Combat, Distances, maps. How do you do it?

[Greepnak]

So it's a thing that you might have samurai warriors with magic swords and telekinetic leaping fighting against or alongside power armor that flies at 300mph and engages from a mile away. It's a headache but also the core appeal of the setting, right?

So how do you guys make it work? Like take that exact scenario. If I have one player who wants to hang out at 1999 feet with his 2000ft range HI-Laser while another person is dragon ball Zing it up in melee, and it's the same encounter, how would you do it?

I have been using whiteboards and dry erase, but every time a map is drawn it implicitly sets a battlefield arena that not everybody's gonna fit into.

Trying to do combat without maps of any kind makes things slow down a LOT as people check and re-check where everything is verbally.

[Killer Cyborg]

I always just used scratch paper & pencils.
Or just the power of our collective imaginations.

[HWalsh]

I use a grid, each square being 15 ft.

2 reasons:
1. Spd x 5 yards/round = 15 feet/spd point. So easier math. (Until mph, but I made a spreadsheet for that.)

2. I use Roll 20 a lot. So a 50 x 50 grid is 750 x 750. And you'll never see a tactical combat map larger than 750 x 750.

Now, I'm sure some are saying, "But HWalsh! Weapon ranges in Rifts are often 1000+"

Sure, but tactical combat? Dude, 750 feet is greater than 2 football fields. If you can draw a line of effect, through all cover, over 750 feet, then it's an open flat plane and you don't need a map. Real life fire fights are within less than 60 yards IRL (180 feet).

The next is, "Doesn't that gimp AoEs?"

Eh, not really. I do caveat AoEs though. If the AoE is greater than 7 feet in radius I allow it to cover the square hit as well as 1 square out in every direction. If greater than 15 feet, I let it go out an additional square etc, if there is a remainder.

This means a 20 foot blast radius would hit the square struck, each square touching that one, and one square out from that: 0 squares out at 1-7, 1 at 8-15, 3 at 16-30, 4 at 31+

It makes AoEs a bit bigger than they'd be, but with the size of the grid it works.

If it's not tactical combat? Theater of the mind's eye it.

Note:
I also grant the same courtesy to movement.

If you have a 13 spd, and 5 actions/round that is 13/5 squares per action (normally 2 and change) I round to 3. It technically give a little extra movement, but it's not bad.

[Natasha]

So it's a thing that you might have samurai warriors with magic swords and telekinetic leaping fighting against or alongside power armor that flies at 300mph and engages from a mile away. It's a headache but also the core appeal of the setting, right?

So how do you guys make it work? Like take that exact scenario. If I have one player who wants to hang out at 1999 feet with his 2000ft range HI-Laser while another person is dragon ball Zing it up in melee, and it's the same encounter, how would you do it?

I have been using whiteboards and dry erase, but every time a map is drawn it implicitly sets a battlefield arena that not everybody's gonna fit into.

Trying to do combat without maps of any kind makes things slow down a LOT as people check and re-check where everything is verbally.

Don't really use scale maps; for instance, very long lines are interrupted with a zig zag or similar to indicate ------//------

A character's Speed attribute number equals the number of feet/second the character can cover. There are (almost?) no rules on acceleration so it tends to become instant acceleration. But the stat is sometimes useful.

[ShadowLogan]

So it's a thing that you might have samurai warriors with magic swords and telekinetic leaping fighting against or alongside power armor that flies at 300mph and engages from a mile away. It's a headache but also the core appeal of the setting, right?

So how do you guys make it work? Like take that exact scenario. If I have one player who wants to hang out at 1999 feet with his 2000ft range HI-Laser while another person is dragon ball Zing it up in melee, and it's the same encounter, how would you do it?

I have been using whiteboards and dry erase, but every time a map is drawn it implicitly sets a battlefield arena that not everybody's gonna fit into.

Trying to do combat without maps of any kind makes things slow down a LOT as people check and re-check where everything is verbally.

When you have players at different ranges on a map:... do the smaller range (melee) and put a marker(s) on the edge signifying where the out of range player(s) are located. There really isn't a general need to have the map cover the full range for all parties, however if there is do two maps at different range/scales.

[Glistam]

I allow a character to move their speed score in feet and still perform an action during their turn. Or, they can move their ((Spd×15)/#Attacks) in a single action. As long as everyone has a similar number of attacks per melee (generally within one or two of each other), and nobody has more than 15, this works out well enough for me.

When gaming in person we just use a whiteboard or scratch paper and don't worry too much about scale. A lot of time if a distance to move seems improbable, but possible, I allow the player to roll percentile dice and try to get below their Spd score to succeed. This works well when we keep the battlefield abstract.

My online games tend to use Roll20, and I'm still playing with how to do this. Typically I set up a scale for the squares (anywhere from 1 square=5 feet to 1 square=40 feet for individual combat) and then the players divide their Spd score by that scale, rounding up, to determine how many squares they can move. I don't think I've ever used a scale for personal combat that was greater than 40 feet per square, so it's seemed to work out.

But yeah, when you start figuring out combats to this detail it will end up causing a big disparity between the folks with range and the melee folks. That's why I prefer to keep it abstract, if possible. You can do things like just spend a melee round or two letting the ranged folks provide cover fire while the melee characters prowl/sneak themselves closer to the battle, then once they're in melee range go back to individual actions. But usually, as someone else already said, I rarely have ranged weapons factoring in their max ranges due to line of sight and cover issues.

[Greepnak]

Thanks everybody. I should learn roll20. It sounds interesting.

I like the idea of there being too much cover in the way sometimes to really get max use out of long range weaponry. Mostly having maps speeds up combat a LOT because people don't need to keep verifying where they and their enemies are.

[HWalsh]

Thanks everybody. I should learn roll20. It sounds interesting.

I like the idea of there being too much cover in the way sometimes to really get max use out of long range weaponry. Mostly having maps speeds up combat a LOT because people don't need to keep verifying where they and their enemies are.

PM me, I can invite you to see my Roll20 campaign setup and how to macro Rifts properly to get combat down to playable speeds. We did a 4 pc + 3 NPC helpers, vs 24 enemy combat in less than 2 hours that didn't involve AoE slaughters. My players are always amazed at combat speed with my setup.

[Blue_Lion]

Thanks everybody. I should learn roll20. It sounds interesting.

I like the idea of there being too much cover in the way sometimes to really get max use out of long range weaponry. Mostly having maps speeds up combat a LOT because people don't need to keep verifying where they and their enemies are.

Roll 20 has a tutorial to teach you how to use its maps.

[Blue_Lion]

I always just used scratch paper & pencils.
Or just the power of our collective imaginations.

That tends to be what I do, it is just a reference of general positions. Some times I just use dice on the table to help people keep track of general location but scratch paper is the most common in face to face games. Typically with ranged I assume if you can see a target you can attack as visibility would cause fights at close range(less than 500 feet). Melee are the ones that really need to watch distance and location if you stand between the GB and the demon you provide the demon with cover.