Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 trd23 May 28, 2010 2:40:01	How many squares should most encounters be? I can use some of the published adventures to get a feel for indoor encounters but I can not find many encounters that take place outside. What is a good rule of thumb for how big outdoor encounters should be?
#2 phaqueue May 28, 2010 3:11:27	Honestly it would depend on the size/number of monsters the PCs are fighting, and how much room they should need to reasonably maneuver. most of my encounters use a chessboard, which can simulate approx 40'X40', which is a fairly large space... My campaign is mostly melee heroes though, so they tend to take up less space as they are usually trying to get as close as possible and get their flanking...
#3 mellored May 28, 2010 10:01:41	40 x 40 is probably a maximum, 20x20 is more of an average outdoor map.  Of course they don't have to be squares either, 40x10 in a canyon could work out pretty well too.
#4 Thought May 28, 2010 10:30:09	As the saying goes, an encounter space should be like a lady's skirt; big enough to cover the essentials but small enough to keep it interesting. But to give some basic numbers, take the longest ranged attack that will be involved, add 2ish squares, and use that as a radius for the area. Have an idea of what is beyond that area, in case there is a chase, but that should give you a good idea of what to work with for a given encounter. However, encounters can be made harder or easier by the amount of space involved. If your party likes hit and fade tactics, removing the room to retreat can turn an easy encounter into a hard one.
#5 calm May 28, 2010 16:15:17	It depends on the encounter. If the party is facing a bunch of artillery foes, they will want to start shooting at max range, probably with a couple of soldiers or brutes in front to slow the PCs down, so a big area is fine. Skirmishers might want a smaller area but with lots of terrain to hide behind. Soldiers and brutes might want tight quarters to control the PC's movement so some pesky archer can't get too far away. Anything is fine, though I'd always advise larger over smaller if possible, because that's more fun for the PCs instead of fighting in a box. A 20 x 20 foot dungeon room is the worst place ever for an interesting combat.
#6 dannoe May 30, 2010 5:50:18	How many squares should most encounters be? I can use some of the published adventures to get a feel for indoor encounters but I can not find many encounters that take place outside. What is a good rule of thumb for how big outdoor encounters should be?  I try to give my Players room to run, and I try to put in some kind of terrain feature in most of my campaigns.  The only time I use relatively small areas (say 5 x 5 square or something like that) is when, for whatever reason, I want to force the action in close.  In that case, the very compactness of the room becomes a factor of the terrain.  Butusually, we only see that in dungeons, and we've only done one real dungeon in a game that has so far spanned 3.5 levels.
#7 brashnir May 30, 2010 22:24:32	Few things in the game have a range greater than 20 squares, so I generally start outdoor encounters 20-25 squares apart.  If there's a character in the party with a range greater than that, I generally give him a free round of attacks before the battle starts - assuming the enemy was visible before initiative was rolled, of course.