Do you move in 5' increments on a battle map, or can you move less than that? If so, how do you track that on the map?
If there is, does it create any cases that may be a concern?
[RPG] difference in movement increments between Grids and Theatre of the Mind
battle-mapdnd-5emovementtheatre-of-the-mind
Related Solutions
Lose the battlemap entirely . Use a whiteboard & be more generalized with things like distances & size once the grid is gone. If you're fighting in a huge warehouse district with streets around most buildings. You don't need to illustrate every single building/street.
Don't try for tactical, go for things like "pretty far down the street a car makes a sudden screeching turn pulls down one one of the side streets". The non-exact nature allows the mental theater you mentioned to color in some of the details as the combat evolves. If something happens like a building getting blown up to make some difficult terrain, you have difficult terrain anyplace that seems reasonable instead of "these three squares". Let one of your players manage the whiteboard so you can be free to focus on describing things.
With the grid out the window, a whiteboard in its place, & a player manning the dry erase markers/eraser, the mental theater can spring to life & with the exact dimensions lost to general terms the players stop thinking of movement like chess in favor of describing what they want to do to really add some fire to that theater. If I'm facing off against a rocket launcher with a range of X feet while in my tshirt with a stick, I'm not going to stand at X+1 feet & neither should your players going fuzzy with distance will make it so they stop trying and go with things that play out better in the mind for what they mean from the player's perspective than what they can see from their external godlike view of the situation as a player.
The key does lie in not sweating the details, but the trick is that which is the least intuitive one: positioning!
Follow three principles and theatre of the mind becomes much easier:
Use descriptive detail
When describing a fight scene, say in general terms where everything is relative to each other. You're not used to giving this detail verbally when your habits are tuned for battle mats, so it will take some practice and effort, but it pays off.
But most importantly, don't sweat being exact—exact details aren't necessary, and even entire things you miss or forget will get caught by the next two principles.
Be generous
When in doubt, rule in favour of the PCs. They're competent adventurers, right? If the Fighter was obviously moving into position last turn, assume that they didn't make any trivial mistakes about their positioning. Don't be miserly with the numbers either—if they're trying to get between the Wizard and the Orc and they've probably got enough movement to pull it off, then don't try to count exact feet to see whether they made it or fell short by 5 feet.
Don't sweat exact distances when the intent of the player is plausible to accomplish.
Track intent above all
What are people trying to do on their turn? Focus on that, rather than the bits and bobs of feet, ranges, and areas. Those are tools you can use as rough measures of whether an intent is plausible this round or will take more than one round. By focusing on what people are intending to accomplish with their allotment of time, it's easier to see what's plausible in the theatre of the mind, and you are actually imagining something more interesting. Is imagining 15 feet of movement an event worth spending imaginative brain power rendering in loving detail? Not really. But a careful repositioning to bolster the front rank, or diving away from a lumbering beast, or a steady advance toward the chieftain with deliberate steps bristling with murderous intent—those are worth time imagining.
So don't sweat the truly small stuff—feet and ranges and positioning in general and some kind of "mental grid". Those are just useful rules of thumb for making reasonable judgements about how people can move around, and trying to re-create the grid in your head is a waste of effort and defeats the purpose.
That's the short, pithy version for how to move from a grid-centric conception of combat to a functional theatre of mind that isn't just "now the grid is in my head and everything is harder, why would anyone do this?" For more nitty-gritty details on implementing a theatre of the mind when you've got a grid-based ruleset, my (and others') answers to these questions should provide:
Best Answer
Yes, there is a difference
Under the Variant: Playing on a grid (PHB, 192) it states, emphasis mine:
Under the grid system, you move in 5 foot segments, but under Theatre of the Mind, you can move in 1 foot increments. The cases are likely edge cases when this will matter, but it is something to consider and understand when answering questions here regarding movement as well as at your tables.