What is the Best Approach to Initiative Tracking in 4e?
September 11, 2008 by shent_lodge
Filed under 4e, Game Design
Initiative tracking in combat. Every DM has their tricks, some write the names and the initiatives of the players on the battle mat and role a pencil from one name to the next to help track when people go. Some use fancy metal infused boards and little flat rectangular magnets big enough to write a PCs name and init on, and many use index cards. Gone are the days of the DM asking the players “who goes next?” We are supposed to know who goes next these days and with 4th edition, WoTC wants us to know even more. The 4th edition DM’s guide has PC and Monster “Combat Cards” in the back to help the DM with combat (Page 220). I think they are a bit too much for real game play.
In 3.X I used index cards, one blank unique color (pink card) to track rounds and six of similar color (say white cards) for my players and some for the bad guys henchmen (yellow cards) and one or two for bad guy leaders or clearly unique monsters (blue cards). Nothing special on the cards PC name and init modifier and the PC init role. This works great in 3.X. A squiggle here and a squiggle there, noting if a player got zotted blind or was slowed; simple and streamlined.
4.X is a bit different I have “start of the turn” stuff and “end of the turn” stuff and 18 conditions to potentially track. Plus there is daily power usage, action points used, whether the PC is bloodied, oh, and don’t forget second wind.
I still want to use my index card method and I was thinking of bringing colored modeling clay to use for “marking” because that seems to bring confusion to combat after about three or four rounds of combat. I figure a different color of clay for each PC that is able to “Mark” opponents will do. In the RPGA LFR game I played in, the DM stacked all sorts of crap on the minies indicating dazed, slowed or blind, and of course, marked. We had loops from water bottles and Coke bottles and gold rings and virtually anything else you could hang on a minie, but stuff was falling off the minies every time we moved them and combat slowed…
I want to stick with my cards, because clever players pick up on who the minion is by the color of the card I use (yellow usually in my home game) kinda the way I know not to pick a fight with someone with cauliflower ear (boxers ear). Inexperience fighters stick out, as do professional fighters (say Michael Cera vs. Randy Couture). I am just wondering with 4.X, if index cards are going the way of the dodo for combat tracking? Has anyone found a fast way to track initiative and all the extra luggage that 4e D&D introduced?
Side note: In the RPGA 3.X when I DM, I use candy for the bad guys on the battle mat, Starburst mainly, and Kisses once in a while. I mark the candy with garage sale stickers that I could potentially write on when a beastie gets marked.
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I’m a fan of the magnetic whiteboard method.
http://www.czaralex.com/images/initboard.jpg
For the PCs, I use magnetic with their names printed on. Baddies just have their names written in with a dry erase marker (although, I grabbed the normal marker a few times. Ugh)
I too do the magnetic white board thing.
I’m about to start a 4E campaign, and I thought I’d just run a spreadsheet on my laptop during encounters. I’d be able to setup all the combatants ahead of time and just add the initiative numbers as they’re rolled. Then I can sort in initiative order and start.
I’m going to have columns for marking/marked by, saves needed, and a column per turn to note what each character did – that should do double duty as a way to figure out who’s next and a ready-made ‘combat journal’ after it’s finished.
It’s not really necessary to use a laptop, but if I’m going to geek out I might as well go all the way!
I blogged about what I do/recommend for initiative just the other day:
http://neartpk.blogspot.com/2008/09/full-party-initiative.html
For tracking conditions, I have two methods:
For conditions from page 277 of the PHB affecting PCs, I use the condition cards here (Condition Cards by Jim Goings, 4th item down): http://www.dragonavenue.com/dnd/resources/
For conditions on monsters, more common conditions, or those that change frequently like marks, ongoing damage, and bloodied, I bought a package of pipe cleaners with a dozen different colors in it at the nearest fabric store for about a buck. Each pipe cleaner gets snipped into 4 pieces and the pieces bent into rings that go around any convenient limb on the mini. Last game a gargoyle mini was carrying two rings on each wing (I think he was bloodied, slowed, paladin-marked and taking ongoing fire damage) with no effect on my ability to move him around. It’s a lot easier to remember a PC is on fire when there’s a bright orange halo wrapped around his mini.
I like the pipe cleaner idea. I do use a laptop in the home game, mainly to track weather and overall campaign progress. Dry erase boards with magnets may be my next big investment after pipe cleaners.
I tend to track initiative using a Dry Erase Board PC Names is printed and adhered to a magnetic Backing. Once in order I use a seperate marker to show the current count. Using Alea magnetic markers I created tokens on 1″ washers to show conditions such as bloodied, Stunned, dazed, etc for PC’s. This also works for smaller groups of mosters in the past although with the advent of 4E the groups are getting larger, so I believe snagging the Pipe Cleaner Idea Above would be optimal.
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