Review of Combat Pad (Initiative Tracker) by Open Mind Games

[FCWesel]

My bro-n-law got one of these. In the package it is very solid. Take it out and it is flimsey, it has a board back in the package, you really need to have it on a clipboard or else it is a slight pain to use.

Me, I can do all the things it does with a piece of paper and a pencil.

 

[Zaukrie]

Great product. I highly recommend it. It is very easy to use, and helps keep track of order and who has gone each round. Unlike some products, unless you have no combat, you'll use this one every single time you DM.

 

[pedr]

A couple of people I play RPGA games with came back from GenCon with these. I've used them a few times and they're superb, in my opinion.

Now if only they'd find a UK distributor!!

 

[rom90125]

My bro-n-law got one of these. In the package it is very solid. Take it out and it is flimsey, it has a board back in the package, you really need to have it on a clipboard or else it is a slight pain to use.

Me, I can do all the things it does with a piece of paper and a pencil.

You are correct. I eventually glued it to the thick piece of cardstock that was packaged with the tracker. Works like a charm.

 

[Cam Banks]

I find I've had great success with the index cards method of handling initiative, as it also lets me keep track of hit points and conditions and initiative being cyclical it's easy to just shuffle through the cards over and over. But the way this board has been spoken about, I'm starting to think it could be a good investment for other games.

Cheers,
Cam

 

[HandofMystra]

better than initiative cards?

I find I've had great success with the index cards method of handling initiative, as it also lets me keep track of hit points and conditions and initiative being cyclical it's easy to just shuffle through the cards over and over. But the way this board has been spoken about, I'm starting to think it could be a good investment for other games.

Cheers,
Cam

I agree, I can't see the advantage over initiatve cards. I like the cards so much that I just bought TOGC pdf of initiaive cards for monsters from the SRD.

 

[lukelightning]

Initiative cards don't work so well if you drop them and they fall all over the floor. This happened to, um, a friend of mine, yeah, that's it. Not me at all.

 

[sjmiller]

Initiative cards don't work so well if you drop them and they fall all over the floor. This happened to, um, a friend of mine, yeah, that's it. Not me at all.

I will admit to having that happen to me several times. I am looking at getting this before my groups next gaming season starts. It's nice to see a local company get some good business.

Gee, The Source was also mentioned in the podcast and they are local too. Very cool.

 

[TracerBullet42]

I like it. I plan to pick up additional magnets and write spells/effects on them with permanent markers. When someone casts "Bless" or "Inspire Courage" is in effect, I'll just slap up the appropriate magnet.

All in all, I think it's pretty nice. We'll see how it holds up after repeated uses.

 

[Oryan77]

This looks great, but there's 2 things keeping me from buying it.

1. The 8.5 x 11 size is perfect for me, but they wasted TONS of space on that board with their huge logo & dead space at the top. The bottom also looks to be wasting about an inch of space. There's wasted space on the left & right sides. The readied/delaying bars are clever, but they also waste a lot of space. There has to be a better way to show readied/delaying. If the board made better use of space, I would have more room to add notes and I could use more magnets for more characters.

2. The size of the name tags looks really big. You can only fit 9 tags down the column? I would definately have to get smaller magnets to use as character placements. If they were smaller and there was more room in the initiative area, you could fit other magnets next to names to represent buffs and other info.

I may end up buying a magnetic board and making my own version of this.