Saturday, August 23, 2014

Make Your Own Blade Barrier or Other Wall for Your Minis - D&D

This idea popped into my head this week to make a Blade Barrier Wall that we can use in game play with our miniatures instead of just placing pencils on the game mat to represent the wall.

Step 1:  Find an image you want to use.  I found an image for my blade barrier at:
http://www.dundjinni.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=2841

Step 2: Modify the image and print it.  I made no modifications.  I just put the image in a word document, changed the margins in the word document, then resized the image just a little bit in word.  Then I repeated the image 9 times (10 images fit on one page).  Then I printed it on my color printer.  I can give you the word document if you want it.

Step 3: Cut.  A Blade Barrier in D&D 3.5 is 20' high, so I cut every 4 images (each image is about 1" so 5' in game terms).  Then I found part of a paperboard box and cut it up, and taped an image to each side of the cut paperboard.

Step 4:  I bought some Pathfinder Pawns this year, and figured the character bases would make great stands for my Blade Barrier wall and they do!


Now I just need to make a few more of them since our Blade Barrier walls should usually be much longer than the one shown in the picture.

Obviously you could use the same technique for a wall of fire, ice, or other.

You might even be able to use some of the dungeon tiles from various vendors for your walls.

Happy Gaming!

Monday, August 18, 2014

The Wizards.com 3.5 Archives Still Live at Archive.Org - "All About" series and others!

I tried to go to one of the great articles in the "All About" series from Wizards.com for 3.5 today and got a 404 Error!  Yikes!  But my fear was short-lived because I found all the articles still exist, and will probably always exist, in the web archive.  You can go to the web site the way it looked in May of 2013 at this link:

http://web.archive.org/web/20130522233324/http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/archives

The Best Way to Roll for Hit Points

Here is my favorite approach to rolling Hit Points, especially for 5E.   Per the 5E rules, you can roll the dice or accept the "standar...