3-Hex Figures vs. 1-Hex Doors…?

[FireHorse]

Suppose you're an Evil Tyrant, whose favorite entertainment is watching things kill each other in your own personal gladiator pit. But because you're easily bored, you like variety — so it's not always people, or other creatures that fit into only one hex. Sometimes it's bigger stuff.

So how big a doorway do you need for a 3-hex figure?

At the moment my pit has six gates through which combatants may enter the arena, and each one is 6 feet wide and 12 feet tall (LIKE SO). But is that big enough?

If there is an Official Rule for this, I can't find it.

(And on a side note, there are some seriously stupid entries in ITL's index. A single occurrence of a word, in a sentence that really isn't about that word, should not be an index entry.)

[hcobb]

That would impose the Narrow Tunnels (ITL 119) combat restrictions on a giant standing in that doorway while a three-hex turtle wouldn't fit.

[FireHorse]

Thanks for the page citation.

It would appear that I need one or more of the gates to be a bit bigger than the others.

An opening that is two full hexes wide would be enough to allow 3-hex figures to pass through… but perhaps it would be simpler to just go all the way up to megahex-wide gates.

Of course, I don't know how plausible it is that your average Evil Tyrant (who owns a gladiator pit) would have the muscle to capture a 14-hex Dragon and force it to fight… but we might speculate that his well-paid Evil Architect was just being optimistic about the future.

[hcobb]

If you use my house rules then dragons don't live long in captivity. Either the dragon or the captor will perish.

[FireHorse]

Well, when you toss something in a gladiator pit, you're not really expecting it to live long and prosper anyway, are you? ;)

…

Afterthought: How tall do your suppose that 14-hex Dragon is…?

[Skarg]

The main weird thing about your 2-hex-wide gateway as shown, is that it is placed to span 3 hexes and shows the middle of two hexes with stone in them. It would be more convenient if you placed it so two hexes appear to be free.

But if it didn't, what I tend to do in such cases, is define off-hex positions for figures moving into narrow passages that don't fit the hex grid - i.e. you can use a half-hex if you have another half-hex you can also use.


(Also note hexes are said to be 4 feet wide wide, so a 2-hex doorway is 8 feet wide, not 6 feet, but you might call a 6-foot doorway close enough to 2 hexes wide to count as such.)

[TippetsTX]

Speaking of height, a 3-hex figure averages around 12 ft (+/- 3 ft), right? That's the impression I get from the few examples provided (giants and ogres primarily).

[FireHorse]

Originally Posted by Skarg

The main weird thing about your 2-hex-wide gateway as shown, is that it is placed to span 3 hexes and shows the middle of two hexes with stone in them. It would be more convenient if you placed it so two hexes appear to be free.

…

(Also note hexes are said to be 4 feet wide wide, so a 2-hex doorway is 8 feet wide, not 6 feet, but you might call a 6-foot doorway close enough to 2 hexes wide to count as such.)

The hexes are indeed 4 feet from side to side, but that makes them ~4.62 feet from point to point. So the empty space in the middle of that gate really is exactly 6 feet. (You may trust my OCD on this.)

But if the partial hexes there could invite confusion, then perhaps I should position the gate a little differently… LIKE SO? That way it's more obvious that there is a particular hex that is "standing in the gate's opening", and three hexes you can move to from it, which are all "in the arena".



Afterthought: This means my 50-foot Gladiator Pit is now a 48-foot Gladiator Pit. But that's cool, because multiples of 12 are better than 10 anyway. ;)