Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Mercurius 06-17-05, 06:04 PM	I was just wondering if anyone has any experience with running combat in an environment where characters can conceivably move in three dimensions, such as under water or in the air. I have an idea for a combat location where the PCs have to travel through an underwater tunnel and fight off a few aquatic monsters, but I'm unsure of how to do it. I contemplated making several sections of map, each the same dimensions, and having them all be effectively "on top" of each other, so that the party could move up or down 5' and move to the next map, or across 5' in the same map, etc. The only problem with something like that would potential confusion with regards to obstructions as well as being a bit cumbersome. I was hoping someone here might have a suggestion.
Sinaz 06-17-05, 07:36 PM	OMG. Um... wow. I can't even begin to fathom that nightmare. personally, I'd limit people to the battle grid, and take special consideration for swimming up or down... adjucate as you deem fitting.
Mercurius 06-18-05, 09:39 AM	OMG. Um... wow. I can't even begin to fathom that nightmare. personally, I'd limit people to the battle grid, and take special consideration for swimming up or down... adjucate as you deem fitting. But in a 3-dimensional environment, there are an extra 18 possible directions to attack a medium PC from. Anyone else have any suggestions or experiences?
cmrscorpio 06-18-05, 10:09 AM	What I did when I needed to do 3d combat (in the air) was I used my base grid, then I got a bunch of poker chips (the more colors the better). I used the colors to denote at which height a character was in relation to the character with the lowest altitude. If characters were on top of each other, I simply stacked their poker chips, then wrote down who was at which height. Since we only ran one combat, this seemed to work well, but if you are running an underwater campaign, you may need to come up with more complex representation because this can become a nightmare with keeping track of where everyone is.
BW0222 06-18-05, 12:03 PM	Multiple maps is just confusing. Just include a height of any passage for the maps. Unless they are separate levels, you don't need separate maps. In combat, if someone it at an different altitude, simply put their figure on a dice and use the number on the dice to track how many 5' squares they are up.
redkite 06-18-05, 12:27 PM	We used post-its with character names to rep the players and wrote the elevation on the post-it. Change as needed. That way if more than one character is on the same square with different elevations, there was no issue. You can have real fun if it is murky water (on see 5' or 10') - just pick a critter with blindsight (like dolphin or shark) and the terrain can make for a fun encounter. Just make sure that there is no character communication (cant hear each other underwater, and if murky, maybe not even see each other). Play it fairly creepy (something comes out of the murk...). What I would do with murky water is quickly number the battle map and then you can inform characters of the dimensions as they encounter them (your DM hidden map has the same number scheme for easy reference). A little more work in the set-up, but will help the encounter go more smoothly. Also, then the characters dont know of obstacles or features (like the bottom or side of the area) until they actually move up to them.
Vercingetorix 06-18-05, 12:45 PM	Extending a square grid into three dimensions sounds tricky... Just imagine extending a hex grid into a lattice of...erm...um...rhombic dodecahedra?
Jaid 06-18-05, 04:15 PM	the poker chips idea might also work if you just stack multiple poker chips (or checkers pieces, or whatever you have) on top of each other. it should give a quick "at a glance" idea of height as well, without just giving a number. the multiple maps thing i dunno about... what if you get a creature that is at multiple levels? i think it would be a pain to represent that... i gotta say, 3-d combat can be really hard to deal with...
Mercurius 06-20-05, 12:06 PM	If you implement something like poker chips, what would you do about terrain that's at certain elevations (like, say, a rock cluster that rises up a certain height, or a floating rock that's occupying space higher up)? It might just be the best way to do it, but I'm still not entirely sure... Darn me and my "I want to run an interesting combat encounter" brain.
Jaid 06-20-05, 07:31 PM	easy. you get an object about the right size, and make sure it's the correct number of poker chips worth of height. for example, if you use 1 poker chip = 1 5' square, and you want an obstacle to be 10 x 10, then 10 x 5, then 5 x 5 at the top, you just stack them as such. if you really want to get fancy, you could make obstacles out of something else, but that's basically how i would handle it. oh, and uhh... for a lower cost, easier to spot difference in height alternative... you could always just use cardboard. some grocery stores will just give you a cardboard box or two if you ask nicely. cut them up and you can customize your obstacles (not to mention you can glue them together without worrying about getting them apart, you have reusable obstacles, and it's easier to represent something larger than 5x5). also, of course, this means you can cut the cardboard to the size of your already existing grid, if any. you could even spray paint it, or print out terrain to stick on top =P 'cause after all, if you don't happen to have a bunch of poker chips handy, they can be rather expensive. particularly when compared to the cost of (free) cardboard, scissors/knife (which you probably already have), and some glue. of which only the glue is likely to cost you anything, but still isn't much, and is actually entirely optional. oh, and the cost of paper and ink if you use the optional printed terrain cover.