tracking conditions - your approach?

[moticon]

Hi everyone,

This should probably be a poll question (IMO)...

It seems to me that just about everything on the battlefield is going to be making saves and trying to shed conditions at one time or another in a 4th edition battle...

How will you keep track of the many conditions in 4th Edition?

I've read about using the colored magnets under minis, or perhaps placards... what'll you do?

 

[Amphimir Míriel]

Hi everyone,

This should probably be a poll question (IMO)...

It seems to me that just about everything on the battlefield is going to be making saves and trying to shed conditions at one time or another in a 4th edition battle...

How will you keep track of the many conditions in 4th Edition?

I've read about using the colored magnets under minis, or perhaps placards... what'll you do?

I am planning on giving bits of colored Playdoh to players who can mark. That way, if someone is marking a creature, he can place a little bit of blue/green/yellow playdoh on top of the figure being marked.

And I as DM can use red Playdoh to indicate if someone's bloodied...

I was thinking also of using red/blue/gold poker-style chips to place beneath the figures, but then I'd need several sizes of those...

 

[DeusExMachina]

I used poker chips placed beneath the minis on my first 4e session. Worked fairly well, although I ran out of different colors at some point, so I also still tried to note down the effects in my notebook...

All in all that worked pretty well...

 

[Khuxan]

For marking, Blu Tac (and other colours) sound like a good idea.

For save ends and other conditions, I expect my players to have cards saying stuff like: "Ongoing 5 fire (save ends)" which they'll pass to me when one of my NPCs is affected by that power - and I'll do the same for them.

 

[Snarls-at-Fleas]

I've bought some metal disks at the local hardware shop and glued them to the bottom of my minis with superglue. Then I've found some colored magnets (the kind they use to hold thingies on magnetic boards) and now I can mark conditions fairly easily. The problem is that those magnets should be rather flat and sometimes they are hard to find.
But I don't intend to mark all conditions with them. I think bloodied (for everyone), marked (mosters only) and some other (in case of multiple copies of the same monster). For other conditions I'll make small cards to give to the player (with short condition description). And monsters could be just marked on my Init sheet.

 

[Darkthorne]

I actually got the Alea Tools product which is pretty slick. Colored magnets which you can use under your minis plus they written on w/ wet or dry erase markers. Pretty cool, the container for Ultimate Game Master Pack is smaller than it looks. It's 8 X 9.25 X 2.25 (roughly) and for the metric guys it's 20.32 X 23.50 X 5.72.

 

[The_Fan]

I ran a playtest and used pins and the multicolored pony beads you can buy in large amounts at any craft store. I had about 15 different varieties, but I was starting to run short during the black dragon fight (differentiating between ongoing bite damage and the acid breath was tough). Another set of a different color should provide me with all the colors I need.

 

[hennebeck]

I used poker chips on my first 4e demo.
They were a bit bigger then 1 square. So in a close melee fight with Hobgoblins they didn't work as well for me.
I'm thinking of using someone else's suggesting of different colours of pipecleaner loops.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I haven't found much reason to mark the FIGURES in any way. As far as conditions go, I made a bunch of little cards with things like Slowed and Immobilized on one and Dazed and Stunned on anther and Ongoing Damage on another. You hand 'em out as appropriate.

Haven't had trouble keeping track of marks yet.

Fitz

 

[The Little Raven]

I've begun using the Alea Tools magnetic markers, along with condition cards that are color-coded. Half the time, it's my players who are placing the markers on things, since they've adapted to the system pretty quickly.