What spell templates would you like to have?

I'm in the mood to create some custom spell templates to be used for a D&D 3.5 game. I've seen some that people have made, but I've never been satisfied with their quality. I also prefer to use transparent versions.

So, give me a list of all of the most used spells that require us to use a template (cone, burst, radius, etc, etc). They can be from any 3.5 WotC book (and only those books). I'll see if I can make a template with a graphic that represents that spell effect.

Ones I already have are:

Darkness - 20ft radius
Black Tentacles - 20ft radius
Fireball - 20ft radius
Silence - 20ft radius

There's no interest in these at all? They can be used with something like Maptool, or printed out. Since they would be transparent, they would work well if printed on transparent sheets.

I made mine from wire. The garden shop carries "training wire" for plants, bendable steel with a green plastic coating.

I bent it into shape using my battle mat as a guide. When it came time to close the form I worked it so I had a quarter inch or so of plastic cover hanging off one end, and an equal amount of bare wire exposed on the other. A few drops of glue on the wire before I slip the excess plastic over it and it's sealed for good.

The 20 ft Radius template is the single most frequently used. Larger radius templates would be useful (40 foot radius for Entangle), but they get so big that there's no way to transport them to the game without them getting bent or broken.

Cones are also good, but the problem is that cone type spells can be cast in any direction, at any angle. No fixed template will do the job. The books give examples of two orientations, but the fact is that the orientation question makes them usable as examples only.

The only other area the game deals with is the "line" effect, which again can be cast at any angle. Fixed templates don't work, and in fact any straight piece of string or wire will do the job. So will a line drawn on the map: The spell affects any square the line touches.

i could see an object created to the true cone, line, etc., shape. the line would need to be thick enough to be visible across anything else on the map. the rest should be transparent.

as greenfield pointed out, while it is nice when they fit to the squares, they usually don't. and, wherever the line crosses, that square is affected.

Eh? Maybe I'm not being clear here about what I am offering to do.

I'm offering to draw up some templates in Photoshop. I'm not really concerned about the pros and cons of using various types of templates. I'm just asking everyone, "Yo, you know those template examples in the back of the 3.5 DMG? I'll make some spell specific versions for you if you tell me what spells you would like to get templates for."

Attached are some examples of the transparent templates I have made so far that snap perfectly in a Maptool grid, or can be printed out for use on a battlemat (two generic cones and two 20ft spell templates).

Mine are similar to these promotional templates WotC made:
http://www.rpglocker.com/index.php?file=c-category&iCategoryId=56&v=63

I've see these done in clear plastic, cardboard and paper, with a lot of different artwork added.

While pretty pictures are neat and all that, I'll stick with my wire frames. I can lay them on the field without having to relocate all the figures in the area, since they simply fit around them, following the battle mat lines.

Greenfield said:

I've see these done in clear plastic, cardboard and paper, with a lot of different artwork added.

While pretty pictures are neat and all that, I'll stick with my wire frames. I can lay them on the field without having to relocate all the figures in the area, since they simply fit around them, following the battle mat lines.

Click to expand...

I'm still not seeing how mentioning that you don't need my templates is contributing to this thread.

But apparently nobody needs these templates.

I guess I thought I was contributing by :

a) Offering an alternative idea to printed templates.
b) Explaining *why* nobody seemed to need your templates.

If I did want overlay type templates (as opposed to wrap-around types) I'd probably want translucent images printed on clear plastic.

While there's a lot to be said for hard plastic, wrt to ease of handling in play, I'd also see some value in soft plastic, ala Colorforms quality stuff.

The hard stuff is easy to hold over an area to see who's included. Images make it a graphic plus for the game, while the clear foundation lets you see through it for positioning. It's also easy to crease, crack, chip or otherwise render useless in normal handling.

The soft stuff is harder to hold over an area, but just as easy to lay under, for persistent effects like Entangle, Silence or Black Tentacles. And being flexible means it's easier to keep intact while not in use.

The wire frames are good to hold or lay down, and you don't have to move figures to do it. They do get bent in storage, but aren't hard to straighten.

What they lack, though, is even the hint of a graphic capacity. Your idea tops mine there, hands down.

Now making larger templates (ones wit a dimension larger than will fit in a notebook) is a challenge, no matter what the media. Multi-segmented ones are neither easy to hold nor easy to lay down, and if they don't fit in a protective folder of some kind they're going to die young.

You might try designing them to fold into quarters for storage, while staying rigid enough while opened to allow overlay type handling.

Now I don't know what kind of templates you might need for D&DNext (i.e. 5th Ed). 4th made them kind of strange, since they measure diagonals the same as laterals. That makes cones and bursts into squares (hence the ongoing joke/gripe about Firecube as a spell). If D&DNext ends up with that same ignorance of the Pythagorean Theorem, templates will be somewhere between strange and unnecessary.

Greenfield said:

I guess I thought I was contributing by :

a) Offering an alternative idea to printed templates.
b) Explaining *why* nobody seemed to need your templates.

Click to expand...

A lot of people are moving to digital media for their face-2-face game (LCD TVs or projectors). Printing them out is not the only way people would use these. I use a 46" LCD TV that sits flat on its back. I have a laptop running Maptool that is connected via HDMI cable to the tv. We set miniatures on top of the tv (on top of plexi-glass to protect the screen). With this setup, I prefer using my png template images within Maptool because they not only look pretty, but they are even easier to use than the wire templates. Wire templates still need to gently be placed around the minis without knocking them over or nudging them. It also gets clunky when you need to stack multiple wire templates in overlapping areas. The png templates in Maptool snaps to the grid and there is absolutely nothing getting in their way.

I own several sets of the Steel Sqwire templates that you mentioned. I love them. I prefer using them if I'm using a normal battlemat for the same reasons you mentioned.

I really didn't start this thread to debate the pros & cons of templates though. Not that I mind since this thread is going nowhere anyway. I thought there would be more interest in using the transparent versions that I offered to create. I suppose the target audience is limited though. It's for 3.5 games, mostly usable with a digital battlemat, and those people probably already have templates they are satisfied with. I'll try the Maptool forum then.

Okay, the digital aspect works.

I don't have the luxury of a large LCD screen to use as a tabletop.

I do, however, have a conference projector that hooks to the VGA port on a laptop. I picked it up at a swap meet a while back for $50.

We play in my garage, so I'm pretty free to mount things to the ceiling, so long as my wife's car fits inside when I'm done.

That suggests either mounting the projector up there, aimed down at the game table, or mounting a mirror up there and reflecting the image off of it.

Mounting that sucker is a bit of work (it's clunky) and I'd hate to drop it. At the same time, our floor space is limited, and it would probably be in the way if I tried the mirror trick.

Still, you've given me a bit to think about...