Quote Originally Posted by Ionathus View Post
Sure thing! Your response brings me to a follow-up question: you mention wanting to make curves, what uses are you seeing for that? I think you mentioned making windy paths...is that for an effect like the "Wall of [Stone]/[Fire]/[Thorns]" spells? Or are you seeing your PCs weaving through enemies a lot of the time?

In five years of DMing, I think I could count on one hand the number of times my players could be said to be "maneuvering" with their movement. It's almost always straight lines towards whatever they want to hit/avoid getting hit by. But that could just be my table, and your table likes doing a lot more "duck and weave" thing!

If, like you say, everybody at the table is still counting distances, it might be a good idea to just buy one of those tape measures for each player and let everyone go hog wild. It's not how most modern games play but if it's easier for you, that's all that matters! The only true rule is consistency: in this case, either way you need to give your players a concrete way of always knowing how to reckon the distance, or else they might feel like you're being needlessly arbitrary. As a plus, it gives you more freedom to design terrain that doesn't have grid marks baked in.
That is for PCs weaving around. It is mostly about terrain effects - I have a 3D printer and time, so I have a ridiculous amount of terrain scatter. A small number of battles take place in a relatively open area. But if they are in a forest, there are trees, bushes, and boulders all over, eliminating a lot of straight lines. Or if they are in a building, there will usually be stuff in the rooms - a great hall with tables and chairs that they have to move around, a bedroom with wardrobes, beds, chairs, and the like, a kitchen full of barrels, crates, and stoves. Curves would be helpful in getting the most out of the distance while being able to go around the stuff in the way, and something that curves can also help with defining distance if they climb over something (I'm thinking the scene in D&D:HAT when Xenk is leaving and he walks straight over the boulder in the way.) A lot of the time, that won't matter, but if it's the trunk of a fallen sequoia, that will take some movement.

In addition, BG3 made me see how one could avoid opportunity attacks through how you move. If you curve just out of their reach, they don't get the attack, but grid movement might cost a little more movement than necessary to pull that off.

Consistency as the true rule is a good point. And your last point about terrain that doesn't have grid marks, that's huge for me. I have a couple of chessex battle maps with grids that I use, but as I've built up my terrain library, it has seemed more and more constricting. I want to get to a place where the maps are still the ground because then I can do colors, but ultimately stop boxing myself in. That's as much a mental thing for me as anything - I see all the straight lines and I want to start putting the terrain bits in line with the grid. One time I realized I had made an orchard, not a grove.

@Mastikator - when you use the measurement to get where they want to go then put them in the nearest square, does that ever cause issues? I don't think it would with my players, but I could see some groups I've played with in the past arguing over which square is actually appropriate.