So I've been having difficulties with representing flight in combat on my wet-erase grid mat. I have my players use d8s to represent their characters, with d6s representing enemies, and I haven't found an easy way to incorporate flying into combat. How do you represent how high up a flying creature is, which direction they're facing, whether they're ascending or descending, etc.? It just feels like a headache for me right now.
Thanks!
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We use pizza flyers, those little plastic things with long spindly legs, to raise the miniature and a ten-sided die beside it for altitude where 2 = 20 feet, 4 = 40 feet, etc. The way the character faces is the same, and it's easy to superimpose one figure over another except for really large monsters.
With your current system there'd have to be some changes but maybe that idea will help.
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We use thick wooden dowel to place miniatures upon. We have 3 heights. 10 feet, 20 feet, 30 feet. It gives a feel,for height that way. The heights are measured in inches, just like the battle grid. Just draw a line on the front facing of the dowel.
If it becomes really important, well measure the height in inches and then measure from minis to that point. Can be helpful for breath weapons and ray attacks etc.
We usually just play with dice for our minis like you do, and tend to set the number facing up on the die equal to how high off the ground they are.
When it comes to facing, that only ever matters for movement, and only ever matters during your turn, so I don't worry about keeping detailed track of it. Whichever way you start moving on your turn is the way you're facing at the start of that turn. My players are usually able to remember which way they come from, so it works well enough. :P
Playing a Strix atm, I mounted mini on a silver base. I just write my altitude on it with a wet erase marker each time it changes.
Facing doesn't matter.
Next time you order a pizza for delivery, keep the little insert they put in the box to prevent the box top from squishing into the pizza. It doesn't work as well as a clear base, but it can work especially when using dice for minis.
When important, we generally just note on the side of the map with wet erase what altitude someone is at.
It so rarely comes up that we don't really represent true aerial combat. Usually it's one or more flying critters who are off-map most of the time, and just swoop through or land. You'd need a *huge* map area to keep track of fliers on a 5-foot grid.
There have been many non-D&D solutions. "Dragons in the Skies" (based on the old "Fight in the Skies" WW1 dogfight game) was a memorable one. But you would at the very least need to make larger scale grid squares, say 30-foot or 60-foot.
quarters under the minis, each quarter = 5ft altitude. removing or adding a coin is 5ft of movement, you can move 5ft and descent 5ft as a 5ft step but doing that twice = 15ft
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I often see people use these plastic dice boxes to put under their flying mini: picture. It even works if your PC is flying above someone else.
Facing does not matter, only direction changes matter and those are only *during* a move, not between turns.
Likewise, ascending/descending does not matter except to note the added movement cost for ascending while moving during your turn. You should not need to record this.
Only height matters and that can be noted via a written note, coins, a die used as a counter, etc.
There are accessories to handle this problem, but I don't know what search terms to use to find them. Searching for "Flying" in Products and narrowing the search to "Gaming accessories" turned up this and this.
One of my players who has a bird animal companion uses the former. Other players use either dice, or one of the many clear Chessex dice boxes we have sitting around.
We purchased the pathfinder cardboard miniatures, we then realized that we could use liquid pen erase to mark one side of the plastic stands to indicate facing. Then we bought craft paper of the same thickness (cut to various inches, with a grid), by gluing the bottoms of two black stands together we can put our characters/monsters on top of the 1 inch x 2/3/4/5 inch stand. A paper clip indicates the characters height (as listed on the stand).
We always have a spare clear dice box that we can put under a flying character.
Johnico's solution is the other one we use - use a die to keep track of how many feet (or squares) off the ground the flier is.
So I've been having difficulties with representing flight in combat on my wet-erase grid mat. I have my players use d8s to represent their characters, with d6s representing enemies, and I haven't found an easy way to incorporate flying into combat. How do you represent how high up a flying creature is, which direction they're facing, whether they're ascending or descending, etc.? It just feels like a headache for me right now.
Thanks!
For my games we use poker chips/"Sequence" chips.
For every 5 feet above medium height/normal height, we stack one of these chips under their marker on the board.
Since these are color coded, we use greens for 5, blues for ten, and reds for 20 ft.
As for direction, and whether they are travelling upwards or downwards, we simply remember.
We rarely have more than one to a few units in the air at any given time.
Whether you were ascending or desending is irrelevant between rounds as is which direction you were traveling (based on the game rules). These facets do not carry over between turns. Up only imposes a penalty to total movement (moving up costs 5ft extra per square) and turning requires extra movement (and a fly check during the turn if you turn over a certain amount), but again does not apply between turns.
So, you just need an indicator of current height, normally we just use a die with the face showing multiplied by 5 to represent the height. Using a clear dice box could be nice as it allows you to put your token over another. But that's just a bonus at that point.
Check: You generally need only make a Fly check when you are attempting a complex maneuver. Without making a check, a flying creature can remain flying at the end of its turn so long as it moves a distance greater than half its speed. It can also turn up to 45 degrees by sacrificing 5 feet of movement, can rise at half speed at an angle of 45 degrees, and can descend at any angle at normal speed. Note that these restrictions only apply to movement taken during your current turn. At the beginning of the next turn, you can move in a different direction than you did the previous turn without making a check. Taking any action that violates these rules requires a Fly check. The difficulty of these maneuvers varies depending upon the maneuver you are attempting, as noted on the following chart.
Awesome, thanks guys. There's a pizza place next door so I'll probably just grab a bunch of the box things. I know direction and ascending and descending don't mean anything mechanically; I was just interested in how someone might go about doing that, and if there's any easy and clean way (besides marker) to mark which creatures are going up and down. For the players, y'know?
I use across, plus half the difference in height, to estimate distance.
As for ascending and descending, there isn't anything like that, just like i can choose to go left or right next round, it's up to me.
Honestly, you've got high out of combat, long range, medium range, flying in melee, and on the ground. Only keep track of exact distances if it's better for you.