An alternative to miniatures

[El_Jefe]

Hi there,

Is there anybody out there playing D&D with out using (and buying) a ton of plastic miniatures? Me and my friends where some of those weird gamers that were playing AD&D until late last year. We finally started playing 3.5 D&D and we still look with dread at the plastic miniatures on the board. We think the whole system in 3.5 works fine...if the campaing takes place in dungeon after dungeon. Most of my combat scenes take place in the outdoors or in urban enviroments. In the last figth scene from our last session, several of the party members ran in to different buildings, one of them actually climbed the stairs to the second floor, burst trough a window in to the roof, slide down the ice covered surface and then landed on the street outside...unharmed do through some very lucky old fashioned natural 20's rolls. My question is, how do you keep track of all this with out building a mini-scaled town........maybe I draw stick like figures to represent the monsters and their horses....oh, nevermind SOMEBODY already did that...(that would be The Giant himself in case you never read how Order of the Stick came about).

[Squash Monster]

You need two things: a way to track things that move, and a way to track things that don't move.

For things that move, I use 1" tokens. I print off a sheet of 1" pictures of things we need, spray mount it to cardboard, and cut them apart. Functionally, they work better than minis since you can stack them (helps when people enter the space of a big monster). Additionally, I have a large stash of blank D6s that I stack up under flying creatures. They don't have to be blank ones, obviously.

For things that don't, I print off a bunch of 1" graph paper. I'm a half decent artist so I can draw everything on the fly. For 3D maps it gets tricky, you'll need some way of denoting the height of different layers. Two layers is really easy though: just draw the roof. People on the roof get a height marker like a flying creature.

[Flickerdart]

If you're using a 3D environment, draw a cross-section of the vertical plane and one of the horizontal plane for each floor. You could, if you wanted, cut out the differently-elevated areas and lift them above the ground to signify that they are.

But that's getting dangerously close to building a model town. So just take some graph paper, a ruler and pencil, and do the cross-sections. You could even use 1 square = 5ft to make it easier on you to draw, mark their position with the pencil, and just erase where the guys have been as they move.

Also, if you can manage it, a two-sided cardboard card with the character drawn on each side impaled from the bottom by a flat thumbtack is a decent solution.

[xPANCAKEx]

you don't NEED mini's to play D&D. Strictly all you need is pen, paper, dice and some imagination.

In urban combat or multi level combat it can get a bit confusing - so obviously minis help, but if you don't have the scenery/models to do what you need, just get some grid paper, and draw out a rough map for your own use to keep track of where everyone is - then all you'll need is coloured pins (or coloured tape with numbers on) to represent what everything is. Certainly is a lot easier on the wallet and you spend less time painting and more time playing

the key in these situations is really all down to your notetaking - it might not always end up with a 100% accurate description of whats going on, but if your an honest DM and don't mess the players around just to merk them then you should fine

[PollyOliver]

We don't use miniatures so much as we use small tokens with a picture or symbol representing our character on them. For the most part--for example if we're fighting a couple flying creatures--we stand a piece of laminated grid on end against something, perpendicular to the grid our characters are standing on, and use dry-erase marker to keep track of height--each square is five feet above the ground.

We had a really cool urban campaign once, though, and one of our encounters was a massive fight, parts of it essentially a running battle, across the rooftops. The DM mapped the roofs of that part of the city ahead of time on regular graph paper, noting the heights and the distance between them, and then set up the battlefield by stacking books and DVD cases and other objects on top of each other and then just sticking a grid on top of each, noting the height above the ground in the corner. That way we could get an intuitive feel for relative heights and distances just by looking at the stacked up books, and know the actual numbers by looking in the corner. It was a huge success, but was probably a little too much work on the DM's part to use all that often. For most of the campaign he just used a regular piece of laminated grid paper and noted height on the edge when it was important.

[TheThan]

you don't NEED mini's to play D&D. Strictly all you need is pen, paper, dice and some imagination.

In urban combat or multi level combat it can get a bit confusing - so obviously minis help, but if you don't have the scenery/models to do what you need, just get some grid paper, and draw out a rough map for your own use to keep track of where everyone is - then all you'll need is coloured pins (or coloured tape with numbers on) to represent what everything is. Certainly is a lot easier on the wallet and you spend less time painting and more time playing

the key in these situations is really all down to your notetaking - it might not always end up with a 100% accurate description of whats going on, but if your an honest DM and don't mess the players around just to merk them then you should fine

Unfortunately the game wants you to buy minis. Just look at the combat section in the PHB.

Anyway the problem I have with the DND minis is that they just make random boosters and seemingly random monsters to put in those boosters.

Sure they have some of the iconic monsters (dragons, beholders etc) but if my party is going up against a small army of say goblins, I’m sort of out of luck as I can’t just buy a package of 25 orcs and be done with it.

Basically its too hard to get what I need out of the dnd minis. Fortunately they’re not the only option I have for minis. I’ve been thinking of buying a box of Mordor orcs for the LOTR fantasy battles game (put out by Games workshop if you’re interested) to use for dnd. Oh and as far as the painting, you can always get your buddies to help out (especially if you shelled out the cash for it).

Other than that, we use tokens to represent just about everything from coffins in a dungeon to trees.

[Renegade Paladin]

I just use colored glass beads for masses of orcs and so forth; you can get a bunch of them for a couple bucks at an arts and crafts store. For PCs and unique NPCs, I use chess pieces, or for ones I'm really invested in, Reaper minis. I have to be really into a character before I'll buy a mini for him, though.

The cheapest way to get minis, scenery, and so forth is seriously a hobby shop or crafts store. They want a whole lot less than any gaming miniatures company does.

[Rutee]

I'm going to agree with using tokens, slips of paper, and whatnot. It's just too useful (And cheap)

[Morty]

I personally use battle mat and tokens from "D&D for beginners" game I once bought from my friend. I also made myself my own map using big sheet of paper, a ruler and a long, straight piece of wood. If I didn't have those tokens, I'd use coins and chess pieces. In other words, you don't need to buy any minis D&D-designed or not, which is handy when you don't have any hobby or gaming store within 100km radius.

[TheCountAlucard]

If I recall correctly, Mr. Burlew himself was using OotS-style paper miniatures...

[TempusCCK]

We don't play with miniatures ever, but we have recently started using two very large dry erase marker boards one for mapping out the entire area and one for mapping out individual encounters. It works extremely well, all you do is grab a marker and draw your movements on the board. Very cheap alternative.

[kjones]

Spare Dice (not that there's any such thing) can be handy, especially because if you are fighting (say) eight orcs, just turn the dice to 1-8. That way, you know which one is which.

As for three dimensions, there are a few possibilities. Usually, trying to construct a 3D model of the environment is overly complex, but one option is to have two grids, one "high" and one "low". Then, you only need to keep track of distance above the "low" grid, or above the "high" grid. The problem is keeping track of the combination of the two...

If it's just the players fighting some flying creatures, I have a stash of the plastic cases Chessex dice sets come in that I keep around specifically for this purpose. The wyvern sits on top of the plastic box, and everyone remembers that he's not actually on the ground.

[nerulean]

Spare Dice (not that there's any such thing) can be handy...

No such thing? Our entire party is represented by d12s!

We tend to use a blank battlemap and our imaginations for encounters, and various dice out of the dicebox for the monsters - that is, if we're playing an encounter where distances are important. A lot of the time, we don't bother.

[Tack122]

I have been making miniature type things out of copper recently, though that requires access to a bunch of tools that I assume most people don't have.

One option I recently had a look at was figures made out of electrical components, resistor as the torso, then a LED or small transistor for a head, it makes an interesting if somewhat fragile mini. I soldered the legs to some scraps of copper plate so it could stand easily, thats easily doable, though there are other options that would probably work easily.

[Were-Sandwich]

My group do wargaming as well as RPGs, so we have a lot of miniatures. I occasionaly create paper figures, then use sticky backed plastic to reinforce the paper.

[_Puppetmaster_]

I use Lego men as minis for the PCs, and ripped pieces of paper with writing on them for monsters, except I use lego men or creatures for boss battles and important NPCs.

[Fostire]

I use Lego men as minis
I used to do that when playing 2E.
:smallconfused: For some reason that escapes me right now, i dont do that anymore.

[TheThan]

I just use colored glass beads for masses of orcs and so forth; you can get a bunch of them for a couple bucks at an arts and crafts store. For PCs and unique NPCs, I use chess pieces, or for ones I'm really invested in, Reaper minis. I have to be really into a character before I'll buy a mini for him, though.

The cheapest way to get minis, scenery, and so forth is seriously a hobby shop or crafts store. They want a whole lot less than any gaming miniatures company does.

that's pretty much what i use when i mentioned "tokens". try heading to the local Walmart and checking in pets (fish) department for some beads. I almost guarantee they'll be cheaper than what you can find at a hobby or crafts store. at least thats what we did.

[SilverClawShift]

For larger scale maps, like full castles and wide outdoor areas, we just use maps with a plexiglass sheet on top. We use dry erase markers, and make Xs or dots or whatnot to represent where we are, erasing things as we (and the monsters) move. It helps when you're dealing with larger scale things like wars, creatures too large to fit on your average battle map, ect.

Even for smaller scale stuff, we don't usually use a grid. Our DM made a series of little metal sticks and circles out of wire that we use to guage distance. Since it's stiff wire, you can bend it as needed to tell distance around curves, so you're not really confined to moving in straight lines or weird hopscotchy patterns. The circles are also useful for quickly determining the area of effect for things like auras and fireballs and whatnot.*
For the smaller scale maps, we use a variety of things. A lot of monsters can be covered by various figures or minis we've picked up from random spots. Our most commonly used 'minis' though are actually just pictures of things printed onto card stock and folded/glued into triangles. Our DM takes care of the sizing and knows how big to print anything based on size category, so if we want to use artwork we find as characters, we just give the picture to him and he prints us character minis.
The most useful thing about the paper minis is transportation and storage. Our DM keeps binders full of card organizers with the paper minis for monsters and NPCs in various categories so he can find them quickly.

Our DM dedicates a lot of time to our groups amusement, god bless him.

*Edit

Meant to mention, after you use the physical guidelines to measure things for a dozen sessions or so, you get used to eyeballing the space between monsters, obstacles and such, so we rarely even have to use them now. We have a good 'feel' for what 30 feet, 60 feet, 80 feet, whatever means on the map size we use, so we can just move our peices with occasional real checks to remind us of the distances.

It really gives combat a more organic feel to get away from grid lines.

[Xuincherguixe]

There's all kinds of possibilities. If you were feeling particularly hard core, you could print out things with a color printer, and glue them to cardboard bits. The model dungeon would be three dimensional.

Or, make it all out of clay.

Slightly less crazy (crazy being a good reason to do things) would be to write your own computer program. You could then reasonably adapt it over time and get all kinds of uses out of it. I only mention this because you are likely not a programmer, and thus it becomes a much bigger task. If you were a programmer, this would probably be easy. It may or may not violate the terms of the SRD, it depends on how you did it.



My advice? Just print out some characters. For the dungeon itself, cut out little pieces that represent the rooms (or parts of them, if visibility is an issue). Don't worry too much about making it look realistic. It's just supposed to represent the situation is all.

[shadow_archmagi]

In my game, the players get minis, the villains get coins. Mooks are pennies, bosses quarters, megabosses get golden dollars, and full out main villains get miniatures.

[Jerthanis]

I ran into this problem a few months ago... and solved it through two methods.

First, I went to ebay and found packs of large numbers of Common D&D minis for pretty cheap (1 dollar + 3-4 bucks shipping) and bought two or three sets of 20 or so. Then I convinced each member of my group to buy a random booster each, and by then we had somewhere around 100 minis of various types. We don't have many duplicates, so we can't really fight rooms full of identical orcs and skeletons, but we have enough that we can fight about 7 "undead" looking creatures at once, even if ghouls and zombies have to stand in for Skeletons sometimes.

After that, we wanted unique figures to act as our PCs, and I descended down the dark, dark path of miniature painting. I've only painted two sets of minis so far, but I probably sank 100 bucks in just to get started, and I already need a new fine detail brush.

The idea behind miniatures is that you don't lose them after using them once, so if you paint one zombie... you've got one zombie forever. If you paint a second zombie... now you've got two. In theory, it costs a lot to get started, but if you share the cost out among friends, having each person buy some of their own minis, and you keep tabs on where your minis are... eventually you'll have minis for every occasion.

The cost is really negligible IF you plan on playing the game for the next twenty or thirty years. If you think you'll probably quit when you leave college and find a real job... don't bother getting good looking minis, and just use cardboard tokens.

[holywhippet]

Do you have access to a PC (preferrably a notebook or tablet notebook) while you play? If so, there are a number of free RPG applications which can keep track of the battlefield. Handling different heights is no problem, you just create different layers for the map and more your characters between them. My DM uses this one: http://rptools.net/doku.php?id=maptool:intro

[Jimp]

A pencil and some paper. Failing that, some pebbles and some paper. Failing that, some household object and some paper. Failing that, our imaginations.
Really, there is absolutely no need for miniatures.

[Starbuck_II]

Unfortunately the game wants you to buy minis. Just look at the combat section in the PHB.

Anyway the problem I have with the DND minis is that they just make random boosters and seemingly random monsters to put in those boosters.

Sure they have some of the iconic monsters (dragons, beholders etc) but if my party is going up against a small army of say goblins, I’m sort of out of luck as I can’t just buy a package of 25 orcs and be done with it.

Basically its too hard to get what I need out of the dnd minis. Fortunately they’re not the only option I have for minis. I’ve been thinking of buying a box of Mordor orcs for the LOTR fantasy battles game (put out by Games workshop if you’re interested) to use for dnd. Oh and as far as the painting, you can always get your buddies to help out (especially if you shelled out the cash for it).

Other than that, we use tokens to represent just about everything from coffins in a dungeon to trees.

You could buy individual minis?
GamingetcStore sells minis from Mage Knight and other minis. You can buy individual ones for somewhat cheap (if commons).

[Prometheus]

Again, pieces of paper that are drawn on and then taped/glued to paper work perfectly. Even tokens work as long as players know what they are. I've heard one can make stand up tokens by folding the paper into an upside down T, but it's never seemed useful for me to use.

As for the map, I use a dry erase grid that I had bought, works great. Alternatively, tokens on a printed out grid work moderately well, and I'd imagine wide-rule graph paper would work fine.

Also, if anyone has a laptob, there are a number of programs made for the purpose or able to be adapted for the purpose - you only need one and show everbody.

[LibraryOgre]

Dice are a not-bad alternative. I like to use dice of the same size as the creature's HD. You can use other dice for elevation.

[FMArthur]

I've honestly found that Lego men work best. They're cheaper, more customizable, and easier to change than the D&D miniatures. It might sound kind of silly, but it works and is fun. If you're into Lego (or you were a long time ago and have leftovers), you'll have more than enough for the party. The rest can be D12s. ;)

[Admiral Squish]

My DM has a heroscape set he never uses, so we just use those. For non-combat settings, he doodles the basics out in the paint program on his laptop.

[TheOOB]

For years I used basic supplies I have around the house. For a grid I used graph paper, and for mini's I used pencil erasers with thumb tacks in them. Now I have a laminated grid for my battle fields (laminated grids and a white board are your budgest DM's best friend). I have a couple minis the players use, and I mostly use dice for enemies.

[Gralamin]

*Looks up at Colossal Red dragon miniature* You would want alternatives why?
*Looks at wallet* oh. Right.

I beleive someone around here was making fold up printable miniatures. Now where was it? Ah yes (http://www.apolitical.info/webgame/heroes/).

[LibraryOgre]

I've honestly found that Lego men work best. They're cheaper, more customizable, and easier to change than the D&D miniatures. It might sound kind of silly, but it works and is fun. If you're into Lego (or you were a long time ago and have leftovers), you'll have more than enough for the party. The rest can be D12s. ;)

Lego men... that's great. Might not work in all situations (non-man-sized creatures), but it's a great idea.

[Totally Guy]

I've used paper/ card dudes. I used a site called World works games. Made some dungeons and some men. It worked quite well, we even used some cowboy lady for a female commoner thet we didn't have a decent miniature for.

[Vilehelm]

We use miniatures, but most of the time we don't use a grid. Battles are played out using a tape measure instead, which feels much more natural and less contrived and gamey.

In many cases we don't even bother moving the miniatures around, just keeping things to our imagination. We do use the minis for marching order and camp organisation.

Mini's are expensive. I just use any spare warhammer ones that resemble our PCs/NPCs/Monsters.

If there are battles to be fought, I intend to do it with our self-developed wargaming system, on a tabletop battlefield.

[elliott20]

most of the time, my group used to just have several different sheets of graph paper to track the different battle fields (because, let's face it, that's what they functionally really are unless you start counting large scale events.)

In some cases though, if the seperate battlefields only involve one enemy vs. one pc, I might even just forgo the map and just let their imagination do the rest.

[Person_Man]

We used checkers and chess boards from age 11ish to 16 and finally started to invest in figures. But with the advent of the internet, its ridiculously easy to get hold of a bunch of miniatures and terrain for a cheap price. I suggest you buy a couple of used Heroscape games. Plenty of varied minis. Stackable terrain.

[Rift_Wolf]

Our DM has a wipe-clean grid mat and some 1 inch ceramic markers for PCs and enemies of note, then some 2p coins with goblin, wolf or spider pictures sellotaped on (with numbers to track them) and for larger creatures he's got squares of copper (One game he turned up beaming to himself and said 'You're in for a treat tonight, I needed to get a bigger square!'. Spare dice are used for fluid monsters like swarms or mobs that don't stay in a square shape.

[GammaPaladin]

I kind of like Worldworks Games model stuff for buildings with elevation to deal with and so on. Cheaper than most of the 3D environment model sets out there, because they're cardboard.

Whether or not you're willing to shell out $17 for a cardboard castle/dungeon/town/whatever is another question.

[Roderick_BR]

My group uses shirt's buttons, and hasted and badly drawn battle grids on blank paper sheets.
Sometimes the DM will just draw the map, and write down the position of each character, without showing to the players. Fun, but chaotic sometimes.

[BardicDuelist]

I hate the Wizard's minis. Most of them look like crap.

For me, moddeling and painting are fun hobbies. I even sculpt my own from time to time. It really isn't that expensive if your group pools paint while everyone gets their own stuff.

We use minis simply because we like painting them and such. Since we have them, why not?

[elliott20]

me? I use lego minifigs and we often will build impromptu set pieces when needed. the problem? you really have to make sure people are focusing on the game instead of messing around with their minifigs.

[DeathQuaker]

The only person I know who actually uses "official" D&D minis made by Wizards bought them for super-cheap on e-Bay.

I use "real" minis (pewter ones made by Reaper, etc.) but that's because I'm a miniature hobbyist and I enjoy collecting and painting them.

For minis I don't have (e.g., I may have minis for the party but not for every monster), I bought a big bag of 1-inch-square plastic bases for miniatures and painted them different colors or numbered them. For creatures of large size or larger, I just cut out squares of the appropriate size out of cardstock, and then glued the plastic bases underneath to support them.

For creatures of size Tiny or less, I like using Skittles, peanuts, or M&Ms (they then get eaten when they "die").

As mentioned, buttons, dice, legomen, coins, etc. all work.

I even heard of one cheap-ass nerd who printed stylized STICK FIGURES, of all things, onto cardstock to represent his NPCs and his players' characters. But no one here respects stick figures, so forget that.:smallwink:

(Please note above sentence is meant to be taken in a humorous light.)

I think you can purchase paper w/ one inch squares for a grid, or of course the dry-erase mats are pretty much worth the investment.

In small battles or games where you trust the players and you know the rules well, you don't really need grid-based battle at all (although if I run in these cases, I usually drop a lot of the AOO rules, to avoid a lot of arguments. This doesn't affect things too much, but depends a lot on the kind of game you're running).

[TheThan]

I hate the Wizard's minis. Most of them look like crap.

For me, moddeling and painting are fun hobbies. I even sculpt my own from time to time. It really isn't that expensive if your group pools paint while everyone gets their own stuff.

We use minis simply because we like painting them and such. Since we have them, why not?

this thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=74260)
has noticed this trend too.
anyway i was thinking of just buying the single models I needed. since I'm not into the dnd minis game, i just want them for dnd. which irritates me since I don't want to buy a random box of monsters. I'm wanting x monster and y creature, you know something specific.

[Psiwave]

We always used to use a chessboard as a grid, using boxes and paper to mark out walls and chess pieces or dice to denote players and beasties.
Then one happy day i happened to buy a box of small, multi-shaped beer snack type crackers. these where IMO far better than any lead minis because you could eat the vanquished without any fear of brain damage. plus then you could also guage the success of a PC's tactics by his players weight gain.

[Craig1f]

We use a large dry-erase board. The DM just draws the surroundings, puts little letters with circles around them to represent the party, and does the same with different colors to represent the enemy. Or you can use a cap or something to represent your character. Sometimes we use dice to represent the creatures and players.

It's easy enough to erase and redraw. And the lack of miniatures allows your imagination to take over. I can vividly picture every fight that we've been in, because my imagination took over.

You need to make sure you respect measurements though. We usually do a pen cap is 10', the full marker is 30 or 40 (I forget which). It works out fine. Movement speeds still have value, although it's not as precise.

[RTGoodman]

I actually have a ton of the D&D official miniatures (hooray for Christmas and birthday gifts), but not all of my groups use them. If we do, it's with my homemade battle mat (i.e., one-inch grid draw on some poster paper and laminated at the local Staples).

In other groups, we either just wing it (since some people don't like the mini concept in general) or use dice, glass beads, and little round cardboard tokens (Kobold, Ghoul, etc.) that my DM managed to find somewhere.

[chevalier]

For the grid: there are plenty of print-'em-off grid tiles with different terrains, a lot of customizable dungeon grid programs, and of course the ever popular dungeon tiles.

For miniatures: my PCs have miniatures, and I have a have a few gobbos and orcs, etc; however, for the most part I use:

+colored pawns (like in SORRY or other board games) that you can buy in bulk on ebay, these are also great for short term NPC, crowds, etc.

+paper miniatures--I print them out from the SRD or google image search, and attach them into little 3/4 inch square stands I bought at the gaming story. Why buy hundreds of miniatures when you can expend a little toner?

+ printed out tiles (again, free on the internet) for 10x10 and bigger monsters. If I want them to look tall I mount them on a cardboard square and stand them up...

C

[DeathQuaker]

D'oh! I can't believe I almost forgot.

Fruit:

http://www.angelfire.com/id/deathquaker/gaming/images/pelemental.jpg

I mean, if someone brought healthy food to the game, what else would you use it for?

[Adlan]

Sorry, but the official D&D minitures Suck. The random packs and amount of useless stuff, I can't ever recall an encounter with over five NPC's that involved every miniture being halfways WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get). And that was playing in a group where two people would show up the 12"square and 6" deep boxes full of minitures (not in nice foam either, packed in solid).

Now, when I run games, I'm a warhammer player, and I have a large selection of models to choose from, and I often theme the game around my model's availible (which oddly enough, made for more interesting games, How often do you encounter a pike wall normally in D&D). And, the LOTR range is very useful, if you are prepared to put the time in painting (or the cost of someone else painting) it's a good way of getting the bog standard enemies you never get in D&D random packs (mordor orcs, Moria Goblins and Men of Rohan are the most useful).

But, even though I have this availible, I have ended up not using it. Now when I run games, I don't even have a battle map. I tell my players what is happening, I explain the situation, they describe what they are gonna do, and I tell them the results. If find minitures get in the way of roleplaying.

[TheCountAlucard]

http://www.angelfire.com/id/deathquaker/gaming/images/pelemental.jpg

That is made of epic-proportion win.

[Emperor Tippy]

For RL games with my main group we use a touch screen computer table with some custom programs (his dad needs the thing for work which is quite nice, the damn thing costs 15K).

Otherwise I just use paper and whatever I have lieing around. For PbP it really depends on the game.

[TheThan]

Sorry, but the official D&D minitures Suck. The random packs and amount of useless stuff, I can't ever recall an encounter with over five NPC's that involved every miniture being halfways WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get). And that was playing in a group where two people would show up the 12"square and 6" deep boxes full of minitures (not in nice foam either, packed in solid).

Now, when I run games, I'm a warhammer player, and I have a large selection of models to choose from, and I often theme the game around my model's availible (which oddly enough, made for more interesting games, How often do you encounter a pike wall normally in D&D). And, the LOTR range is very useful, if you are prepared to put the time in painting (or the cost of someone else painting) it's a good way of getting the bog standard enemies you never get in D&D random packs (mordor orcs, Moria Goblins and Men of Rohan are the most useful).


that's pretty much what I'm currently doing. I've pulled them minis and dungeon tiles from a dndesqe board game and use them for minis. it works great really.

[El_Jefe]

All,

I wanted to say thanks to everyone, I am very glad I started this thread.

I am carefully deciding what choices to try. Is not so much about spending money on the things, is just that I am not in to the miniature hobby at all, AND I find grid base combat problematic. I can see how it really helps to know where everyone is standing relative to each other but...

I actually ran a whole session with out toys and it was okay, except one of the players didn't really enjoy it.

Wasn't 3.0 designed to be used with and with out miniatures?

[DeathQuaker]

All,
I am carefully deciding what choices to try. Is not so much about spending money on the things, is just that I am not in to the miniature hobby at all, AND I find grid base combat problematic. I can see how it really helps to know where everyone is standing relative to each other but...

I actually ran a whole session with out toys and it was okay, except one of the players didn't really enjoy it.

Wasn't 3.0 designed to be used with and with out miniatures?

3.0 emphasized it less (partly because Wizards wasn't as into its miniatures line... actually, I think when 3.0 first came out they put out some old-fashioned pewter minis, but I don't think they sold well), but the foundations for the grid-based combat were very, very much there. Little of that was changed to 3.5.

In the end, you need to do what's best and easiest for you and your players.

I've played in games where you essentially need a grid because you have players who will otherwise say, "No, did I say I was 20' away from him? I was 50' away from him. Totally. That's totally what I said." And sometimes people are being honest, but just misinterpreted, and in a game like D&D where combat gets very specific in terms of positioning, that can lead to major snafus that seriously slow up combat.

But others handle it very well. If you can live without and in fact prefer not having a grid per se, some of the suggestions of simply drawing a combat small-scale on graph paper or on a chalkboard or whatever may be the compromise you need. That way there's less confusion about where everyone is when a combat is starting, but you don't feel so confined to exact squares and tactical rigamarole.

If it's really not your thing, is it less the grid per se and more simply the combat mechanics themselves? They do get nitpicky, and it may be a good idea to look into variant rules, or even other gaming systems that suit your style better.

Whatever you decide to do, good luck! If you come up with a good solution or compromise, be sure to post it--I'm sure others'd be interested. :smallsmile:

TheCountAlucard: Thanks. :smallbiggrin: