Cool new product you may find useful

[alsih2o]

http://www.steelsqwire.com/prod04.htm

Look around, you may find these as useful as I do.

Little pre-bent steel wires that let you outline area effects. Well done.

 

[Jaws]

New? Maybe for you. I got these last year.

 

[Sir Brennen]

For low-level games, I've discovered they really should make one for the area of a Burning Hands spell.

 

[DonTadow]

I bought one of these last year gencon. They are an awesome product however the larger radious ones are useless to me as it takes me just as much time to find the center square as it woudl have been for me to count. In an ycase this is something they will easily fix in future editions I know

THe cones are priceless. What I'd like to see is a product that is more flexible.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

For low-level games, I've discovered they really should make one for the area of a Burning Hands spell.

Well, the area of burning hands is so small, it's pretty easy to memorize. It looks like one of these:

 XX            XXX
XXX    or      XX
 XX            X

Actually, I have all of the SteelSqwire templates, and while I really like the "circular" ones, I've found the conical ones to be almost useless. Cones are big enough (and most importantly, wide enough) that eyeballing who's in the area of effect is extremely easy to do. We very occasionally use the 30-foot "straight" cone, but I can't remember the last time we used either on the 60-foot cones, or the 30-foot diagonal cone.

 

[Crothian]

We use them in our games as well. THe only problem is we are low level and no one really uses area effect spells yet.

 

[Talic]

While a template for fireball radius is especially useful, the price on these things are rediculous. I built one out of some short sticks of bass wood, some scrap carboard, and a hot glue gun in about 10-15 minutes. Total cost about a 60 cents. We haven't found any need for a cone as yet so I havent attempted building one of those, but the process shouldn't be much different. Even bending your own wire would be much less expensive.

 

[IronWolf]

I like the ones I have. At low levels they don't see much use. I was really excited as a DM when a player cast Obscuring Mist so I could break one out! I hope to be able to use them more extensively in the future.

The durability is nice too, they survive the every other week in a bag quite nicely.

 

[Warehouse23]

Hmm...coat hanger + pliers + slow afternoon = savings!

 

[Crothian]

these though are much more durable and I don't have to worry about them bending in the bag or anything like that. They area bit costly but for mini oriented games they are worth it I think. Heck, I use them more then most books that cost as much or more.