They’re free and easy to use: just drop them on the mini like a hula hoop. Of course, it gets quite entertaining when the NPC has 3 or more effects on it…

Towards the end of the fight, we had the cleric and rogue dying, the warlock at 1 hp, the fighter (me) at about 15 hp and a boss who hadn’t been bloodied yet. Both surviving PCs had spent our Second Winds and all our daily and encounter powers, and our one healing potion was gone.

A string of bad boss rolls, followed by a stabilization of one PC and the the NPC rolling a 20 and popping back up after I went down, enabled the warlock and the rogue to train the boss around the map while plinking away at him.

It was the most tense and closest combat I’ve ever played, and one of the most fun overall — made all the more fun because we shouldn’t have lived and we did.

my FLGS sells these for a couple of dimes. i’ve been using them already in my 3e game to mark flying characters, burning monsters, and so forth.

I was starting to get used to this at high levels in 3.5, but it’s there right at the beginning for 4e. I found it very daunting. I suppose it doesn’t get worse as characters level though, since most high level effects still only last a round. Contrast that to 3.5 where in any high level battle you’ve got a dozen or more long-lasting effects that factor into every roll.

I also dig the idea of colored paperclip hoops. Nearly every mini has something projecting from it you can dangle a hoop on, and you wouldn’t have to move any figures to get at it (like you would to slide something under a mini).

The commercial solution is magnetic, stackable markers from Alea Tools. They’re nice (I’ve fiddled with them at GenCon), but both craft foam and paperclips will be a lot cheaper.

Sadly, that solution will only work if you have either a) a LAN-party style table where everyone has laptops, or b) one of those fancy (expensive!) projector set-ups.

I’ll pass that along to the party’s rogue. He’s the one who pushed through to the next encounter.

Rafe said: Go buy a stack of wafer-thin foam, multi-coloured. Cut them into 1″ squares (and a few 2″x2″ ones for large critters) and hand them out to the PCs.

What a simple, but elegant solution. I’ll have to try it.

Ish said: Given how easy the internet makes it to find pictures of various monsters, and how ubiquitous color printers are these days, I’ve never been able to understand why peopel freak out about the need for minis.

My love for minis is irrational, I know. But it’s there all the same. But I’m old school. I love to paint the metal (lead if I can get it … just kidding there). There’s something about the tactile nature of a three-dimension representation of a monster or character in skirmish combat. It really adds something.

It’s also a toy. And you know gamers and their toys …

Itliaf says: The question is, do you make it clear to the players that they best stick to the encounter area at a time, or let them learn the hard way?

I’m hoping that the first TPK taught that lesson. If the second TPK doesn’t clue them in, I might have that conversation then.

It’s like the old table rule about splitting the party. Sure, it’s OK to split the party. Nothing in the rules speaks against it. And sometimes it can make for some interesting parallel encounters. But mostly, what happens now is that when someone suggests they split up, a chorus replies in unison: “Don’t split the party!”

Experience is a great teacher.

Fighter A marks “red,” Fighter B marks “green,” and the Warlork marks “yellow.” Make every player keep a clip attached to the character sheet (or better still, try to match a PC’s mini with the color. Red tunic on the paladin? Red clips!)

Given how easy the internet makes it to find pictures of various monsters, and how ubiquitous color printers are these days, I’ve never been able to understand why peopel freak out about the need for minis.