This is a problem I came upon when thinking about this. It is not a rule question so I tough I would post it here instead of in my OP.
I hate mapped battles with a passion and I'm trying to do fights just describing things, but I have a hard time adjucating crowd control spells such as walls in a gridless encounter. It is easy to do when you have a map and know where the spell is and you need to navigate arround it, but In a theather of the mind encounter, with no map and no tokens/minis, how do you handle these spells?
For instance, if Wizard cast a Wall of Fire to divide the crowd, the initial assault is easy to playout (saving throw for those in the area) but after that, do you roll a dice to know if an enemy ends its turn near the wall? Do you just say ''now the enemies know about the wall and just go around it'' with mindless creatures traversing it or ending their turn near it and smart creatures just working around it?
How is it handled at your table?
I would suggest handling it through relative positioning. If you're in a chamber, the wall bisects the room east to west, for example. Or the cloud blocks area of the doorway on either side of it. Or the hemisphere surrounds the altar and prevents anyone from going near it. Or the area aroCreate a fictional tag - a few words that describe the situation e.g. "Bisecting Wall of Fire" or "Clouded Doorway" - on a sheet of paper or an index card and put it on the table so everyone can see it and remember it.
With regard to how NPCs or monsters respond, just consider their motivations. Anyone who might be killed by the wall of fire avoid it. If they can get through it unscathed, they ignore it. If they can get through it at a cost, is the cost worth it considering their agenda?
That's the crux of the dillema. Map & Minis playing makes it very precise to know who is where, what spells AOE affects who, etc. Whereas Theater-of-the-Mind (TOTM) gaming makes that more difficult. It often comes down to DM adjudication on who's affected.
I've personally run both, and blend the two for most encounters. I typically draw out a really rough outline of the area, with prominent features. Not a grid, just a rough sketch. I then describe the area in as much detail as I want. When combat happens, everyone should already know about where they are and where the bad guys are. In the case of things getting spread out, honestly, if the encounter is going too easy and I want it to be a little tougher, I'll say only 2 of the 10 guys get hit by the spell. If it's going more difficult than expected, I'll say more of them get hit by it. It all depends on the situation, and if the players are having fun. If they're super into it and having a great time, maybe I'll extend the encounter a while so they can do their super-cool stuff. But if I can tell they're just getting their @$$es handed to them and they're not having fun, I'll adjust on the fly and reign it in a little bit, by maybe having some environmental hazards get in the bad guys way or occupy their attention so the PCs will have Advantage. Something like that.
That's a problem alright. D&D as written uses absolute positioning, distances, etc. Unfortunately not a lot of us can keep absolute position and distance in our heads. I am completely incapable in this regard.
Therefore I employ three strategies. One is to get off absolute position and handle everything relatively. Distances are Descriptions: Engaged, Reach, Near, Far, Unreachable.
The second is that I treat use groups of monsters & creatures within a range category (so you can fireball everyone in far range, everyone in close range, or everyone engaged/reach range.
Last, I treat spells such as walls in a way that alters the field of battle. When a wall of fire goes up, it's now simply part of the field. If my monsters want to move from far to close, or close to engage, they MUST deal with the wall. Same for players.
Player: "I engage the Ogre Mage. And Attack."
DM: "Ok, what about the wall of fire? If you move to engage, you'll have to pass through it. Or you can move and then dash to get around it, but you won't be able to attack this round, having used your action to Dash."
Player: "Nah, I'm a rogue, so I'll move, bonus action dash, and then get my Attack anyway."
DM: "Perfect. With surprising alacrity, you close the distance on the Oni, who gapes in surprise as you drive your dagger toward him. Roll."
Basically I treat all terrain features as though they exist kind of everywhere.
This isn't perfect. There are big trade offs. But I am okay with it because I give up precision (which I cannot track personally) and gain speed of play (which is high on my list of priorities). So whatever solution you employ, you'll have to be willing to accept the consequences.
bawylie wrote:
An easy and intuitive way to do it is to break up the battlefield into descriptive areas, and then AoE-type spells can affect an area.
To give a few examples from Lost Mine of Phandelver:
Goblin Ambush: left side of the trail, right side of the trail, by the horses, behind you.
Fight with Yeemik in the Goblin Den: by the entrance, over by the stairs, up on the ledge.
You get the idea. Then the Wizard just casts sleep on the goblins on the right side of the trail, or casts a wall of fire between the area over by the stairs and by the entrance. If an enemy wants to move from over by the stairs to by the entrance, they have to go through the wall of fire. If they are moving from over by the stairs to up on the ledge, they don't. Extremely simple and, as I mentioned, you can see how intutive it is based on the natural language describing it. Just think of the areas as simple but "official" amorphous spaces on a virtual gameboard and you are all set.
That's pretty much how FATE does it, btw, and it works very well - they say to create 2-4 "zones" to use per combat.
I've found that the minute you throw down some sort of map and minis, the story aspect of the game slows to a crawl and it becomes a very different kind of fun. In my games I reserve maps for large, important tactical battles with an understanding that the battle is the main focus of the session.
I've been using a grid for so long I find it hard to do without. But...
Something you might want to try for complex encounters is using a whiteboard with no grid. Draw major features and use your best judgement for distances. When they were still doing the Mines of Phandalver podcast, they showed the DM drawing the map on the board and then drawing X's for rough position.
You could also do the same with minis/tokens. Don't get caught up in grid detail, but still give people the way to visually see position.
I prefer maps and minis. I have and employ lots of 3d terrain and some of my set piece fights take a war-game bent. And again, trade-offs. I get visual wonder and excitement in exchange for a bit more in time. Of course the time spent is enjoyable, so it's a trade off I'm willing to make.
But not every encounter can be a set piece and much of my game reacts to on the fly player action. So I must have a workable TotM to complement my Tableu Vivant (or whatever we call maps and minis now).
Synjin wrote:
bawylie wrote:
A great compromise between the two that works well online (but I imagine you can make it work at home too) is to use an image with tokens instead of a top-down map with minis.
For example, a goblin ambush:
You can then place tokens on the road, in the woods, behind the rocks, etc. It keeps most of the fluid and dynamic nature of a TotM battle while at the same time giving players something to reference visually. My players and I tend to see this method as the best of both worlds, so I try to use it as much as possible.
Note that this works with the area method I descibed above, as well as those who want to crunch some numbers by using the image as a guide (it looks like the stream is about 5ft wide, the goblins are about 100 feet from the trees, etc.)
Neptune0923 wrote:
I don't completely agree with Neptune's characterization of that as opinion. Everyone would agree that the audience dictates the approach. However, I think TotM being more fluid, dynamic and faster for the vast majority of players is closer to fact than opinion. It's more the case that many people would prefer to sacrifice those benefits for the visual/spatial benefits of a map and minis.
Ansbach wrote:
SillyMind wrote: