PDA

View Full Version : DM Help Sizes: Medium vs. Small vs. subSmall



mindchoir
2018-10-24, 05:11 PM
Hey,

Something that's often annoyed me, about using a grid, is the representation of Small and Medium creatures, with the same amount of space (1 hex/square), and subSmall creature with even less space.

I was wondering if anyone had implemented a fix to this?

I had one in mind along the lines of: assign the smallest creature (in current scene/combat) a space of 1 unit (hex/square), and then proportionally assign larger creatures the larger units, as standard (possibly extending the standard for very large size differences).

Problems I see with this are summons and familiars. This can be worked around for npcs quite easily, but you need to know/anticipate/work with your players for their part.

I was wondering if anyone had tried anything like this?
Or knew why small and medium creatures used the same standard? Was it just streamlining/simplicity?

Regards
a fish

Mordaedil
2018-10-25, 05:44 AM
It works this way because most things are medium or small. Anything smaller than that is usually not regarded as a large deal or have special abilities that threaten the PC's in other ways.

If you are running a campaign with tiny or smaller creatures I recommend just increasing the grid size as appropriate.

Khedrac
2018-10-25, 05:49 AM
At this point you also have a variable scale gird - which is going to be really confusing for people who like to count squares/hexes to work out distances.

What's worse, is that unless you have multiple different grids to lay out to use (one for each smallest size fight) then characters will need multiple tokens (figures/whatever) as a different placeholder will be needed depending on the current grid scale...

RedWarlock
2018-10-26, 02:05 AM
Originally, in D&D 3.0, there was symmetry between Small and Large humanoid creatures, in their inverted size/grapple mods, and in their spaces, both fitting into a 5ftx5ft area. Ogres had a 5ft space, too. But then they decided that didn't make sense (probably around the same time they were trying to squeeze 2" tall giants in action poses onto 1" bases for Chainmail) and decided to dump horses and displacer beasts being 5ftx10ft, and bump up the large creatures of all sizes to a 10ft space.

Depending on the minis you have, you could try and say that small creatures can sit in the middle of a space, OR sit on the intersection of 4 spaces. (My own homebrew system is going down to a 3ft space, and more variety in playable sizes, from 1 yard "small"-equivalents, "medium"-ish elf/orc/human types that can be either 1y or 2, with 2y or 1y base reach, and "large" ogres and such that are 3 yards across. The equivalent of "tiny" actually get to sit purely on the intersections of spaces, so they occupy no tactical space themselves, and only threaten 4 squares on a basic grid, or 3 squares on a hex grid.)

Pleh
2018-10-26, 07:38 AM
Another problem you'll likely run into is Movement Speed.

At one point, I was considering what a Fine PC in the party might play like, so I looked up some common real world Ant movement speeds (these creatures tend to be very fast relative to their size compared to most medium creatures). I forget all my calculations, but the conclusion was that an ant could cross 5ft in a round if it used the Run action.

This has some rather significant implications for the tactics of such characters. If I were playing a Fine hero with somewhat realistic movement speed, my default mode of movement would be Mounted Combat. I'd either get a Tiny Flying mount or just hitch a ride on my human ally's coat collar and try to cast spells.

I mean, at sizes so small, how does the jump skill work? It's unlikely you'll get to Run for 4 rounds to get the 20ft Running Start, but that's following strict RAW. RAI would probably say the 20ft running start should probably be scaled if the squares are scaled, but then the jump check results should likely also be scaled.
4 Squares of Movement Speed for a running start
1 Square of move speed per point of Check Result for long jump (or half without running start)
1/4th Square of move speed (not accounting for vertical reach) per point of Check Result (or 1/8th without running start)
This would leave no change to the medium creature rules and since the units aren't based on physical constants, they can scale with creature size.

But by RAW, ants probably won't have a 20ft running start. Their move speed is 5ft for running for a full round, so it's measured in inches, which tells us they are taking -12 to jump for having speed less than 10ft and more than 0ft. And just what is the strength score of a Fine creature? That modifies their jump check, but the SRD lists size modifiers to attack, grapple, and hide but not actually strength. The Reduce Person spell hints that you reduce str by 2 for each category smaller than medium, so if we start with an average strength of 10, then reduce by 2 for each size category, it has a strength of 2 for a modifier of -4, so the jump check is -16 and the DC is Doubled.

But we still have an ant, without a running start, able to roll a nat 20 for a check result of 4 to get a distance of 2ft (or, on a high jump, 6 inches). When is the last time you saw an ant spontaneously leap 2ft forward (or 6 inches off the ground)?

But the point of all this wasn't to torment catgirls. It was to express through an example how much work is involved in scaling a grid.

RedWarlock
2018-10-27, 04:30 PM
Fine is a very large range, proportionately, though. Anything up to 6 inches tall (humanoid) or from nose to base of tail (quadruped/nonhumanoid). That includes most frogs, mice, chipmunks, and almost any insects and land invertebrates, such as all but the largest real-world spiders.

KillianHawkeye
2018-10-27, 11:07 PM
Was it just streamlining/simplicity?


It was exactly this.

mindchoir
2018-10-28, 12:43 AM
... that small creatures can sit in the middle of a space, OR sit on the intersection of 4 spaces. ... or 3 squares on a hex grid.)
I like this intersection idea, but I'm not sure what you mean by middle of a space - do they threaten all adjacent spaces? (I use hex grids btw)

RedWarlock
2018-10-30, 05:19 AM
I like this intersection idea, but I'm not sure what you mean by middle of a space - do they threaten all adjacent spaces? (I use hex grids btw)

Yeah, "middle" just means how things are in normal rules, so a small creature would still have 1 space of reach, but either 1 or 0 occupied spaces. The idea of being able to do both is just so you can effectively have twice as many small creatures occupying a group of spaces, so one centered on a space, and one on the intersection of spaces. Where you could normally fit 3 normal creatures, you can put 6 small creatures.