A simple Battle-grid combat

Sometimes, I want to run a fight without having to draw an exact map of the terrain. It's specially true if I want to describe the scene in a theatre of the mind style. I plan to test a battle-grid for helping me to run this style of simplified fights.

For this, we need a battle-grid to help define zones (lines) for allied and enemy side. For each grid we need :

• a Front Line (one for each side)
• a Rear Line (one for each side)
• a Far Line (one for each side) - spelled Back Line on my picture below

We don't use measures of distance, nor 5 feet grid. 6 zones will be fine, you can draw them on a blank map or make something fancy.

A battle-grid on my landing page on Roll20

The Rules

At the beginning of combat, we place the characters on the battle-grid by their inverse initiative order. That's mean if a character have a good initiative, he can choose his line after the characters with lower initiative. Because choosing a line after the other characters is an advantage. Surprised characters always begin on the front line. In this rules, a character never goes on the opposite side of the battle-grid. We use another mechanic for this.

Once all characters are in the battle-grid, you can begin to play the rounds of combat and resolve character actions. The actions a character can accomplish depend of his line.

On the front line, a character can:

• Attack with melee weapon an enemy in the opposite side front line. He cannot attack enemy who are not in the opposite side front line.
• Attack with a ranged weapon any enemy in the opposite side front line or rear line.
• Cast a spell. Depend of the range of the spell: touch spells can be casted to a target in the same line of the caster or one line distance, and ranged spells can be used on any line of the battle-grid.
• Move to the rear line.
• Use an item or take another action (referee jugement)

On the rear line, a character can:

• Attack with a ranged weapon any enemy in the opposite side front line or rear line.
• Cast a spell. Depend of the range of the spell: touch spells can be casted to a target in the same line of the caster or one line distance, and ranged spells can be used on any line of the battle-grid.
• Move to the far line, or to the front line.
• Use an item or take another action (referee jugement)

On the far line, a character can:

• Cast a spell. Depend of the range of the spell: touch spells can be casted to a target in the same line of the caster or one line distance, and ranged spells can be used on any line of the battle-grid.
• Move to the read line or flee combat.
• Use an item or take another action (referee jugement)

And finally we have two another important rules for the Battle-Grid combat:

• At any time of the fight, if the front line of any side is empty, all the characters of the side slip one line toward the front line. You can repeat this instantly if the front line is always empty.
• A character who need to enter in the combat begin in the far line of his side.

It's inspired by Ryuutama and his Battle Egg combat system. I hope it can be useful for someone :)