How do you show flight elevation in combat when using mini's?

[Hairfoot]

What? Why are you looking at me like that?

In my homeland people are burned at stake for knowing such sorcery.

 

[Transit]

Poker chips stack nicely under a mini, and the different colors (usually red, blue and white) can represent different altitudes.

 

[Nail]

I use 1" wooden cubes where I wrote the altitude on them..

That sounds like a good idea, but......what happens if the flying creature pauses over another mini?

 

[mvincent]

From another thread:
"One of the best tips I've discovered for handling combat is:
Keep a fistful of clay handy

It can be used to:
1) Elevate flyers: a pedestal or column of clay puts them in the air and helps designate elevation
2) Make creatures: oozes, ones you don't have miniatures for, oddly shaped ones, newly summoned ones, etc.
3) Make terrain: pillars, coffins, thrones, boulders etc.
4) Make terrain effects from spells: walls, orbs, circles
5) Designate spell effects on creatures: my group uses a blob on their head to designate say, invisibility or blindness, or a ring around the middle or feet for maybe protection or paralyzation
6) Attach creatures to each other: a small blob can temporarily affix a character to a mount, grappler, flying carpet etc.
7) Create properly sized bases: (for proxies, improperly based miniatures, or invisible creatures)

Other ideas?

Ideally, the clay will be neutral colored (light gray, or the same color as your battlemat), and somewhat firm (modeling clay).

 

[Infiniti2000]

That sounds like a good idea, but......what happens if the flying creature pauses over another mini?

Then I use telekinesis. Duh.

 

[mvincent]

a pedestal or column of clay puts them in the air and helps designate elevation

Also note, for higher flying where elevation tracking is needed, I usually stick a small die into the clay pedestal and adjust its number to represent elevation.

Alternate, we just write the elevation directly on the battlemat next to the figure (dry erase boards are particularly nice for keeping this updated).

 

[Dracorat]

Clay would not be allowed within a hundred feet of my gaming board....

That said I usually just cut an index card to the same size of the flier and place its card on the map (sort of a shadow effet) and then on the card, I write the elevation in pencil so I can erase and rewrite it round after round.

I do something different for wall walking creatures coming down a wall however. I usually just place them the appropriate number of squares outside the wall boundaries of the room. 3 squares outside means they are on the wall at that location, but 20 feet up (since at floor level, they would be INSIDE the wall boundary)

 

[mvincent]

Clay would not be allowed within a hundred feet of my gaming board....

Why? What problems would it cause?

It has been extremely useful for my own games, and hasn't caused any residue problems (note though that I use the pre-painted D&D miniatures rather than painted lead)

 

[Dracorat]

Because it's messy, tacky (as in tactile), has a tendancy to get all over the place including the carpet and prone to be a distraction as my players will undoubtedly insist on marking it up in all manners unuseful to it's actual use.

Plus, it doesn't really solve most the problems that were listed in the post. Like what happens when clay-elevated figure has miniature X run underneath it to stab its belly?

 

[Deset Gled]

Place a d12 near or under the mini. The number on the d12 is how many 10s of feet you are in the air.

May not be the most detailed method, but its one of the simplest.