Post/Author/DateTime	Post
erebfaer 01-27-07, 03:58 AM	I was trying to work out a way to represent altitude/depth on a battle grid but when I couldn't think of a decent way I decided to leave it to the friendly people of the Wizards Community. Any ideas?
StoneStokes 01-27-07, 04:26 AM	Stack disks (such as checkers, quarters, etc) under miniatures that are at a higher elevation. Each disk represents a 5-ft. (or 10 ft.) step in the vertical direction. A dragon that has 6 disks under it is understood to be 30 feet off the ground (or 60 feet if you are counting by tens instead).
Pandaemoni 01-27-07, 06:41 AM	Stack disks (such as checkers, quarters, etc) under miniatures that are at a higher elevation. Each disk represents a 5-ft. (or 10 ft.) step in the vertical direction. A dragon that has 6 disks under it is understood to be 30 feet off the ground (or 60 feet if you are counting by tens instead). That's what we do. Poker chips. If you need to represent depth you can either use different colored poker chips or you can "scale up" everybody on the battlemat, so that they are all elevated relative to the deepest figure.
Jezmund 01-28-07, 06:02 PM	I'll have to remember this in case the party somehow winds up on the Plane of Air again...maybe then orchestrating a battle there won't wind up such an organizational disaster.
trapspringer 01-28-07, 07:37 PM	What do you do if two things occupy the same two-dimensional square at different depths or alititudes?
StoneStokes 01-28-07, 07:48 PM	If you have a set of Chessex dice that come in the clear plastic boxes, you can put that box over the mini that is at lower altitude and put the other mini on top.
zama202 01-28-07, 09:11 PM	I have some clear rectangles that some dice came in. I stack those for height. Or I just scribble the altitude next to the mini on the battle mat.
bholdr_mage 01-28-07, 09:57 PM	Another idea is to designate one "row" of 5 ft. squares in the front of the battle mat. This is the depth chart. Mark 5, 10, 15, 20, and so on to the maximum amount of "ceiling to floor" in the encounter. Have cardboard cutouts to represent all characters in the fight on the appropriate depth and use the mini's to use the rest of the mat as the horizontal surface. If a character changes altitude or depth of water or whatever, just move the carboard token (or a ripped scrap piece of paper) to the desired depth. When fighting in air or larger body of water that's deeper than 60ft. or so, mark the center square the "base" altitude for when the combat takes place, and adjust. In other words, to your right mark each square as positive 5 ft., and squares below it cumulative -5ft per square. The checker idea is a good one though and probably less confusing. In the above example, It's best to ask the charcter "where they want to be" before someone gets confused.
Yokomohoyo 01-29-07, 04:54 AM	You could also use the heroclicx figures that figures that fly already have an elivated platform...
deldyrra 01-29-07, 12:00 PM	Some friends and i ran into this problem when doing a PvP battle we were forced into.. it was really confusing because nearly everyone was invisible, flying, and throwing around area-of-effect spells, which required everyone to have exact coordinates. I like the idea about poker chips, but the problem with this was we werent allowed to know where the other invisible players were unless we spotted them. It turned out to be pretty tough for the dm, but we ended up figureing it out. The dm made a coordinates chart, and when on of us figured out where another pc was, he showed just us the chart. it ended up being a ton of fun.