Hi,

I need to build this for a pathfinder game:



The problem I have is that the the height difference of the stairs
between D2 and D3 as well as D4 is 30 ft.

This means stairs that are going to be 30 ft down and 10 ft along which is extremely steep.
The other one is 30 ft up and 20 ft along.
I also need to support the floors...

Any ideas how to do this?

Thanks

War of the Wielded! What a great adventure!

I do NOT recommend making the D3 area at all, but just marking the central "pit" should be enough (maybe just using a textured floor). Then build the lower area as a separate piece.
Should the battle spill downstairs, you'd have to remove the upper floors to manage the scene, and having tried a different scene with a three floor build, trust me, it's something you want to avoid.

I gotta agree with golem101 on this one. Given the height of the stairs and the steepness, you really are not going to need to worry to much about stair melee, and any range work is just a matter of counting to the end of the first floor and starting up again on the second. I would do both d3 and d4 as seperate areas and point out tot eh players just how steep those stairs are and how nasty a fall would be. A 3/1 slope is getting dang steep and going to have really small steps. I would be requiring at least a dc15( probably dc20 for any same level fighting) acrobatic checks to fight on those.

A slope of 1:1 is very steep for stairs. Having stairs with a 3:1 slope is just insane - so much so that you have to wonder if the map designer thought about this when they drew that one up. With a slope 3:1 what you've got is not stairs but an angled ladder.

For ease of play I'd build this with just one level difference between D2 and D3 (any more and the players won't be able to see the minis down there) linked by a ladder and, like ehisey said, tell the players there's a 30' drop with appropriate penalties for falling etc.

D3 doesn't look like a very big space from the map you've posted. If D3 is a larger subteranean area (i.e. bigger than the hole in the floor of D2) then just building a set of stairs down from D2 (don't worry about the slope) and having a whole separate area for D3 might work much better.

as said before, I would not build stairs to D3. The stairs to D4 I would just build as normal stairs. I wouldn't worry too much about getting things perfect with respect to the map. That has been an issue I have had since I have started building terrain for my RPGs. After this weekend I will post pictures of two builds I made for my game (they go into action on Friday) The mechanics of TLX didn't make building the areas easy, so I changed the areas. My experience is, people will be so in awe of the terrain that they won't think about the mechanics of it all and say "Well that area is only 5' lower than this area, because the stairs only drop an inch."

Thanks guys, some good ideas here.

I'll sleep on it and let you know what I decide.
I'll also try to provide pics.