I had to drink Diet Coke to write this, so please bare with me. Conditions during combat can be very frustrating to track. A couple players in the 4e RPGA group I game with found a neat approach to tracking that worked good with miniatures in the game. One guy likes to use loops from 20 ounce plastic drink bottles, so find some with different colored caps like I did here and we can use those to help track combat conditions. Others in the past have suggested pipe cleaners, but those are harder to find than 20 ounce sodas.
So here to help me out is a caimen fighter and a uber beast. The caimen entered the room and lost initiative to the uber beast which dazed the fighter.
Unfortunately the caimen fails to end the daze and is now slowed by the beast and secondary damage by uber beast makes her blind.
I am using a fork to get the loops off the bottles. Doing this on empty bottles help reduce spills.
The caimen is in trouble now. Failing all roles she is dazed, slowed, blinded and now the uber beast marks her with its next attack which also makes her immobilized and bloodied.
We could have used colored foam pads cut from stock bought at a craft store. I tend to use colored plastic magnets in my games for all medium monsters and I just mark the magnet with wet erase marker when a monster is dazed or bloodied. The flat magnets are not as cool as the figure WotC wants you to buy but it gets the job done and the players don’t seem to mind.
In the end I like the pads because it is easier to see the player’s mini.
The bottle caps made my caimen look like a hula hoop champion. Imagine six players and ten monsters all adorned with plastic hoops, sliding and shifting around the battle mat.
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About shent_lodge
I’m a big fan of using physical items to keep track of things during play whenever possible (action points, successes/failures in skill challenges, conditions, etc.). Gotta say the pop cap rings are something I haven’t seen and look serviceable. The foam pads as conditional bases is a nifty idea too.
.-= geek ken´s last blog ..Planning sessions with Masterplan =-.
I have to agree. I have run games where pop loops were used and other items as well….cheapest and easiest to make for those who want to know is to make the loops using colored pipe cleaners. You can make them as small or large as needed. I knew a guy who made them smaller to fit over swords or other pointy parts of a mini. We ran into problems with those minis with no pointy parts to hang them on.
I too have decided that colored foam is the best to use for marking conditions. I also print out some templates (for blast and area in smoke, fire and a few other things) on clear tranparencies to mark areas that stay for a duration or as a sustained action.
Good article!
Good idea! I like the re-cycling involved too.
But what do you do when someone takes a seventh status effect?
.-= Jonathan Drain | D20 Source´s last blog ..D&D Ancient History, Part IV =-.
@Jonathan If someone does a seventh effect you give up and start playing Pathfinder RPG…
Actually, most players in the games I have run end up being dazed, marked and bloodied most often (rule of three). If you come to the table having three or four condition markers ready to go, you are OK. Plus, in most cases I just make quick notes on index cards or the battle mat if I run out of markers for this condition or that. One guy came to my table with tiny colored skulls that he would put on the base of a mini, say when it gets marked. His skulls ended up being a quick way to see who marked what on the table.
.-= shent_lodge´s last blog ..Map of Jelling =-.
very creative
LOL… Or you could use just use a free program called maptools (rptools.net). You can make all the snappy maps, have macro’s for your characters powers and icons for conditions etc. Very fun, and there is no reason why you couldn’t do that in a face to face game…
Have fun!
.-= Steven´s last blog ..MWAP Mafia Wars =-.