Battlemats for DnD 4e

[uthoroc]

I'll be playing my first DnD session for 20 years or so on Friday. Of course it'll be the shiny new 4th edition, and of course it will use miniatures and battle mats.

As the resident map expert my DM asked me to whip up a few blank battle mats with generic backgrounds - and mentioned he also needed a road with trees on both sides, similar to this

Comments

[gbsteve]

That's very nice! What scale are the squares? I only ask because simonjrogers tried 1" per square but this made the map too big. Most miniatures will fit on a 1cm square grid and this makes it far more manageable.

[uthoroc]

It's the official scale of 1" to the 5' square. I think they recommend it because there are situations in the rules where two or more figures end up in a square.

As this map is A3, it should fit comfortably on a gaming table, but it can be scaled down easily.

[uthoroc]

What minis were you using by the way?

I've put some of mine on the printed mat, and it looks like the 1" per square is definitely needed - at least for my GW miniatures. See the Gimli and Legolas figs in the image I added to the post.

[simonjrogers]

We used my old lead 1st Edition minatures which are about 1/2 the size of these.

I don't understand how it's possible to run a battle against a gargantuan creature at this scale without burning out ink cartridges and having a table the size of Switzerland.

[temporus]

This is spectatular. I started to do something quite similar during my campaign (though no where near as good quality) because it just saved me time. Printing things out ahead meant that as soon as we hit an encounter, bang there it was. No trying to hastily re-sketch my nice CC version onto a battle mat, where I'll forget some of the details in my desire to keep the adventure moving. Nothing worse than boring your players while you draw out the map.

Another trick you can do, if you want to be able to re-use such a map, is to buy some clear laminate, and laminate a selection of these, so that you can use your standard markers on them, like the dry erase, then just wipe them off. (Which we tend to do for laying down magical effects during combat.)

Gah, now you guys once again make me wish I were still running a campaign.

[momosnyx]

I can't wait for the gaming session on Friday :)

[simonjrogers]

Hmm, I sense an ambush!

[uthoroc]

Don't give him ideas!

[momosnyx]

Yes, and ... no.