Alright, so I've got it in my head to start using obstacles, buildings, and maybe even actual terrain boards from the mini war gaming genre. I'm getting fed up with the time-consuming action of constantly drawing and erasing on my play mat with the wet-erase markers (which slows the games down considerably, even when letting one of the folks that knows how to draw do it). I know about flip mats, but I'm looking for something a little (or a lot) more customizable). So, I'm wondering if anyone's done this yet, and how they fared.
Aside from it being particularly expensive, I'm not entirely sure what other problems to expect with converting to such a play style. Initially I was thinking of using the obstacles and buildings and what not on a hex grid, both for change of pace and for a bit more freedom in movement and combat. As I thought more about it, I started to wonder about using the actual terrain boards with it.
Before I start committing to far to one side or the other, hex-mat + 3d obstacles & etc, or full-blown war-game style, I thought I'd see if anyone had any feedback on how such a game would fare with PF rules. I'm working on a major war-based campaign, which was what made me think of the war game terrains in the first place.
Primary concerns are weather or not such things speed up or slow down game time, ease of use (particularly in concern of spell area), and so forth. Since I've also been considering 3.5 Unearthed Arcana's combat facing (with shield facing), I was wondering if anyone might give some advice on that in conjunction with this whole deal as well.
Also, since I've never actually played such a war game as these terrains as used for, I've got no experience with the actual objects themselves. I'm not entirely sure what 'size' to pick up. I'm a little confused on the scale... 6mm? 25mm/28mm? Ontop of sucking at metric, I've got no idea what scale would fit with the 1" = 5' scale of the PF rule set.
Any help and advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance ^_^.
25-28mm (ie, one inch) is closest to the 5' scale, not that PF specifies inches anywhere. But if you're doing wars, ie battles, you might find yourself going to 6mm now and again.
Hexes will need slight adjustments to the rules, but nothing substantial (flanking, AoO, etc). Spell area of effect can be covered by templates.
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the beauty of hexes is that mess with diagonals is gone.
large, huge, etc minis don't line up well though.
flanking becomes a major pain on large or bigger creatures, I'd borrow a gang up rule from other systems where gang up gives +2 to hit, and don't worry about hexes.
cone templates get tricky, but you can make them all 60deg. cones instead of 90.
its very hard to run pre-written adventures with 3d terrain if the maps that come with them are important. if you don't care about maps, or are running a homebrew (which sounds like you may) then go for it.
25-28mm (ie, one inch) is closest to the 5' scale, not that PF specifies inches anywhere. But if you're doing wars, ie battles, you might find yourself going to 6mm now and again.
Hexes will need slight adjustments to the rules, but nothing substantial (flanking, AoO, etc). Spell area of effect can be covered by templates.
Funny you should start a thread about this...
Recent thoughts I've had on a similar matter:
*I was thinking about this the other day, seeing as I still have some of my old terrain from my WH40K days.
*I was wondering how many gamers have cross-interests like I do, and therefore have a bunch of terrain they don't use with their RPGs, and a bunch of flat maps that don't get used with their wargames.
*It's a shame that there is a segment of the population that enjoys constructing models and terrain and Paizo hasn't really found a way to capture that target demographic.
*Using the grid and terrain together is difficult; you end up covering up the grid with any terrain you have placed, unless you paint lines right on the terrain. The problem with doing that is you have effectively forced the terrain to "snap-to-grid"; it is no longer possible to use that terrain in any other orientation that won't align to the grid you have assigned it.
*I would like to see a possible ruleset that you could side-load into the game that patches the grid system and replaces it with free-form rangefinding; something like what Warhammer uses. It wouldn't be too hard to create, I just haven't put forward the time to think about it that much. It would mean people would have to think exclusively in the inch scale; you'd have to carry around tape measures just like Warhammer players do. Diagonals wouldn't exist. Spells would work well with templates, which could be actually round, not round-ish. The difficult things to set up would be flanking, reach, models partially under AOE templates, and cover.
Once that ruleset existed, that would be the easiest way to incorporate wargame-style terrain into your games.