Initiative Cards - Your Advice and Experiences

[billd91]

I usually use a whiteboard to keep track of initiatives rather than initiative cards. But I think the initiative cards might be a good place to put tactical information as well as attack values. I think they're less useful for defensive and saving throw info since, to use that info, you have to dig through the stack to find it. I usually have that stuff on my notes for the evening and printed out in front of me.
Offensive abilities and summaries of what they do (poison saves, ranges, etc) are excellent fodder for the cards, though.

 

[Thunderfoot]

I LOVE them - they have helped to speed up combat a ton (and I'm running 11 players so, speed is good)

I also load them with info though! Why ask for mods if you already have them. As far as losing your place in a stack to change hp, lay stack face down at the seperation (don't remove card), hold the rest of the stack underneath (not moving card in its order, mark off hp and put stack back together. Easy, quick and painless.

 

[ARandomGod]

I'd say that initiative cards are practically a must have. You can delegate the initiative order keeping to someone else, if you want, but even then cards are the best way.

The only base information I put on initiative cards are the player/character's name, and their bonus to initiaitve, whether or not that includes the feat "improved initiative". This additional information is because of how we attempt to resolve ties in initiative rolls... someone with the feat goes before someone without it, regardless of other initiative modifiers... and the person with the highest initiative modifier goes first if both (all) or none have the improved initiative feat. Only if all those things are tied do we have a roll-off.