Water combat and "Ring of walking on water"

[aabicus]

For my next session, I'm going to have my lvl 3-4 players get attacked by sharks while stranded on a dingy lifeboat. None of them are serious magic users (one ranger and one paladin but mainly everyone's martial.) The only thing is, everyone has Rings of Walking on Water.

I'm having a hard time figuring out exactly how to represent combat. Since both parties are treating the same battlefield as a different terrain, I'm not sure how to show both of them without busting out a second grid and making things confusingly 3-dimensional.

How should I go about this?

[Urpriest]

If the players always stay on the surface, the sharks won't have reason to go very deep. What about using paper representations of the sharks rather than minis? Then you could just put them under players they're attacking.

[Thomasinx]

For my next session, I'm going to have my lvl 3-4 players get attacked by sharks while stranded on a dingy lifeboat. None of them are serious magic users (one ranger and one paladin but mainly everyone's martial.) The only thing is, everyone has Rings of Walking on Water.

I'm having a hard time figuring out exactly how to represent combat. Since both parties are treating the same battlefield as a different terrain, I'm not sure how to show both of them without busting out a second grid and making things confusingly 3-dimensional.

How should I go about this?

My suggestion: Simplify it.

I'd check the rules on fly-by attacks, and have the sharks attacks represented as such. Any grapples are kept at surface level (because the water walk spell and ring of waterwalk both give massive buoyancy which would keep both shark and player on the surface).

The only rules that would involve underwater combat would be ranged attacks fired at sharks underwater.

[Synovia]

Agree with Thomasinx here. The sharks are basically flying here, and they'd be using fly-by attack.

The only real difference is that ranged attacks are going to hit the water and be significantly less effective.

[aabicus]

I think I'll incorporate both ideas (pseudo-flyby attacks, with a piece of paper if a shark is grappled or decides to stick around for more than a standard action). It's simple and intuitive for the players.

Thank you!