![]() I'll have their attacks, the way they are going to fight in combat, maybe a line or two of tactics. Special characters will get their own sheet, but mooks generally share their sheet with each other if they are similar. When prepping a new session I print out new sheets that have the basic stats and abilities that I need for whatever my players are going to fight. My tablet has freed me from the need of all the heavy books and the research function is really nice :p I use transparent plastic sheet and rewritable marker, you can print map and put the sheet on it so you can write directly on it and put token as players and monsters (My players love to play tactical). Paizo has the Pathfinder Combat Pad, that does the same thing. The larger strips are used for initiative order, HPs and any thing else that needs tracking. I marked the sides of the white board with permanent numbers and a small strip the slide down the number to keep track of rounds. Cut strips to the length you want and the apply to back of white board material and trim material to sides of the strips. You can find magnetic strips and a roll of white board material at a hobby store like Hobby Lobby or Michael's. you can find a small white board at any office store. I use a 9"x 12" magnetic white board with home made magnetic "white board" strips. (especially with PCGen and their GMGen tool that is very easy to work with, but I guess the others are great too, depending on what exactly you want from it) I don't use them, but I see the possibilities. That said, there are tools, programs like DMMinionPF, PCGen and HeroLab, that help you with all of that and some of them are free. Whenever possible I go into battles with a very clear strategy which spells are used when. The exact system varies from day to day, sometimes I add the damage, sometimes I substract it from the monster's total HP. HP, I just scribble on wherever it fits on my notes. Players keep track of their own spells and abilities, often use dice as counters for longer lasting effects. then I hand it over to one of the players of my group to keep track of that (or do it myself, if there's not that much else for me to keep track of) every player and every monster or NPC gets a card (with their name or descriptions like "Goblin 1", "Goblin 2" etc on it) and they are arranged in initiative order. I've seen a lot of guides on character creation, builds for different classes, etc, but not as much on "here's an easy form to fill out / system to keep track of what's going on." This stuff might be in the full GM Guide, but I'm opposed to spending more money until I know we are ready to go there, which is why I haven't spent the coin on it yet. Is there a sheet / cheat sheet / system that people use to keep track of everything? I'm still in the "do we really want to play this game" stage, so I'm trying to keep costs low. He had used Divine Favor to give him +1 on Att/Dmg rolls, which was supposed to last a minute, which is what, 10 rounds? In the end it didn't matter, it was just a 1 on 1 low level adventure, and he slayed the goblin, but it highlighted for me that if there were more characters and/or baddies, I did not have a good system in place for how to keep track of initiative order, who's turn it was, what spell(s) or attacks they used, how long the effect(s) are supposed to last, monster HP as the attacks keep coming, XP to award at the end, treasure amounts along the way, the list goes on. But after a few misses on both sides of combat I completely lost track of what round we were in. I just used the margins of my printed Word document to cross out HP and write in new lower values, and he did the same. At the risk of breaking my arm patting myself on the back, it was a completely successful experience - except I had no idea what I was doing trying to keep track of everything (and there was not a lot to keep track of as it was - I can see how a full party in a full adventure can get complicated quick). ![]() It was fun, his Cleric didn't die, and he seems interested in playing and even GM'g. To introduce him to the absolute basics (GM describes a scene, PC explains what they do, GM describes consequences, we roll dice and have fun), I made up a simple linear "adventure" with three rooms, a few goblins, a trap, a secret room, and a moral dilemma at the end. Since we are just one character and one GM, I didn't want to run him through the Beginner's Box adventure for his first experience. So we are learning as we go, just he and I, starting with the Beginner's Box. I'm starting to get my son interested in RPG's, PF specifically, and we don't have very many other players in our area that we know of to learn from. I'm new to PF (after taking 30+ years off from D&D back in the day).
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |