Quote from: StormBringer;560396I'm fairly convinced this is almost not possible.  I have heard people who have done it, people whom I trust and respect, but I would have a difficult time with it personally.  Unless I ran it like AD&D, but that would require a lot of guesstimating on my part for AoO, line of sight, blast radii, and so forth.  I'm comfortable running combat like that, but I can see how it would conflict with the various fiddly bits in 3.x combat.

I can do it with 3.0, and Fantasy Craft is built to be gridless so no issue there.  But 3.5?  No, I agree with your assessment. Hence I would like to know how it works for Sacrosanct.

Quote from: StormBringer;560394I am working on it.

I am having my Druid wildshape into an Ancient Dire Vampiric Demonic Draco-lich.  Do I win?

Sure but you definitely won't like my definition of "win" in this situation.  Call me a bitch but I have standards.  I need Jeff's Viking hat just to make it clear that the Buck stops with me. He'd never give it to me though.

Quote from: Marleycat;560392To be fair 3.0 is far faster than 3.5. I never knew anybody to run 3.5 gridless tell me how it works out.
.

How it works out?  We pretty much ignored things like AoO and flanking.  Or if we did, it was on the fly.  I'm sure if we had used a grid, an AoO would have happened a few times.  But oh well, we're OK with skipping all that stuff.

I will say one thing I noticed though.  I hear constant arguments that a caster is better at being a thief than a thief because they can cast a spell like Find traps.  Well, after looking at that spell description for the first time, it's only for 1 min per level, and you don't automatically find them. You simply have the skill to find them, and have to make a skill check.  And I can't see how cleric casting that spell would have nearly the skill points in search that an equal level rogue would have.

I suspect people claiming that are the same people who claim that a 1e MU is way more powerful than other classes while ignoring rules like spell components, spell interruptions, spell learning %, etc.  I.e., they make these claims by ignoring rules in place that were meant to mitigate them.

Quote from: Marleycat;560412I need Jeff's Viking hat just to make it clear that the Buck stops with me. He'd never give it to me though.

The Viking Hat is earned, not given. Yet you would seem to have the chops for wearing one....

Quote from: jeff37923;560438The Viking Hat is earned, not given. Yet you would seem to have the chops for wearing one....

From you that means alot.

@Sacrosanct, it seems like your group runs games fast and loose like myself.  Just never never saw it attempted with 3.5 hence the reason I do Fantasy Craft.  No AoO's. And it's scene based like White Wolf.  I likey because of this I can pace the game to my liking and there are action dice for both the players and the GM to change stuff on the fly.

Quote from: marleycat@Sacrosanct, it seems like your group runs games fast and loose like myself. Just never never saw it attempted with 3.5 hence the reason I do Fantasy Craft. No AoO's. And it's scene based like White Wolf. I likey because of this I can pace the game to my liking and there are action dice for both the players and the GM to change stuff on the fly.

We've been doing gridless combat in our Pathfinder group.  I don't see how it's much different than doing gridless with 3.0 -- the only difference (TMK) are the units that range increments are given in sometimes and the way combat sections of the books are worded, but otherwise it's the same.

The thing you have to be careful about is AoOs and other positioning-triggered abilities.  Fighters and other martial classes benefit greatly from them, so if you're not running with a grid, I think it's good form to err on the side of being generous when handing them out.

Also, I'm kind of jelly you're running Fantasy Craft, Marley.  d20 never did much for me in the way of wow-factor, but the subsystems in FC look really cool.

Quote from: Peregrin;560502We've been doing gridless combat in our Pathfinder group.  I don't see how it's much different than doing gridless with 3.0 -- the only difference (TMK) are the units that range increments are given in sometimes and the way combat sections of the books are worded, but otherwise it's the same.

Also, I'm kind of jelly you're running Fantasy Craft, Marley.  d20 never did much for me in the way of wow-factor, but the subsystems in FC look really cool.

They are fun and I like stuff like fate points and action dice. As Halloween Jack says I'm "groggy" but not "grognard" I guess.

Quote from: jeff37923;560438The Viking Hat is earned, not given. Yet you would seem to have the chops for wearing one....

Oh, now that's just pure awesome and funny at the same time.  You seriously have no clue how that changed my mindset into fun and just remember it's a game silly girl, hat or not.

Jeff is cuter though, might be the beer? Or no, it's the HORNS!  It has to be.

Always wear the Viking Hat with pride!

I think I'm going to have to go with Vulmea and say that pirate hats are cooler.

I will say, though, that I'm beginning to feel I'm in the minority of people who do not own a viking hat.

Quote from: Peregrin;560510I think I'm going to have to go with Vulmea and say that pirate hats are cooler.

I will say, though, that I'm beginning to feel I'm in the minority of people who do not own a viking hat.

No worries we will go on a quest together. Maybe we get to kick Stormbringer's ass?* Who knows? Who cares?

*Beer is good stuff.

Quote from: Marleycat;560512No worries we will go on a quest together. Maybe we get to kick Stormbringer's ass?* Who knows? Who cares?

*Beer is good stuff.

Surviving Castle Amber is the first step on the journey to a Viking Hat.

Well, yesterday we had our first Pathfinder experience (with the Beginner Box) which coincided with our first experience in the whole D&D3E - Pathfinder arc at playing with a grid, and "as written" (after 6 years playing 3.5E gridless).

Results:

A - A LOT of fun

B - After a while everybody understood how the rules serve the logic of the action - not the other way around. Thus it took only 30 mins of gaming for the Dwarf to say:

"...PowerAttackvs.thegoblin, -1tohit, annulledbythe+1racial hatebonus, thus+2tohitduetoStrenghtModifier, +2todamagefor Powerattackand+2forStrenghtModifier, thismakesfora+2/+4attack, let'sroll..."

...Faster than the actual d20 roll (which involves, as usual, long shamanic rituals and propitiatory dances...)

C - As much as it was fun (and it *was* fun) "winging it" simply allows for much more vivid battles and set-pieces (and, I could add, descriptions in a general sense) than the miniatures/grid approach. I remember how in one of our last 3.5E battles an Abyssal Drake crash landed on the players' flying ship, I said "The ship waves badly... everybody, make a Reflex check with DC 20 or lose balance... and everybody just SAW the scene in his mind. Having me saying: "K, now everybody rolls initiative, to see who regains balance first - Abyssal Drake included" only added to the already high cinematic tension of the scene.

True, you can do the same with a grid, but - as basically we all agreed - looking at a bunch of cardboard counters and a map makes you more feel that the counters are doing it - losing the "me, here and now" feeling given by seeing what happens with your mind-eye.

End summary: we loved the miniature/grid game, but, in a way, choosing a method over the other is a little bit like choosing theater over cinema, or prose over poetry, for your next narrative project: the narration's nature dictates the best expressive method, not the other way around.

Quote from: StormBringer;560514Surviving Castle Amber is the first step on the journey to a Viking Hat.

WRONG! Beer is always the first step, why have dwarfs? (I even spelled it correctly, more proof that yes, Marleycat can read.