Archade
Azer Paladin
Way back in the early days of 3E, I tried all sorts of methods to track initiative ... scrap pieces of paper, index cards, even card clipped to the outside of my DM screen. The problem was, I had a hard time tracking initiative and running the combat, so I came up with a laminated chart that I put on the board, in front of the screen, and asked the players to track everything.
When Alea Tools put out their colored magnetic markers, we used those with the chart, and in fact, the players started to associate colored disks with themselves. Thus, I always know that Ren is yellow, Matt is blue, etc. I used black disks stacked with another color for monsters (spiders are black and gray, zombies are black and sickly green, etc). I only put the monsters on the chart when they go for the first time, and no one tends to get missed.
Initiative works pretty much the same in 5E, but my chart is looking kind of dingy, so I prepped up another one for 5E -- this time, I added boxes for the players, to lay out their Inspiration dice, bardic inspiration dice, condition counters, etc. It should help players track who has what effects going, including the bad guys (as much as I would tell them).
Since this works really well for our group, I thought I'd share it with all of you!
When Alea Tools put out their colored magnetic markers, we used those with the chart, and in fact, the players started to associate colored disks with themselves. Thus, I always know that Ren is yellow, Matt is blue, etc. I used black disks stacked with another color for monsters (spiders are black and gray, zombies are black and sickly green, etc). I only put the monsters on the chart when they go for the first time, and no one tends to get missed.
Initiative works pretty much the same in 5E, but my chart is looking kind of dingy, so I prepped up another one for 5E -- this time, I added boxes for the players, to lay out their Inspiration dice, bardic inspiration dice, condition counters, etc. It should help players track who has what effects going, including the bad guys (as much as I would tell them).
Since this works really well for our group, I thought I'd share it with all of you!
