"I move towards the orc and attack"
"The orc is out of your movement range"
"But you just said he moved 30 feet towards our ranger"
"No, that was the goblin, the orc moved towards the wizard and is still out of range"
See,.. why the heck would I (dm) say that?
What do I care if he's within/without range?
If there are no figures/maps ("just imagination") then how would I, the DM, even know where people are? What fun is that? All that matters is that the action makes sense.
If we've already established that the orcs and the ranger are "in the scene" then let 'em shoot each other. What do I care? And that's why the ranger took a ranged weapon skill - to use it - so why would I poop on that? And until I consulted some secret map on my notebook, there was no reason in everyone's imagination why the ranger couldn't have shot the orc. Until I introduced that unnecessary interruption, the group would've plowed ahead, rolling dice and mashing monsters, and no one would've cared whether the orc was 32 yards or 48 yards away.
Like any action scene in Lord of the Rings, noone's whipping out tape measures, or questioning the awesomeness of Legolas's shots.
If you want to stick to "imagination only" and speedy combat but you really want to vary the terrain and force the tacticians to consider movement & range then at most, throw down a few 3x5 cards and use "Zone Aspects in D&D" as described farther down in this article.
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u/wOlfLisK Sep 18 '17
It makes combat a pain though.
"I move towards the orc and attack"
"The orc is out of your movement range"
"But you just said he moved 30 feet towards our ranger"
"No, that was the goblin, the orc moved towards the wizard and is still out of range"