In short: Sure you can play without miniatures, but the game is clearly built with the assumption that you use them, and built to support that style of play.

[Flickerdart]

I've played gridless a few times. The biggest problems are that PCs love to charge, flank, score/provoke AoOs, and place areas of effect very precisely. The simplest thing to do would be to describe things in terms of groups of engagement. Let's say that the party of Axeman, Wizard, Thief, and Horseman encounters four kobold warriors. Axeman charges into the fray - him and the kobolds are now one group of engagement. Wizard could throw a fireball, but given that the combatants are all mixed up, he would hit everyone in the group, including Axeman. Next, Thief runs in. Thief can be considered to flank anyone Axeman attacked the previous round - after all, an axe to the face is pretty distracting. Horseman does a ride-by attack, but because he leaves the engagement group as soon as he entered, he's not in it. At the end of the round, there are three engagement groups - Wizard, Horseman, and the melee between the kobolds, Axeman, and Thief. The kobolds gnaw on Thief's ankles and he decides to retreat, but pulling out of the group of engagement provokes AoO from all of the kobolds that attacked him in the last round.

[Larkas]

In short: Sure you can play without miniatures, but the game is clearly built with the assumption that you use them, and built to support that style of play.

It arguably isn't, as I said above. That's part of the reason I want to try this. 3.X's battle system is complex, sure, but range/area isn't such a huge part of that complexity, I think. Remember, by going minitureless, I kind of expect to have to wing some situations. None of them seem excessively complex. Have you read the article I linked? Monte Cook has a couple of solid advices regarding just that!

What I'm fishing here, however, is exactly for some other complexities I might have missed. Any ideas?


I've played gridless a few times. The biggest problems are that PCs love to charge, flank, score/provoke AoOs, and place areas of effect very precisely. The simplest thing to do would be to describe things in terms of groups of engagement. Let's say that the party of Axeman, Wizard, Thief, and Horseman encounters four kobold warriors. Axeman charges into the fray - him and the kobolds are now one group of engagement. Wizard could throw a fireball, but given that the combatants are all mixed up, he would hit everyone in the group, including Axeman. Next, Thief runs in. Thief can be considered to flank anyone Axeman attacked the previous round - after all, an axe to the face is pretty distracting. Horseman does a ride-by attack, but because he leaves the engagement group as soon as he entered, he's not in it. At the end of the round, there are three engagement groups - Wizard, Horseman, and the melee between the kobolds, Axeman, and Thief. The kobolds gnaw on Thief's ankles and he decides to retreat, but pulling out of the group of engagement provokes AoO from all of the kobolds that attacked him in the last round.

That's some pretty solid advice!

[Doomeye56]

Ive played most of my 3.5 career gridless, it not hard it just takes abit of smoothing around the edges. like letting AoE placement be abit more lax.

[Deadline]

What you are looking to do has been typically referred to as "Theater of the Mind". It has some problems when applied to 3.X. AoOs are pretty much random (i.e. whenever the GM decides they happen), and inflicting them on players will tend to draw arguments. You may be better off eliminating them almost entirely (or making the circumstances that trigger them a bit more abstract, like Flickerdart mentioned). Blasting and area effects will likewise see less use, because they will often be less useful (catching an optimal number of targets is pretty much impossible in this setup), and potentially take longer to adjudicate (players have to ask what the largest group of targets is, since they'll have no way of knowing otherwise). And large combats become very difficult to manage effectively without improvising and compromising a great deal (wait, where was the fourth group of kobold archers again?).

In short, the highly "tactical" portion of the game is lost in favor of trying to do a more "descriptive" or "cinematic" style of combat. There are systems that work much better for this sort of thing ("7th Sea" is my absolute favorite for this), but 3.X has issues with it. If you've got a solid group who is willing to give it a shot and accept that they'll generally be less effective (barring some improving like Flickerdart mentioned). It can certainly be done with 3.X, but you wind up having to sacrifice some crunch to do so. That may or may not appeal to you and your players.

[nedz]

I ran AD&D for many years, which has no grid. When I first started with 3E I looked upon it as a kind of board game :smallamused: My experience is that it resolved a few issues we had with one player. Grids definitely help in the same way that figures do, but you can dispense with them sometimes, and I think you should mix things up on occasion.

[JusticeZero]

I'd lock them down to one intervening waypoint first. Gridless map people can start obsessing over measuring radii and arguing over a millimeter gap.

[Squirrel_Dude]

It arguably isn't, as I said above. That's part of the reason I want to try this. 3.X's battle system is complex, sure, but range/area isn't such a huge part of that complexity, I think. Remember, by going minitureless, I kind of expect to have to wing some situations. None of them seem excessively complex. Have you read the article I linked? Monte Cook has a couple of solid advices regarding just that!His suggestions can be summed up as telling the GM to throw out rules greatly effected by the grid or make consistent judgement calls. I don't think that he's wrong, but I also don't see that as evidence that 3.X is built for theater of the mind play. Me making houserules and judgement calls is the not the same as the game working as intended.


However, I guess that a solution is using a fast hand drawn map, with dots for everything just to remember this kind of stuff. I remember using that back in the days of 2E, and it didn't bring the kind of "representativeness" brought about by grid battle maps in 3.5.If you have a battlemap, you're not removing miniatures, you're going gridless. Miniatures = pieces of candy = dots on map = whatever you use to represent position in on a fixed plane or map. Removing the grid is fine and easy, as you just switch everything to distances. I've played systems with that built in, and I've run it in 3.X. It works fine.

I've actually found this to work extremely well in roll20, even on maps with grids because you have a ruler to measure distances.

[Andreaz]

D&D in all its forms is designed in a way irrevocably attached to a grid... so I suggest you keep it. If you want to go gridless, use other systems. Much of how it works depends on the grid, and much of the tactical fun of the system requires it.

[nedz]

D&D in all its forms is designed in a way irrevocably attached to a grid... so I suggest you keep it. If you want to go gridless, use other systems. Much of how it works depends on the grid, and much of the tactical fun of the system requires it.

Nope Grids only appeared with 3.0

Previous editions followed the principles of skirmish war-games.

3.0 onwards does assume a grid however.

[ZamielVanWeber]

Ive played most of my 3.5 career gridless, it not hard it just takes abit of smoothing around the edges. like letting AoE placement be abit more lax.

This exactly. We don't have a grid to use (I meant to make one but never did) so the game does consist of a lot of "how far is X" or "can I do Y" as compared to a game with a grid. Once you get used to it the game flows speedier at times because you aren't shuffling around little pieces every few seconds. Being able to keep a decent mental map (especially as DM) is highly critical though.

[Calimehter]

My group has been gridless for the whole of 3.X. It probably helps that most of us were 2E players back in the day, and so were used to it and didn't have anything to unlearn. When comparing what we do to the descriptions of others who use grids a lot and the few times we have busted out a grid for something, I can say:

- We consider combats to be a bit 'swirlier' than the grid crowd, so rely less on techniques that rely on everything around them being "static" during any given players turn. Having that mindset in the first place helps a lot.

- Having a rough sketch of the area helps, but I would strongly advise that you *don't* try to make everything to scale and make sure that people know that positions are fairly approximate. Otherwise, you get a lot of fiddly measuring and arguing. I'd argue that you would be getting the worst of both worlds if you try to do a to-scale sketch.

- AoO, to put it simply, are rarer. They usually only happen if something keeps a simple 5-foot step from being effective (including being backed up against a wall), or if a build is specifically going for them like a trip fighter. Yes, Mobility is an even worse feat than normal, and almost never provides a benefit the few times I've seen it taken.

- Area attacks chucked into swirling melees happen a lot less. We've never had much of a problem with that, as we've always felt that throwing something like a fireball that precisely into a combat is about the same as throwing a grenade.

To use casting an area effect behind an enemy that is in battle with a melee PC as an example: The few times its been tried, I've used the rules for splash weapons, with the ranged touch attack being a "hit" but a miss resulting in either both sides getting hit or neither, depending on the scatter direction. I also require the attack roll to be a ranged touch against the target as opposed to just an AC 5 "grid square" to represent the swirling melee effect again (a higher dex target is likely moving around more) . . . the area attack is obviously centered behind the target, but the caster in this case is trying to be very precise with the radius endpoint of this attack, so its the radius edge that is being "aimed" in this case. This would probably result in more hits if our party optimized for it, but the mere chance of failure usually steers my players toward a safer approach unless the situation has become grim.

Another side effect is that a getting some protection from the spellcaster's favorite area attack spell becomes a pretty good "buff" spell when pre-combat buffing is available.

- Rogues who are roughly within a move of the opponent usually are given the option of "Take a full turn to get into position then sneak attack in the 2nd turn . . . or (more commonly) use Tumble to get there this turn" when trying to get flanking.

[Blackhawk748]

My group uses a grid for 3.5, but when we play WH40k RPGs we go gridless, its a straight conversion to one square=1 inch and you threaten everything within 1 inch. It could work well for DnD, especially if you play Tabletop Wargames like my group does, as you have tons of minis as well as some terrain.

The only thing that gets a bit odd is flanking, but otherwise its fairly simple.