I tried the "Item Card" thing in a couple of my campaigns. It was a neat idea, but a bit tedious. It took some work to print and cut them. And since I was using my own Word document for the cards, I had to create them in word, adding new gear and such. Editing those was harder, than a simple inventory list in Word.
I did it as a player, and as a GM. As a a player, carding my gear worked OK. It did take longer to find stuff. If you truly make a card for "everything" it's a lot of cards, and I'm not talking about individual cards for coins. I suppose it was a good simulation for "how long does it take the PC to dig out that healing potion", but that's about it.
As a GM, making cards for all the gear the PCs find was tedious. Technically, I would have to make a card for every physical item, plus 1 card for "the money". This allowed them to split up the loot, by swapping cards around. The problem was making cards for stuff the party was going to sell was a waste of ink. I kept a pool of such cards, so I could re-use them. The players didn't like the system as much either.
For tracking purposes, I tend to prefer the following:
monster cards for "summonable monsters"
custom spell book for PC's spells (copied from SRD)
inventory sheet (a page for the char-sheet, just for inventory)
a combat sheet (a page for the char-sheet, holds the combat stats and HP scratch pad)
I tend to like a char-sheet, with 1 page per "topic" be it: basic stats, skills, inventory, spells, combat, feats & abilities
I don't mind a multi-page sheet, because it keeps the data on it simple. It's not crowded, so it's easy to flip pages and find what I need.
I did it as a player, and as a GM. As a a player, carding my gear worked OK. It did take longer to find stuff. If you truly make a card for "everything" it's a lot of cards, and I'm not talking about individual cards for coins. I suppose it was a good simulation for "how long does it take the PC to dig out that healing potion", but that's about it.
As a GM, making cards for all the gear the PCs find was tedious. Technically, I would have to make a card for every physical item, plus 1 card for "the money". This allowed them to split up the loot, by swapping cards around. The problem was making cards for stuff the party was going to sell was a waste of ink. I kept a pool of such cards, so I could re-use them. The players didn't like the system as much either.
For tracking purposes, I tend to prefer the following:
monster cards for "summonable monsters"
custom spell book for PC's spells (copied from SRD)
inventory sheet (a page for the char-sheet, just for inventory)
a combat sheet (a page for the char-sheet, holds the combat stats and HP scratch pad)
I tend to like a char-sheet, with 1 page per "topic" be it: basic stats, skills, inventory, spells, combat, feats & abilities
I don't mind a multi-page sheet, because it keeps the data on it simple. It's not crowded, so it's easy to flip pages and find what I need.
