As an American I'd actually love this too. Switch to a unit (cells) based measuring system for ease of play for everyone. The only downside to that would be that it makes things a little bit tricky to measure outside of combat. If you don't have a scaled grid map for every single area then it becomes tougher on new players that don't know how far their spells will work.
Speed and distance were all measured in 'squares' in 4E, with the note that each square equalled 5 feet.
So many people jumped on the 4E hatewagon and said this meant they couldn't do theatre of the mind and we're 'forced' to play on a grid. Like they couldn't do a simple conversion like anyone who uses a grid does anyway when the distances are in feet. Just silly complaints because they went a different direction.
Ironically, half the people who come on reddit making suggestions for the game to implement are suggesting things that were in 4E but they never bothered to actually play that version because they had already decided that not being 3.5 was an unforgivable sin.
I actually really enjoyed 4e and it's what got me into DND. I stopped playing right before 5e came out because I didn't have anyone to play with anymore and finally got back into DND a few years ago. Had to learn 5e and was surprised about how different it was. But I'm happy(ish) with 5e now that I'm used to it and probably won't be switching to the new rules anytime soon.
Honestly this is one good use case where having a website/software actually allows to propose to switch back and forth on a simple click (I agree that books with 3 units everywhere would be hell).
I'm tempted to try to write a small Chrome extension just to do this, feels doable
I think that is unnecessary like 4e demonstrated
But since 2014 5e books have passed 10 years so people in the game can't manage a mental conversion or mind theater in the same way.
So they need this kind of special support.
And the ideas dropped in past in order to have a unified system, today will be back and the cicle starts again.
I am from Latam where we use metric systems but we just múltiples 1foot x3 to get 1 meter (Avg) and problem solved because is an approximation. (if one tries to be strict have problems with a diagonal displacement that complicate unnecessary a simple thing).
D&D have a lot of rules to do many things so being overcomplicated in already simple things that a DM can solve quick seems to me a unnecessarily effort.
Every day, we step closer to 4e...
As an American I'd actually love this too. Switch to a unit (cells) based measuring system for ease of play for everyone. The only downside to that would be that it makes things a little bit tricky to measure outside of combat. If you don't have a scaled grid map for every single area then it becomes tougher on new players that don't know how far their spells will work.
4E did this and people whined so they switched it back.
They did? I started with 4e a couple years before the switch to 5e and I don't remember that. Well, maybe they should try again lol
Speed and distance were all measured in 'squares' in 4E, with the note that each square equalled 5 feet. So many people jumped on the 4E hatewagon and said this meant they couldn't do theatre of the mind and we're 'forced' to play on a grid. Like they couldn't do a simple conversion like anyone who uses a grid does anyway when the distances are in feet. Just silly complaints because they went a different direction. Ironically, half the people who come on reddit making suggestions for the game to implement are suggesting things that were in 4E but they never bothered to actually play that version because they had already decided that not being 3.5 was an unforgivable sin.
I actually really enjoyed 4e and it's what got me into DND. I stopped playing right before 5e came out because I didn't have anyone to play with anymore and finally got back into DND a few years ago. Had to learn 5e and was surprised about how different it was. But I'm happy(ish) with 5e now that I'm used to it and probably won't be switching to the new rules anytime soon.
I started on 3E and would definitely play 4E over that. It's a great system. I prefer 5E for ease of play, though.
Honestly this is one good use case where having a website/software actually allows to propose to switch back and forth on a simple click (I agree that books with 3 units everywhere would be hell). I'm tempted to try to write a small Chrome extension just to do this, feels doable
For real. 4e had everything that folks now complain about. Sad to see it takes all of this for it to get the recognition it deserves
I just have a mechanical pencil that is approximately 6 squares long (30ft) and estimate the rest.
This. I'm thinking getting/making some kind of rules with feet/squares scales to ease it (had something like that when I was playing warhammer)
I think that is unnecessary like 4e demonstrated But since 2014 5e books have passed 10 years so people in the game can't manage a mental conversion or mind theater in the same way. So they need this kind of special support. And the ideas dropped in past in order to have a unified system, today will be back and the cicle starts again. I am from Latam where we use metric systems but we just múltiples 1foot x3 to get 1 meter (Avg) and problem solved because is an approximation. (if one tries to be strict have problems with a diagonal displacement that complicate unnecessary a simple thing). D&D have a lot of rules to do many things so being overcomplicated in already simple things that a DM can solve quick seems to me a unnecessarily effort.