Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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Please, give us the option to toggle between this measurement system you use and the metric. The vast majority of countries is used to kilometer, kilos, meter, and etc, so while you don't offer localization option, at least let us have an easier time comprehending distances with this setting. I have 0 interest in learning feet and miles, and it creates unnecessary pauses during the games, so being able to convert will create a better experience
I personally don't think this is necessary and would actually cause more issues than it'd solve. I'm speaking as someone who also uses metric, but I live by the mantra of "silly fantasy units for silly fantasy game". You can easily convert imperial on the fly using these rough guidelines:
That's all you need to remember
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The issue is that everything is so ingrained to the measurements of feet that it would be a mess to play in meters. I get the KM and Kilo measurements, but something like how many feet a person moved would get messy.
5 feet is 1.524 meters, 30 feet is 9.144 meters. You would notice there are a ton of decimal numbers once you use meters and it's just a hassle more than counting everything by 5 when you move.
You can round the convertion as 5ft = 1.5m to avoid the decimals, every systems do that, and the French version of DnD do that too.
I am with FogareuMagico on this, that may not seems a big deal for thos who use imperial metrics but,
I had to find a chrome/firefox extention for my players to avoid ingame mistakes with spells and traits
and I myself had to print a convert table because in the fire of actions even if making math doesn't seems much, it can cause unnecesary time loss.
If it helps, I just found this converter online.
"Let's keep things civil, friend. We're not looking for trouble."
I'm just happy to be here.
I've always kind of wondered why they didn't go to 1 yard/1 meter squares. Particularly because they tend to use multiples of three for range, movement, vision, etc anyway.
Personally, I think this is a long overdue conversion.
Sadly, I fear the main issue is the distance measurement originally chosen for 5e. 5ft is quite unwieldy to convert. Realistically, 3ft/1m/1yd would have made so much more sense. This perhaps might have necessitated Melee range being 6ft not 5ft, but does that really make all that much difference? I'd argue not. A switch to squares being a base of 3ft would make conversion so much easier right the way across the line*.
*Yes, I'm aware that 3ft does not precisely equal 1 metre. It is however close enough for a fantasy game.
DM session planning template - My version of maps for 'Lost Mine of Phandelver' - Send your party to The Circus - Other DM Resources - Maps, Tokens, Quests - 'Better' Player Character Injury Tables?
Actor, Writer, Director & Teacher by day - GM/DM in my off hours.
I agree with a conversion.
But close enough is close enough for fantasy.
My group uses imperial in D&D and metric is twilight200. No big deal.
Also, the average width of a door is 3', so a 3' square makes mapping easier.
So, this is rooted in tradition. Going all the way back to the 1970's, war gaming used inches, so Chainmail used them, then D&D and so forth.
Great, the UK's traditional was feet and inches long before the USA was even a country. Times change and reasonable people move with the times. Granted the UK has a disproportionate number of older people (60-70+) who seem to think it's important to retain Pints and Miles for pretty silly reasons of 'tradition', which as a collection of four nations we Brits should be ashamed of. Beyond that though, the metric system is the standard for a reason.
Given that a new (sub)edition was published in 2024, it's pretty silly that WotC never bothered to consider if the 'traditional' distances still made sense. It would have been the perfect opportunity to do some tweaks and make the maths a little easier outside of the USA.
DM session planning template - My version of maps for 'Lost Mine of Phandelver' - Send your party to The Circus - Other DM Resources - Maps, Tokens, Quests - 'Better' Player Character Injury Tables?
Actor, Writer, Director & Teacher by day - GM/DM in my off hours.
Even I, an american well used to feet and inches, find 5' squares deeply annoying and sometimes wish for metric.
So you want US players to crunch out decimals every time they measure distances once everything is even & decimalless in metric?
Because conversion from metric to what the US uses doesn't translate cleanly ever.
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Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
People make things so hard.
Just make a conversion chart and leave it on the table.Round everything off.
Exactly how many distances, areas and volumes are you dealing with?
By the time those decimals matter things are getting out of hand.
100 meters is about 109.4 yards. So what?call them both 100 and equal.
Sorry its my venting day.
No, he apparently wants that plus reprinting 50 years of materials that all used inches, feet, 5 foot squares, 20 foot radius area effects and so on. Metric is great for precision, tradition works fine for gaming. That said, I DEMAND a copy of Mille Bournes with MILES instead of kilometers! So unfair.
This whole thread is very confusing as why are you not using both instantly? I switch between Imperial & metric and use them basically interchangeably. We live in a world were both are used, so you need to understand both. As this is a game, you don't need precision. 1.5m = 5 feet. Is that exact no but does it matter? You have a speed of 9m so you are a hair faster then 30 feet. That 3rd level monk has a speed of 12m which is faster than 40 feet, does he have a competitive advantage over someone else? How does this swapping of units change the game.
The hardest part of quick conversions is F/C (hot/cold), and that can remain listed in what the party is comfortable with.
I am in the camp that is basically leave it the way it is. I would rather convert it myself and keep even numbers than now use converted numbers that have too many decimal places.
Most people use just one in their day to day life (unless you live in the UK which has the weirdest and messiest hybrid approach). There are only three countries that officially use the imperial system in the world—USA, Liberia, and Myanmar, and a small number that have mixed usage—the UK and former Commonweath nations (Canada, Australia, India, etc). However, of the mixed group, UK is the "most" mixed.
I think learning some key reference points helps. For example the average door is 8 feet high. The average road is about 25 feet wide. A mile is about one and half km. 2 lb is a kg. A gallon is about 4 liters. Once you have those, you're usually good for playing D&D.
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Gee Whizz and Gosh Golly! Thanks for putting words in my mouth!
No, I'm not calling for reprinting of materials. Nor am I calling for it all to be in metric...though I do find the fact that the UK isn't fully metric by now, and the fact the US is continuing in its exceptionalism to decline metric annoying. In an ideal world everyone would be using metric measurements and we could all agree on at least something. We did it for time and guess what it works rather well.
What I am suggesting however, is that WotC could do far worse than to print measurements for both in future books. That they missed a trick by not printing both (or at least a good conversion table in the most recent core books for 5.5e.
More than that though, D&D does get translated to other languages. If you're going through the effort of that it's not difficult to also convert units of measurements for books to be sold outside that undeveloped, criminal-led wasteland known as the USA. There's no reason the English text version of the books sold outside the US couldn't be in metric for the Australians, Canadians, Irish, English, Scottish, Welsh, New Zealanders. One assumes after all that the books do get translated at a bare minimum into Spanish, French, and German too.
Now of course that would get tricky on D&D Beyond but here's the thing. Once you have those metric estimations, they can be applied to almost every single other user outside of the USA, with weirdos like Great Britain being able to pick and choose which system they utilise. This is something that would take maybe a day's work to figure out by the writers and team at WotC. So, once again, that they didn't bother to consider this in printing the 2024 books is a stunningly poor example of US exceptionalism.
DM session planning template - My version of maps for 'Lost Mine of Phandelver' - Send your party to The Circus - Other DM Resources - Maps, Tokens, Quests - 'Better' Player Character Injury Tables?
Actor, Writer, Director & Teacher by day - GM/DM in my off hours.
Well the german translated version of the books do use the metric system, so the"official" values in meters already exist somewhere and no one has to convert on their own.
And I think it would really be a good addition to have the option to switch on D&D Beyond.
Edit: Though of course there is more than just the rule books, I guess it would be more of a hassle with all of the other resources that aren´t translated.
The only real concern with mechanics is distance. The rest are simply conversions.
And 5ft = 1.5m isn't that hard.
"I have 30ft of movement" or 6 squares = "I have 9m of movement" or 6 squares.
And as long as you never try to use both 5ft and 1.5m in the same game, there isn't a problem. Squares are just a tiny bit smaller, but it's an arbitrary value anyway.
And there's always extensions like Metric Beyond: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/metric-beyond/cihnlndlolbobejfmejjnagmohcbklff
or DnD Beyond Kit: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/DnD Beyond Kit/gdpopbkamfkkenkillfnocgljokkcopg