Grid Variants

These two variants can change up how distance and movement work in your game. Going Gridless You can play encounters without a grid. This is best for groups who can easily imagine their surroundings without a visual aid and for battles that don't require understanding a complex physical space. Your game doesn't have to be entirely on or off maps—you might decide to play out most simple fights without a grid, then use one for highly tactical fights or major set pieces. The 3-action structure is your best friend. You might find yourself answering a lot of questions about actions and space, like “Can I get there this turn?” or “How many of the oozes can I catch in a fireball?” If you find yourself needing to repeatedly remind players of the physical features of the environment or enemy positioning, that might mean you're making your encounters too tactical for what a gridless game supports. This style works better to encourage imaginative, cinematic action and quick play without getting too hung up on details. Uniform Diagonals If you like, your group can count all diagonals as 5 feet instead of counting every other diagonal as 10 feet. This speeds up play, but some people find it breaks their suspension of disbelief. This is most noticeable when someone moves a long distance along a diagonal all at once or when characters start moving diagonally as much as possible to cover more distance. Using this variant requires thinking of the game map in more abstract terms, and less like a real physical environment where the map is accurately reflecting the size of the room or encounter area. You can choose whether you measure radius-based areas of spells in the same way or visualize them as circles or other round shapes. The latter works best if you have templates to use. Hex Grids Some of the challenges of diagonal movement can be fixed by using a hex grid instead of a square grid, or by using a grid with offset squares, which works similarly. This allows you to count movement the same in all directions. However, it makes flanking a bit harder to pull off, requires you to arrange standard Large and larger miniatures differently, and causes challenges when drawing maps that consist primarily of rectangular structures since you'll have a lot of partially occupied hexes.