Tell me about Battle Box

[ColonelHardisson]

The steel d20 came with the Revised edition of the BattleBox.

It also came with the Iron Heroes battle box.

 

[dragonlordofpoondari]

The revised edition comes with the steel d20 and a cd. The cd has .jpgs of all the area effects so you can print them out on cardstock and make as many as you'd like. It has some other stuff too, I'll post about it when I get the chance.

 

[Elodan]

OK, interesting. Those metal dice are sweet. My AE Battle Box came with a cd with a ton of extra goodies on it, but my standard one didn't. Sounds like FDP have really upped the value. They're a great company!

Do you need the standard battle box if you buy the AE one? What's in one but not the other?

 

[Mark Hope]

Do you need the standard battle box if you buy the AE one? What's in one but not the other?

No, you don't need the standard one if you buy the AE version. The AE version offers pretty much the same sort of stuff that the standard one does, only with the content specifically tied to the Arcana Evolved game. So while it's missing things like the fireball and lightning bolt templates (for example), it has counters for summoned energy creatures, runes and some Diamond Throne character types. However, the AE Battle Box doesn't have the maneuver cards. Instead it has condition cards, summarising the effects of stuff like dazed, nauseated, shaken etc etc. It also has dinky little maps of the Diamond Throne lands and a cd with more counters and, iirc, class progression lists for AE classes like you find in the NPC chapter of the DMG. Oh, and there is also a cut-out mask of Monte Cook's head that you can wear when you are DMing Arcana Evolved games to give that added level of immersion for your players. I imagine that it would work just as well for Ptolus games, though.

There is plenty in the standard Battle Box that would be of use to someone running AE games, mind you, so you wouldn't be wasting your money if you bought it. Plus the maneuver cards are useful if you need them. I bought both (my homebrew incorporates core and AE elements) and I haven't regretted it. Having the condition and maneuver cards as well as some extra cone and line templates hasn't hurt at all.

 

[Klaus]

The really big ones (like fireball or fog cloud) are paper, folded up in the box. The others are on card. They include small ones for things like spiritual weapon or flaming sphere, circles and cones of various sizes (up to 30'), lines (including a specific one for lightning bolt) - that sort of thing. You just lay them down on the battlemat. One drawback, of course, is that they obscure whatever counters are on the mat (we had a brief hiccup with this the other night when a gehreleth cast a fog cloud on the PCs). It can be a bit fiddly to replace all of the counters on top of the fog cloud and then place them all back in their proper places again once it is gone (we just left it in place, and pretended it wasn't there anymore, lol). I'm thinking of checking out the steel wire templates from Steel Sqwire as another option, but they're a bit $$$ :\

You could photocopy the spell templates onto one of those transparency papers.

 

[Mark Hope]

You could photocopy the spell templates onto one of those transparency papers.

Hmmm - good idea. I live in an absurdly isolated village, but next time I am in the Big City I will see about doing this. There aren't all that many templates, either, so it shouldn't be all that expensive. Thanks .