Originally Posted by
Ionathus
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.