Long story short, yes. Hexes for combat make a lot of the questions about distance much easier to manage. Occasionally, there may be some “oddities” regarding moves that squares have solved, but with some quick adjudications, hexes can be a lot of fun.
Remember, that your character also takes up a hex. Often times there are round tokens, but to help with determining where things are, think of your character as a hex too.
Although this guide assumes you use what is occasionally called “Flat Hexes”. These are hexes where the top and bottom are flat, and the left and right are pointed. However, if you feel like using “Point Hexes” (the top and bottom are pointy, and the left and right are flat), then just note that when you are drawing distances, chances are good, you will actually draw a hex that’s the inverse type of what you use.
In other words, if you are using “Flat” hexes, your distances and the like will form a Pointy Hex, and vise versa. Here is an example of 30 feet of movement in both styles.
As you can see, 30 feet of movement forms a pointy hex, despite the base hexes being flat.
As you can see, 30 feet of movement forms a flat hex, despite the base hexes being pointy.
Going forward, all documentation will use Flat Hexes, but converting to pointy hexes should be easy enough.
Since hexes aren’t perfectly square, but many hallways or buildings are, you may need to perform some calculations while working with partial hexes. There are two kinds of partial hexes: Line and Corner.
Partial Hexes are often used in determining size as well.
The rules of adjudicating partial hexes are located in each segment below.
If an effect requires line of sight, it is simple to determine. Simply take any corner from each hex, and draw a line to it. If the line is uninterrupted, then you have line of sight.
In the example, the two character with blue lines have line of sight. The character with the red line does not.
You can have line of sight, but the target might still have cover.
Using hexes makes it easy to determine cover. When a question of cover comes up, draw a line from the corner of each hex of one creature to the same corner of each hex of the other creature. If no corners are obstructed, or 1 corner is obstructed, there is no cover.
If 2, or 3 corners are obstructed, the target has half-cover.
If 4 or 5 corners are obstructed, the target has 3/4 cover.
If all 6 corners are obstructed, you cannot see the target, they have total cover.
