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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Greenfield" data-source="post: 5491006" data-attributes="member: 6669384">All my "speed up the game" ideas are procedural, rather than rules-changing.I took drew up a sheet with numbers down the left side, from 30 to 0 descending, and glued it to a piece of metal flashing I bought at the home center.  Laid some plastic lamination on top, and got some rubber magnets.  I wrote the names of each of the players on a little tab of rubber magnet, and made a few that said things like, "Monster 1", "Monster 2", etc.  Added one as a pointer.  Now when we roll Initiatives I ask everyone what they got and mark their place on the scale.  Monsters got on there as well.  I use the pointer as I count down the initiatives, shifting it as I go.When I hit someone's initiative I ask what they're doing, and warn the next player that they're up next.  It cuts out a lot of the ,"Oh, is it my turn?  Let's see..." stuff.If you aren't ready when your turn comes up, you're Holding action.  People with Held or Readied actions get their pointer pulled aside as I go, then relocated when they decide to take their actions.Spell effects on the field are written on the leftover space to the right of the chart, with lines drawn to the initiative point when they started, and a round # marked for when they started, and how long they last.  I use the same markers I use on the battle mat.  They come off with water, or just a damp finger.It also gives me an easy place to mark hit points for each monster.This simple device keeps things running in order, handles cyclic Initiative, Held Actions, brain dead players and the occasional brain dead DM.  (That's me, at least some of the time).  It's also pretty good for tracking spells, conditions, bonuses and penalties.When I played 4e we made up some colored condition markers. You can buy them, but why waste the money?  Go get a pack of 1 inch "fender washers" at the hardware store.  Big flat disks with little tiny holes in the center.  I backed them with magnetic rubber strips, and spray painted them all sorts of colors.Now just agree on what each color means, and use them as needed.  Slip them under the figs of affected monsters or PCs.  They'll stick together because of the magnets, and you can see all the different colors showing on the edges.Over all I didn't find these all that useful.  We still had a fight keeping track of who got Slowed or Dazed or Poisoned by who, and when when it had happened.  And in 4e condition markers change constantly.  Okay if you've got a computer doing all the timekeeping and book keeping, as WOW does.  Not so good on the tabletop.Have I mentioned that I don't play 4e any more?  That's one of the reasons why. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />We used to joke that we knew when a monster was about to go down because the stack of markers under his mini got to be taller than he was.</blockquote>

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