DM Combat Log, Initiative Tracker, and Character Tracker

Here's my second version of a DM combat log, initiative tracker, and character tracker. This is my attempt in an Excel spreadsheet to keep everything organized in combat. You will notice on the sheet that there are 4 tabs at the bottom.

• The first tab is for auto-filling a ton of stats from all the monsters/creatures in the 4e monster manual. This does so by using a drop-down box in the creature name sections and auto-fills the stats from there.
• The second tab has the same drop-down, but doesn't fill out the stats, this is in case you want to create your own NPC "bosses", monsters, or whatever.
• The third tab is an encounter/experience tracker. This will auto-fill the experience and level according to your encounters as you add them in.
• The fourth tab is the Monster Table, with almost everything from the monster manual as far as stats go.

It's still a work in progress as I keep thinking of new things to add to it, and I've been working on getting the information into the huge monster table for two weeks now, and just finished today. Other things that this spreadsheet does:

• Drop downs for Effects.
• Drop downs for Initiative.
• Drop downs for Rounds.
• Drop downs on the second tab for "size" of creatures.

I'd like any constructive comments that come to mind, or any way that I might improve it. I've used formulas, but no macros (haven't really worked with them much yet). I've got it attached here in a zip file that has both versions of Excel 2007 and the previous for those who can't see the 2007 stuff. Enjoy!

-Trav


EDIT: Took off the 2.0 version and replaced with version 2.1 below.

A shameless bump to give people a chance to take a look at it.

It looks useful, but it's way too colorful. Maybe if it just used shades of a single color?

ok, i think this has some real promise to it.

i've only looked at it a few min so far, but i'm really impressed at how much monster data (all of it) you've pre-loaded in there.

to make this tracker a complete winner, is there or could there be a way to sort monsters/pc's by initiative?

Thank you for the comments, I have messed with it a bit more and added a few things to it. There is now a DM screen attached to it made by one of our community members, I don't know his name on here, but I did give credit to him at the bottom of the DM screen I imported over.

I have created a small area to the left of the combat trackers for initiatives. I couldn't figure out how to auto-sort this area according to the rolls, but all you have to do is highlight all the rolls in the 2 columns and have Excel sort it for you from highest to lowest and wa-la.

I thought about doing it in a single color, but decided against it because it seemed to all run together and I wanted defined separations between the columns, headers and whatnot. Here is version 2.1 with the changes mentioned above.

Please feel free to change anything you don't like on your own copies, the sheets are protect but without a password. I also included both the Excel versions for people who don't have 2007 yet.

would it be possible to add an addition sheet, one that would auto fill and look like what was entered in the main sheet, but sort by initiative (and only have as many monters/pc's as have been activated)?

I'm not sure I get your meaning on that, maybe explain a bit more what you would like to see? I put in that little initiative box at the top left to keep track of who goes in what order. If I was to do another sheet just like the first, I'm going to have to re-think how to get it to auto-fill according the the initiative values, it may take a macro of some kind to do this, and my sheet doesn't have any macros, if anyone would like to lend a hand in how this might be accomplished I'm all ears. I'm good at excel, but by no means a pro at it, especially when it comes to creating the macros.

well my excel-fu is weak, so i wont be much help.

to explain further, you have entries for 50 combatants (pc's/monsters), which is great but don't want to have to cycle through 50 entries to see who is going next. normally i may only have 8-10 initiatives to go through (especially when i stack them - all orcs go on 15, all goblins go on 10, etc).

so what i'd like to be able to do is 'check' off who is in a combat and just have those pc's/monsters that i've selected auto-populate on another sheet in their intiative order. call this the current encounter sheet?

this make sense?

I think I may have confused you a bit. The left initiative box has enough room for 25 different combantants (which I'm sure is more than enough). The actual sheets one that can be auto-filled from my table and the other which doesn't have auto-filling in case you want to make your own monsters and fill out their stats. There is enough room on each sheet (tab) for 6 PCs and their stats and 9 different monsters/creatures w/ their stats. The small table on the top left for initiative is to keep track of the order of players/creatures. The 1-50 are the rounds dropdown boxes, I did this so it's easier to keep track of what round you are in for each character or creature(s). I do like your idea of check boxes and I'll see what I can do for those and auto-populating for the monsters and PCs seems a bit redundant to me, because these are meant to be a "per encounter" combat sheet at it is, the current encounter as you've built it from auto-populating the monsters by their dropdowns. What I do is just roll for the creatures and then add their initiative modifiers, place them up in the initiative table, then have the players roll w/ their initiative modifiers and place them in the table as well. Then I will right click after highlighting the whole initiative area and have it "auto-sort" from Highest to Lowest and there is your order, with the initiative order and the names of the encounter combatants. I'll look into autopopulating this area as well per the initiative rolls, but not sure how to do that because as it is I only have initiative modifiers and not the true total initiative scores until the rolls are in for creatures and PCs, make sense? That is why I did it the way it is, because it is real time rolls and not autorolls for the characters and creatures.

really cool, will you add in creatures from mm2 when it comes out?