And yes, I am bizarre. I have done away with dice in moments where I don’t want PCs to worry about hit points. I don’t want them to know exactly how close to death they are. I don’t want them to fret about the Balor’s vorpal sword. I want their decisions and nothing else to carry the day. It also adds flavor to dice combat as well, the PCs get used to describing how they attack rather than “Full attack on the ogre”. Sometimes I reward strategic thinking with +1-3 bonuses on attack or damage, but they don’t know when I do.

Back to the topic at hand, I use “blots”. If anyone is familiar with pokemon damage counters, the glass beands – that’s what I’m talking about. Different colors for different mobs, unique colors for PCs. Decorate fish tank stones work just as well. It keeps the players knowing where they are, but forces the imagination. All miniatures should be are placeholders, not the character. The character is in the sheet and the guy who plays it.

Here’s a breakdown:
Blots for small and medium
Put a blot on the point of intersection of 4 squares for large.
Huge are MTG cards.
Garguantuans take the form of a dice or deck box.
Colossal combatants normally don’t enter the map, and these encounters are almost always fought without miniatures. The map ceases to matter when fighting a Red Wyrm.

These are all items I owned anyway, so cost effectiveness is perfect. I use various colored and sided dice for land features, and although it is confusing at first, I have been running with my players for quite a while, and they know what a green d6 means.

I never thought of it that way. I really like having the players play from their own persective. There is an orc to your right, your pal on the left is looking bad and arrows keep pelting everyone from somewhere ahead…

That is far more exciting than the map. If you all don’t believe how lame it can get, check out this mini’s demo from wizards of the coast: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/mini_demo/DNDMinis.asp

It is far more like chess than roleplaying.

But if you take that thought too far, you could even argue that dice take you out of the roleplaying mindset, and there are in fact players who don’t bother with dice. Bizzare.

Anyway, even if I follow Nigel’s advice, I would still need a battle map so I could apply the rules correctly and let each player know what they see from their perspective.

Also, if they see the relative size of a dragon to their own token, it can help in the roleplaying too.

If I follow Nigel’s thoughts, I might use my pc to monitor where people are, or a map w/ minis behind my DM screen.

I created a word document and created ovals to match the sizes and printed them out. I used lots of similar and different colors, so there are 10 red ones, I can use those if there are 10 orcs, but there are a few of other colors. I can use those for an Orc Leader or Archers. Etc. It would be great to cut up a thin whiteboard and use that to track HP, but then the players would know how many they have. I prefer to say, wow, you did 10 points of damage, but it doesn’t look like that took a lot out of him!

Remember POGS? I want a set of cheap multicolored POGS like I described above made commercially. I bet those would sell!

Besides that, I found that I like the tactical element (as a recovering rules lawyer) of the battlemat, but I forget to give descriptions because, duh, it’s right there! What are you, blind? The tiles sound like a happy medium (and relatively cheap at that).