House Rules & Colored Markers - a sort of advice contest with free stuff!
- Thread starter CraigAT
- Start date
I love these things - wrote a little review a while back on their new stuff. Here is a simple list we used to start with - although generally it seems actually easier to just declare what you are marking as you mark it during the battle - pretty easy and informal. We also tend to write on the markers a lot.
Bloodied - Red
Weakend - Orange
Stunned - Lt Gray
Unconscious - Med Gray
Dying - Black
Slowed - Lt Brown
Restrained - Med Brown
Immobilized - Dk Brown
Dazed - Lt Green
Prone - Med Green
Helpless - Dk Green
Blinded - Yellow
Deafened - Lt Purple
Petrified - Dk Purple
Fly 5ft - Lt Blue
Fly 10ft - Med Blue
Fly 20ft - Dk Blue
Like I said - it is a basic starting list and you can create a little spreadsheet with color coding in Excel for refrence - print it on a color printer and make a bunch of bookmarks... But again, we often just use whatever color is handy and tell folks what it means when we put it in play for that fight.
We also do the matching color technique where we put a color under the fighter - say one of the greens, then when he does his combat challenge we mark the creature with the same color linking the two. That works well if you have charaters who tend to override someone else's mark.
Good stuff!
Bloodied - Red
Weakend - Orange
Stunned - Lt Gray
Unconscious - Med Gray
Dying - Black
Slowed - Lt Brown
Restrained - Med Brown
Immobilized - Dk Brown
Dazed - Lt Green
Prone - Med Green
Helpless - Dk Green
Blinded - Yellow
Deafened - Lt Purple
Petrified - Dk Purple
Fly 5ft - Lt Blue
Fly 10ft - Med Blue
Fly 20ft - Dk Blue
Like I said - it is a basic starting list and you can create a little spreadsheet with color coding in Excel for refrence - print it on a color printer and make a bunch of bookmarks... But again, we often just use whatever color is handy and tell folks what it means when we put it in play for that fight.
We also do the matching color technique where we put a color under the fighter - say one of the greens, then when he does his combat challenge we mark the creature with the same color linking the two. That works well if you have charaters who tend to override someone else's mark.
Good stuff!
I use index cards for initiative order -- my monster cards have all the stats for a given monster on them, plus hit point tracking, which is very handy. I have my Alea Tools colors matched up with colored paperclips, so instead of scribbling conditions onto the cards, I can just add a paperclip to match. Left side of the index card = save ends conditions; right side of the index card = end of turn or other conditions.
I don't bother with a paperclip for bloodied.
I don't bother with a paperclip for bloodied.
Timeboxer
Explorer
Yeah, I was just trying to avoid linguistic parsing -- that way you don't have to spend any extra time going "Let me look at what that number is again..."
The idea is that the stackable aspect to it means that you can easily visually determine numeric quantities.
MadLordOfMilk
First Post
I unfortunately don't own alea tools (I'm broke), but these ideas come to mind.
1. You can use these to track initiative pretty easily. Particularly if you have anything magnetic to put them on, just assign a color to each entity or write the names on the markers. You can easily move them around for dealing with delaying, etc, and you can re-use them for every encounter.
2. They're basically counters, so you can easily use them in lieu of minis.
3. You can hand them out as tokens for action points.
I have yet to see anyone mention #1 when talking about these
1. You can use these to track initiative pretty easily. Particularly if you have anything magnetic to put them on, just assign a color to each entity or write the names on the markers. You can easily move them around for dealing with delaying, etc, and you can re-use them for every encounter.
2. They're basically counters, so you can easily use them in lieu of minis.
3. You can hand them out as tokens for action points.
I have yet to see anyone mention #1 when talking about these
Nytmare
David Jose
The main thing I use Alea Tools for in my game is for marks.
Each of my players has had a different color (red, green, blue, purple) associated with them pretty much since we all started playing together seven years ago, and we use them to distinguish between everything from each player's character chit, to player cards, to whose pencil is whose. Everyone has a handful of markers of their color for marks/curses/whatever, and two yellow markers for light sources. I've also got a stack of white and light blue chits that I'll probably start using for flight once people get around to flying.
I wanted to avoid keeping track of conditions on the board. I figured that swapping pieces in and out for things that were as temporary as conditions as well as having to check against a chart to help remember what each color was, would end up being too disruptive for me.
The only reason that we don't use red markers to keep track of bloodied is because one of the players had already been established as red and it would have meant buying/finding/remaking a bunch of props and accoutrements.
Each of my players has had a different color (red, green, blue, purple) associated with them pretty much since we all started playing together seven years ago, and we use them to distinguish between everything from each player's character chit, to player cards, to whose pencil is whose. Everyone has a handful of markers of their color for marks/curses/whatever, and two yellow markers for light sources. I've also got a stack of white and light blue chits that I'll probably start using for flight once people get around to flying.
I wanted to avoid keeping track of conditions on the board. I figured that swapping pieces in and out for things that were as temporary as conditions as well as having to check against a chart to help remember what each color was, would end up being too disruptive for me.
The only reason that we don't use red markers to keep track of bloodied is because one of the players had already been established as red and it would have meant buying/finding/remaking a bunch of props and accoutrements.
RangerWickett
Legend
Our GM puts small magnetic squares on the bottom of our minis to make using the markers easier.
We do:
red = bloodied
gray = slowed
dark gray = immobilized
black = restrained
green = poisoned
orange = on fire
light blue = dazed
dark blue = stunned
Spare colors are used by defenders to mark. I don't other conditions have come up often enough for us to have a consistent style.
In one combat, when the room was pitch black and we weren't sure what we were fighting, the GM just used the markers to represent where we heard the monsters, instead of using actual minis. I thought that was kinda cool, especially when in the middle of combat, a 2-inch (large) disk showed up at the edge of the battlefield and began to tromp toward us.
I plan to do something similar in a game I'll run next week. The group will be in the cavern tomb of an elder, sleeping god. His slumber is disturbed by any sort of light, causing those caught in bright light at the start of their turns to take psychic damage that ramps up by an additional 5 for each turn you stay in the light. I plan to keep white tokens handy to make it clear who has bright light sources, and yellow for dim light sources.
(Part of the trick to the combat will be keeping the dragon who lives there in light. The multiple PCs can take turns having light sources, just getting pinged for 5 damage, whereas if they can keep the dragon illuminated, he might end up taking 20 or 30 damage in a round.)
The silliest we ever got was a beholder that was dazed, marked by a paladin, weakened, taking ongoing disintegration damage, ongoing bleeding damage, and was either slowed or restrained or whatever it is that Evard's Black Tentacles does these days.
We do:
red = bloodied
gray = slowed
dark gray = immobilized
black = restrained
green = poisoned
orange = on fire
light blue = dazed
dark blue = stunned
Spare colors are used by defenders to mark. I don't other conditions have come up often enough for us to have a consistent style.
In one combat, when the room was pitch black and we weren't sure what we were fighting, the GM just used the markers to represent where we heard the monsters, instead of using actual minis. I thought that was kinda cool, especially when in the middle of combat, a 2-inch (large) disk showed up at the edge of the battlefield and began to tromp toward us.
I plan to do something similar in a game I'll run next week. The group will be in the cavern tomb of an elder, sleeping god. His slumber is disturbed by any sort of light, causing those caught in bright light at the start of their turns to take psychic damage that ramps up by an additional 5 for each turn you stay in the light. I plan to keep white tokens handy to make it clear who has bright light sources, and yellow for dim light sources.
(Part of the trick to the combat will be keeping the dragon who lives there in light. The multiple PCs can take turns having light sources, just getting pinged for 5 damage, whereas if they can keep the dragon illuminated, he might end up taking 20 or 30 damage in a round.)
The silliest we ever got was a beholder that was dazed, marked by a paladin, weakened, taking ongoing disintegration damage, ongoing bleeding damage, and was either slowed or restrained or whatever it is that Evard's Black Tentacles does these days.
