Handling 3D combat: problems with flying

[Reaver225]

In an upcoming online pathfinder game of mine, flying is going to be ubiquitous, since the currency is tokens of feather fall that are ubiquitous everywhere and 90+% of the population lives in flying cities or towns because the ground is covered in swarms of giant monsters.

...How on earth am I going to deal with combat when everyone's going to be on a different elevation from each other? Are there any good computer utilities to map such things?

I'm currently planning on using OpenRPG and having two maps side by side to designate where everything is, and do some very fast trigonometric calculations, but that's pretty clunky.

Also, some thoughts on the setting might be nice.


Currently it's a high magic campaign, where the old world was wrecked by a wizard war(s) that did apocalyptic damage, smashed the continents, summoned hordes of monstrous beings, shattered the gods (more on that later) and eventually ended up with the epic combatants all dead or gone and everyone scrambling into flying cities.

Thoughts on how to do simulate turn based flying in an online environment for a P&P game?

[Reaver225]

OTHER BITS OF BACKSTORY

The Ubiquitous Artificier Dontian Therobust was both the saviour and one of the destroyers of the Old World remnants; after the great wars of Magic that left most of the lands of Erlt in turmoil.

Dude liked winged creatures. A lot.

He made a number of artifacts that basically churn out tokens of Feather Fall. You can activate them with a swift action, and they can stick to things once activated, so you can slap a bunch of them on items or objects and they'll only sink slowly, or possibly even just float.

They're so ubiquitous they're used as currency instead of gold, simply because gold is heavy and doesn't help you stop falling. Even after being used, you can turn them in to the _____'s Wings artifacts and get new ones (though you have to wait a while. Guilds often charge half price to get them refreshed). Guilds also stick them together to get more powerful feather tokens - flight and balloon tokens that grant flying for an hour or permanent feather fall tokens - that are the equivalent of 500 and 5000 feathers each (roughly equivalent to the prices that'd cost for a one-shot flight and a permanent feather fall effect).

People only really fall to their deaths when they're incapacitated.

Frequent barges go to pick people up who have jumped or fell down to the surface, for nominal fees.


If anyone ever doesn't turn up to a session, they will have "gone over the edge" and will be back later. Only if a majority of players is missing will game sessions be cancelled. BOOM.
Fortunately, if you have enough feathers you can join them together to make "flights" or "balloons" - basically, if you mash enough feathers together they upgrade into flight for an hour, or permanent feather fall tokens, which can be later split apart if one wants.

Balloons are about 5,000 feathers, and flights are 500 feathers (roughly but not quite the cost of a single use flight or continuous use feather fall effect)

They're all used as currency, and don't weigh anything. Only incapacitated people or absolutely destitute people fall to their deaths off the flying cities. Barges go and pick people up who go off the edge for a minimal fee.

Players that don't turn up to a session will have gone "over the edge".

[Reaver225]

In the War that failed to end the world, titanic forces clashed and struggled for dominance, and as the Wizards of old clashed, the very heavens and hells intervened, crying out against the abominations that occured.

They were silenced in a single stroke, both gods and demons alike shattered under the blow, and faith in them crumbled and vanished as the powers they held vanished to the seven winds.

But worship and divinity are not so easily lost.

Centuries after the (ironically called) Fall, there are now an abundance of godlike fragments, ghosts with power, newly summoned beings who have gained part of the essence of godhood.

An eight hundred millionfold, a godling for each and every individual who wants one. Though they are not so easily empowered - efforts to gather pieces of divinity to recreate the old gods or make composite new ones have been unsuccessful overall, though some may grow in size.

They take many forms - ancestor spirits, unseen voices that empower, even familiars and creeds and summonings may be inhabitants for god-shards.

-Or shards of devils, or demons, for that matter. Despite the name of godlings, not every voice is one of the former gods fragments...

No restrictions on domains and paladin codes unless you want one. Organised religion is difficult, but then you don't have quite so much of an issue with church stuff. Other interesting plot points may occur. Familiars and mounts and summons may be fluffed to be touched with divine or infernal, or be outright gods themselves.

Lots of NPC with cleric levels out there.

[GeriSch]

I think the simplest solution would be to use a standard map and use a tag for every combatant in which you write its altitude relative to the ground. For distance calculations you can just count the horizontal and the vertical squares and thumb the pythagorean formula.

gr,
Geri

[Reaver225]

That's the other way I was thinking of handling it, yes, but it's tricky when a lot of folks are overlapping the same square - which notation is for who? That'd slow the game down a fair bit.

[Asheram]

It would take a bit of time, but if you have the combatants lined up by the side with a small description and an altitude counter, you could use small (colour coded?) dots on the map to signify where they are located on a 2 dimensional plane.

[Person_Man]

This article (http://www.campaignmastery.com/blog/elevate-your-game-tracking-airborne-minis/) might help you. I use the poker chip solution. Each poker chip under your miniature equals 5 feet. (And you can use different color poker chips for higher numbers, in case people are very far apart).

If your whole world is filled with flying people, you can make terrain with different elevation tiers (I suggest shoebox mountains), or buy it (http://paizo.com/store/paizoExclusives/v5748btpy85op).

You can also just use the theater of the mind. If everyone flies, then strategic placement on a combat grid is mostly pointless, because there will be very little blocking. (A meat shield can't stand in front of a wizard to protect him, because everyone can just fly around him). Just have people describe where they want to be and what they want to do, and you can warn them about any attacks of opportunity or other problems they might encounter if they take those actions. This has the added benefit of making combat move much more quickly.

[Reaver225]

This article (http://www.campaignmastery.com/blog/elevate-your-game-tracking-airborne-minis/) might help you. I use the poker chip solution. Each poker chip under your miniature equals 5 feet. (And you can use different color poker chips for higher numbers, in case people are very far apart).

If your whole world is filled with flying people, you can make terrain with different elevation tiers (I suggest shoebox mountains), or buy it (http://paizo.com/store/paizoExclusives/v5748btpy85op). Those solutions might be a bit tricky to implement, seeing that it's going to be an online campaign!


You can also just use the theater of the mind. If everyone flies, then strategic placement on a combat grid is mostly pointless, because there will be very little blocking. (A meat shield can't stand in front of a wizard to protect him, because everyone can just fly around him). Just have people describe where they want to be and what they want to do, and you can warn them about any attacks of opportunity or other problems they might encounter if they take those actions. This has the added benefit of making combat move much more quickly.There's a problem with diving to hit with more damage and closing to melee against ranged enemies, though. But it's certainly an option to consider.

Putting up an altitude counter by the side of the main map and putting a copy of people's minis by it to designate how high they are would probably work well.

[killem2]

Legos! :)

Stack up the 2x4 pieces then a 4x4 piece where you can place the mini :P

I honestly have no idea if this will work I haven't tried it, but I might now. :smallbiggrin:

sorry I meant 8x8

[kitcik]

These (http://paizo.com/store/paizoExclusives/v5748btpy85op) are awesome.

[limejuicepowder]

What about a standard 3-axis grid? Set an arbitrary point in the field to be
(0, 0, 0), and then keep track of each combatant with (x, y, z) coordinates.

It's also a bit clunky, but http://easycalculation.com/analytical/learn-distance3.php can be used to calculate the distance between two combatants.

[Reaver225]

Thanks for your help, everyone, but since this is an online campaign I'd need some online utilities to help me play rather than props - while those would be nice I'd prefer if my players can move their own miniatures on the screen as well.

[thriceborn]

Why not just use two maps, one designated as the horizontal map, the other designated as the vertical map. That way it solves the issue of where people are, the only issue is having to consult both maps for tactical combat.

[ericgrau]

The changing font sizes hurt my eyes.

Anyhoo you could use multiple markers or a counter to signify elevation. To calculate distances just keep a spreadsheet open such as an Excel or Google documents spreadsheet. Lay it out like this:
{table]X|Y|Z|=ROUND(SQRT(X^2+Y^2+Z^2)/5,0)*5[/table]

Or in the first row of the spreadsheed that might look like:
{table]|A|B|C|D
1|10|15|25|=ROUND(SQRT(A1^2+B1^2+C1^2)/5,0)*5[/table]

Where X is the X distance, Y is the Y distance and Z is the Z distance. The diagonal distance will display in the cell containing the formula (the formula itself won't display).

Handling diagonal movement the standard way is actually more complicated once you have that formula so you might as well use the more accurate formula for everything including movement.

[Jeff the Green]

I was going to suggest using the statistical program I use (SPSS) because it handles 3D graphs pretty well, but then I remembered it costs nearly $100 for students and several thousand for everyone else. Maybe you could search around for something like that?

[Reaver225]

{table]|A|B|C|D
1|10|15|25|=ROUND(SQRT(A1^2+B1^2+C1^2)/5,0)*5[/table]Yeah, that'd definitely help a lot. I'll keep that on hand to quickly calc distances, or possibly put it up on google docs.