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View Full Version : DM Help Battlemaps and Elevation



SteveLightblade
2021-10-29, 01:17 PM
Since battlemaps are typically two dimensional (yes, I know that they technically are three dimensional, the third dimensional is really thin, but you know what I mean), portraying height is typically a difficult thing to do. If there is a balcony, or an attacker is on an upper floor or roof of a building, this can be easy to portray, but what do you do for portraying flight? What about dogfights and space battles where elevation changes constantly? What about underpasses, multiple floors, staircases? Without using a model building or computerized system, how do you portray elevation?

icefractal
2021-10-29, 04:54 PM
When the exact elevation isn't important and we just need to indicate who's flying, we put something underneath the model - the clear boxes dice often come in are handy for that, but even a coin or poker chip works.

If it is important, we put a die underneath the model, with the top face indicating height.

Having one person directly above another ... we try to avoid, because there's not a convenient way to represent it. If necessary, we just put the "above" figure off to the side of the map with a die indicating height and remember that it's directly above the other one.

If there was a fight on multiple floors of a building, the floors would probably be side by side on the map with some kind of "center marker" to show how they line up if the stairs / shape doesn't already make that apparent.

dafrca
2021-10-30, 12:05 AM
When the exact elevation isn't important and we just need to indicate who's flying, we put something underneath the model - the clear boxes dice often come in are handy for that, but even a coin or poker chip works.

If it is important, we put a die underneath the model, with the top face indicating height.
I do the same thing except if it is important I place a small 12mm d6 next to the clear stand.

And like you, I try real hard not to have two flyers stop their move on the same square. :smallbiggrin:

Balain
2021-10-30, 03:09 AM
If some one is on a balcony or roof, we will write the height on the mat. if a figure is flying we often put a die next to the figure, each number representing 10 feet. S0 a die showing 4 is 40 feet up.

One epic battle the DM made these towers with pillars and platforms, with various sized cartons and popsicle sticks, that he could turn. Prisoners were hanging off the pillars and platforms. Each tower made quarter turns every few rounds

Telok
2021-10-30, 08:55 PM
Amazingly enough childrens blocks & books used to be pretty good stand-in complex terrain back in the day. You lose the "grid" thing, but a ruler is a really good replacement and can help with line of sight/effect too.

Imbalance
2021-11-01, 07:25 AM
There are some pricy acrylic stands you can buy and some people swear by them, but any handy stable-based thing to show a height difference is all I've used.

Thane of Fife
2021-11-01, 04:32 PM
One thing I've seen people do in wargames is to use radio antennas or similar extensible sticks. You just extend it out to the height that you want the figure to be at.

Thrudd
2021-11-01, 06:42 PM
Yeah, that stuff is hard with 2d maps, especially overpasses and multi floor buildings. As said, multiple side maps is what you'll need for doing interiors in 2d.
Battletech mostly did a topographical map style, with the elevation of hills and valleys noted on the hexes themselves. Games where miniatures were going in and out of small buildings and interacting with others outside and below (like Mordheim) would use actual 3d terrain of some kind. The simplest/cheapest was facades or boxes with an open side made of cardboard, with platforms for the floors. You can make simple bridges out of cardboard as well.
For flyers, placing something under the miniature to show their elevation makes sense.
Some people even use legos for the terrain.

Stonehead
2021-11-02, 06:05 PM
I'll second a little die next to the figure, that usually suffices for flying. If the terrain itself is uneven, I'll usually just label the difference, and sometimes use a different color or different shading for different elevations. Takes a little extra time to draw, but it's more readable.

AceOfFools
2021-11-08, 05:59 PM
One thing I’ve done is divide the battle a into areas and label them 1F, 2F, etc, for different 2d “slices” of the battle space, exactly like making out a multi story building. Distances can be counted from vertical terrain (e.g. towers).

This works well for multi-level, but constrained environments (e.g. ships or shafts with ledges & bridges crossing). It works poorly for outdoor spaces and dogfighting where 3d movement is less constrained.

One thing that I have found to work well is “stack poker chips underneath minis” to represent height, eg white = 5’, blue=25’ etc. Combine this with a larger grid map (ie using 1” scale minis on a 1.5” grid) so I have an easier time “squeezing” multiple minis into the same space for vertical stacking, and this works well enough, provided the battlespace doesn’t have too many units.

For true, full 3d arial combat, we just tracked coordinates without minis as it’s a pretty common for such fights to take place in areas where having terrain is iffy, and my players can either do the math or use the “distance calculating spreadsheet” I wrote to figure out range and movement.

Honestly, though, I found once you get that far, theater of the mind works well enough and the lack of fidelity is worth not having to do the math.

Weasel of Doom
2021-11-09, 02:50 AM
For something simple (hilly terrain, a cave with varying elevations but no/few overpasses) we just use cross-hatching or, more rarely, contour lines. If things are a little more complicated with balconys or galleries or overhangs where one creature may pass under another then we'll start using multiple colours on the map. Flying characters either sit up on a clear dicebox or get a ring hung on their figurine.
For aerial or submarine combat we have everything flat on the battlemap, try to remember what elevation everything is at and just rule of thumb movement with a tape measure or two.