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I was at work thinking about how I was going to implement 'Marked' when 4E comes out, the first idea popping into my head being poker-chips or something similar. They come in different colours and so can represent marks from multiple opponents, they're readily and cheaply available for us poor students - seems perfect!
But then I thought about large/huge minitures and how silly it would be to have to keep lifting a mini up to see which color marker it had underneath. Some minis you could place the chip on top of or between the legs of, but others really would look terrible.
And what about bloodied? cursed? poisoned? slowed? charmed? sooner or later you would think a character was flying with how high their mini was stacked with chips!
Being as I work in an Electronics store however I soon came across a solution - short lengths of shielded wire! They come in a multitude of colors (and with a permanent marker you can even personalize some with different patterns), they're dirt cheap, you can get them practically anywhere (Have some old Cat5 laying around? Just cut it open!), they are very flexible and can easily be draped over/at the base of a mini, they take up almost no room, etc.
So I was wondering what other ideas you guys had for cool condition markers, let's have 'em!
Being as I work in an Electronics store however I soon came across a solution - short lengths of shielded wire!
That's similar to what a person in our group came up with - paper clips. We can bend them and put them onto the base of the miniature, with color coding.
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If you have the extra duckets to spend here's an idea. I'm not to much in favor of either of these methods, I don't want to 'ruin' the mini by sticking things in to or on to it.
I've considered cutting a 1 inch dowl rod into about 1/4 inch slices, since poker chips seem to be a tad to large, and paint them with the various colors we'd need. Another idea my group came up with is a small loop of wire with craft beads to loop over the mini (we have 'artsy/craftsy' better (other) halves).
I've been using small rubber bands which are used to tie up hair. They're very cheap, come in quite a few colors and are only about 3/4" in diameter. Just drape them over the monster mini or loop them around the base of your PCs.
The popularity of various miniature games (particularly the "clix" games) have lead to various markers for miniatures. Here is one variation.
Last week, I bought a gripload of the aleatools magnetic markers. These are gonna be great and I can already use them to note effects for 3.5.
Great idea, especially for PCs. I use lots of props, from condition cards to item cards. These are all real great additions.
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Books currently in play: Dungeon & Dragon Magazine (*Scales of War AP*), WOTC 4e Core and Supplemental books
Current Campaign: Scales of War - Lost Mines of Karak -- Kodirgo, Minotaur Barbarian 6; Vondal, Dwarf Cleric 6; Karithul, Gnome Bard 6; Marshaun, Elf Druid 6
Another way to do it would be to use flash cards: get some 3x5 index cards and write "Fatigued," "Raging," "Bloodied," or whatever conditions you need on them, and hand them out to the players. Then, whenever a character is under a particular condition, the player just lays the appropriate card face-up in front of his character sheet or on the edge of the battle mat for everyone to see.
Like I said in another post, we use poker chips...I just slide the white one underneath the monster that the rogue is dodging, for example. In 4E, there are a lot more things to keep track of, so more colors might be needed. Red could mean the creature is bloodied, blue could show all of the creatures getting a bonus from the paladin, etc.
This is sounding more and more like a board game. :\
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Last edited by CleverNickName; 12th March 2008 at 04:59 PM..
A small Post-It note will do it - either a pre-cut one or one cut to size. You can stick it to the underside of a mini's base so it protrudes and write a letter code on the projecting tab to indicate status, e.g. "B" for bloodied, "P" for poisoned. Alternatively, you can colour-code the Post-Its.
Many groups use combat mats so they have wet-erase markers handy. Wet-erase pens can be used on paper too (but can't be erased).
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One thing that the whole Texas Hold-Em Poker phenomenon has done is make a lot of different styles of poker chips available. When I was in Las Vegas, they had a number of places that would custom make them for you with initials and so forth. My FLGS has small collections of them in dozens of different colors.
My thought is to get a small number of different colored chips to mark conditions or, well, marks and so forth.
--Steve
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I play 4E, and it's every bit as much Dungeons and Dragons as any other edition, including the one(s) you play. No more, and no less.
You can buy sheets of 2mm foam in loads of colors at any art or craft supply store (like Michaels), and each sheet is less than a buck or so. Get a big hole punch, or a pair of scissors, and you've got ready made tokens for marking.
To represent flight, I've been using these for the last couple years (which you can buy atany craft store); and I had inheritted a half set of these neat, marbalized, "they don't really look like poker chips", poker chips that we had been using for different status effects.
After I saw an article with the aleatools, I realized that though I liked the poker chips, I wasn't happy with their vertical profile and I didn't have anywhere near enough colors. I spent a couple days wandering around a bunch of different shops looking for inspiration and finally landed on just cutting a 1 inch dowel down to 1/4 inch chunks and staining them different colors (stripes for marks).
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