Keeping track of bloodied, marked, etc...

[Hawke]

I went to a local hobby store (Micheal's, I think) and picked up a little packet of wooden 1 inch squares with alphabet letters on them. I think they're intended to replace lose scrabble pieces. They were $2.99 for 60 of them. They also have a lot of other shapes - hearts, stars, etc. that are all about 1 inch.

Those + a little paint works wonders. They sit underneath the figure - they're square so you can see the color easily because the bases are round. For a few bucks I've got more than enough bases for any condition I can imagine.

 

[erf_beto]

arght, bad conection ate my post! >_<
Here it goes again, more or less intact...

I went to a local hobby store (Micheal's, I think) and picked up a little packet of wooden 1 inch squares with alphabet letters on them. I think they're intended to replace lose scrabble pieces. They were $2.99 for 60 of them. They also have a lot of other shapes - hearts, stars, etc. that are all about 1 inch.

Those + a little paint works wonders. They sit underneath the figure - they're square so you can see the color easily because the bases are round. For a few bucks I've got more than enough bases for any condition I can imagine.

I think you are playtesting what I was going to suggest: just print colored squares to sit underneath round based miniatures. You could even fold a tab with a note at the front saying "Bloodied", "Marked" or whatever...

Here's a quick example.

 

[Meaxe]

Hi everyone.

Last game I've DM'ed, we used pichnotte token (I think it's called pinnochi in english). Those are 1 inch diameter round and about 1/2 inch in height. They even come in different colors (red, blue, black, wood from what I recall). They worked wonderfully. For those who do not know what pichenotte is here is a link i've found on ebay. And by the way, I've bought mine 2 weeks ago for 5.99$ at Toy's are Us.

http://cgi.ebay.com/30-Rings-Pinnoc...5154174QQcmdZViewItem?_trksid=p3286.m20.l1116

Philippe the Quebecer

 

[Bunnicula]

Someone in our group bought a box of tiny different color beads which I think came to $1.99 at the local Dollar Store. Every player gets a color, with red left over for bloodied. We thread them on the pointy bits of the minis, or stack them on the base. It's a little inconvenient when moving minis, and we think the cat might have eaten a couple of beads, but they're no real problem.

I like the pipe cleaner idea, but I can't see paying for the Alea things.

 

[Leadfeather]

I am using beer bottle caps, primed and painted red, green, blue etc. as markers. They are just the right size and once primed and painted they are rough enough to stack three of four high without slipping. Also they are cheap and plentiful.

If you use rubber cement to glue a small piece of magnetic strip to the bottom of each mini, the magentic attraction will be strong enough to keep the bottle cap
attached to the bottom of the mini allowing you to move them as normal.

Finally I raided my wife's sewing kit and took a number of pins, each one with a different colored plasic ball at the end. When using identical minis I tag each one a different color by pushing the pin into the base of the mini. It makes it easier for the players to specify which mini they are attacking and makes it easier for me to track damage to identical troops.

 

[Nytmare]

I had been agonizing over what to use in my campaign. We use laminated, cardstock chits, not minis, so I wanted to avoid hiding what the chit was, and we didn't have handy bits of miniature to hang beads and pipe cleaners off of.

Poker chips bothered me because they were both too wide, and not tall enough. A decent vertical profile was what was really important to me, and I had really liked the idea of the Alea Tools, though the magnetic bit was kind of a turn off. I tried mussing around with a dowel rod cut to 1/4 inch lengths, and with a bunch of double thick shrinky dinks, but got bogged down in the process of actually making a couple dozen of the things.

One of the things I had been hoping to find at Gencon this year was a deluge of different 4E inspired toys. I was a little surprised that the only company out there really offering something in the realm of "marks" was Alea Tools.

I think that, in the end, what I had been hoping to find were a bunch of colored acrylic/plexiglass disks. I'm currently looking into having someone laser cut a buttload of them for a couple of cents a piece. We'll see how they work out.

 

[ebertran]

Office Max sells a tub of 1" round plastic with magnets, not unlike Alea Tools, for less than 5 bucks. They come in a pack of 12, 6 colors X2....

They stack under my 1" metal tokens perfectly.

I only found them at office max though... check them out if you were thinking of Alea. I was until I found these magnets.

 

[Jack Colby]

If a PC puts a condition like that on a monster I make the players remember and remind me. If the monster does it to them, I make the players remember and remind me. Sometimes I don't get reminded. Oh well, the game goes on...

 

[essenbee]

In practice, I have found that the only condition I need to keep track of using a marker is Bloodied, for which I use a red gaming stone. All other conditions I remember.

 

[Nytmare]

In practice, I have found that the only condition I need to keep track of using a marker is Bloodied, for which I use a red gaming stone. All other conditions I remember.

It's odd, and I'm not sure if it's only because my group's party makeup, but marks have always been the important bit of information that everyone needs to see, and whether or not something is bloody is a far second. Maybe it's that they're just a mark heavy group, and they need to pay more attention to who is interfering with what?