Initiative card tray..do you use one?

[Emirikol]

I use an initiative card tray. It's 18 inches long and sits in front of my DM screen. I take the initiatives and stick them in there so that the players can see them right up front (and know when they're up).

Do you guys use that sort of thing or do you try to juggle them in your hands while DMing?

I've found that it really speeds things up.

I made mine out of clear plastic packing (from toys) and then use colored 3x5 index cards from office max for the actual cards.

Jay H

[edit: king nate..brand new and already on the no-see-um's list ]

 

[King Nate]

I use an initiative card tray. It's 18 inches long and sits in front of my DM screen. I take the initiatives and stick them in there so that the players can see them right up front (and know when they're up).

Do you guys use that sort of thing or do you try to juggle them in your hands while DMing?

I've found that it really speeds things up.

I made mine out of clear plastic packing (from toys) and then use colored 3x5 index cards from office max for the actual cards.

Jay H

Dude that is the dumbest idea I have ever heard. Why waste your time trying to speed things up? If you just have everything already at a fast pace there wouldn't be any need to speed things up.

And if I was to do something like this I wouldn't use colored index cards, I'd probably stick to white, less distracting.

 

[vic20]

Dude that is the dumbest idea I have ever heard.

Awww. That's the cutest troll I have ever heard. It's like a little baby troll!

Emirikol- that sounds like a good system. I can't quite picture the plastic try portion of it, but I can totally appreciate the convenience this brings to sharing information as a group.

I use Game Mastery Initiative tracker, which is a stiff magnetic board with dry-erasable "nameplate" things. It's nice to be able to tactilely move something as opposed to erasing & rewriting. I stand it against my dm screen facing the players.

 

[DanmarLOK]

If you're using a DM screen then clothespins or more commonly available these days, binder clips with the persons name written on them and something generic like Monster 1, monster 2, monster 3, etc. Then you just pin them to the screen and rearrange them as needed. Put the name on both sides and your players can see them. Leave enough space between them and you have room to change the order without have to shift everything around.

 

[The Little Raven]

Why waste your time trying to speed things up?

The benefits to speeding up play should be obvious to anyone with some sense.

 

[Turtlejay]

Am I the only one that detected sarcasm in that troll's reply?

Anyways, we play on a whiteboard and just write the initiative order in the corner. Works super.

Jay

 

[cmbarona]

I wish we'd start using something like this. When we were first starting to play, my Warlord had Furious Smash. Unfortunately, I had so much else to think about that I could never quite get my delayed actions right to have my turn be just before the Rogue. If it were, I could set up flanking and use Furious Smash to set up for an awesome sneak attack. We don't have a defender, so the two of us do our thing while the ranged guys do theirs. As things currently stand, I have Viper's Strike instead to maintain the flanks we do set up. I might retrain back to it at some point, especially now that I know the game better (or if we get a defender soon). Warlord is definitely a class that could use that third at-will humans get.

Anyway, point being it's a device that would greatly help my tactical decisions.

 

[excepti0n]

I use this: http://paizo.com/store/byCompany/o/openMindGames/v5748btpy7uvm

 

[Palladion]

I use this: paizo.com - GameMastery Combat Pad

Same here. It was designed for 3e use, but once you get to higher levels, you can to ignore the 0 to 25 scale on the left, that is not really an issue.

 

[keterys]

I love my combat pad. Another thing we've done sometimes is just hand out index cards with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc... and that's your order, and you just swap if you ready/delay.

I've been tempted to try something I read elsewhere to just roll one init for the monsters... any players before them go in any order, then all the monsters go, then all the players go in any order they want.

Just requires, y'know, effort to think on how to handle start/end of turn stuff.