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Hello all,
My friends and I started our own Pathfinder group and I am going to DM the Rise of the Runelords campaign.
There are 4 of us total. One has never played and myself and the other two have been away from the game for a while.
I created a brief adventure for us before we started the campaign, so we could get used to the mechanics and role playing part of the game. It was a simple adventure (the PC's were "hired" to rescue the town Mayor's daughter) and it went very well. We all had a great time.
One thing that was hard for me to manage was tracking the monster's initiative and hit points. One of the encounters involved the PC's vs. 5 goblins. It was challenging to track which goblin goes first and how healthy he was. The health wasn't a major concern because one hit pretty much always killed the goblin, but the initiative was harder.
Any advice for this?
Thanks.
Hello all,
My friends and I started our own Pathfinder group and I am going to DM the Rise of the Runelords campaign.
There are 4 of us total. One has never played and myself and the other two have been away from the game for a while.
I created a brief adventure for us before we started the campaign, so we could get used to the mechanics and role playing part of the game. It was a simple adventure (the PC's were "hired" to rescue the town Mayor's daughter) and it went very well. We all had a great time.
One thing that was hard for me to manage was tracking the monster's initiative and hit points. One of the encounters involved the PC's vs. 5 goblins. It was challenging to track which goblin goes first and how healthy he was. The health wasn't a major concern because one hit pretty much always killed the goblin, but the initiative was harder.
Any advice for this?
Thanks.
I use a pad of paper and pencil. On one half I keep track of the player's initiative, on the other I keep track of the monster's initiative, and leave myself enough room next to the monsters to keep a running total of HP. Also, the more monsters there are, the more I "group" them, giving several of them the same intiative count just to simplify the matter. In large enough number, I have even given ALL the enemies the same intiative, if they are the same creature type. Those would be my recommendations.
Hello all,
My friends and I started our own Pathfinder group and I am going to DM the Rise of the Runelords campaign.
There are 4 of us total. One has never played and myself and the other two have been away from the game for a while.
I created a brief adventure for us before we started the campaign, so we could get used to the mechanics and role playing part of the game. It was a simple adventure (the PC's were "hired" to rescue the town Mayor's daughter) and it went very well. We all had a great time.
One thing that was hard for me to manage was tracking the monster's initiative and hit points. One of the encounters involved the PC's vs. 5 goblins. It was challenging to track which goblin goes first and how healthy he was. The health wasn't a major concern because one hit pretty much always killed the goblin, but the initiative was harder.
Any advice for this?
Thanks.
Many (most?) DMs will run all the monsters on a single initiative count, or all the same type of monster on one count. For instance if you had 3 goblin archers, 5 goblin warriors and the big bad, that would be just three separate initiatives, not nine.
Another way to handle this is using a combat tracking grid. There are a number of spreadsheets available on the web, or simply make your own. Basically it's just a table of monsters, with their initiative check, and columns to tick down their HP. This can make things easier if you want to have each monster have their own initiative and/or for big battles.
I agree that combining all of the same monsters into the same initiative works very well. As an aside if keeping track of which of the group has been hit the most might I recommend using colored paperclips on the minis or counters to enable you to keep track of which one is at 5 hp and which is at 1 hp. There used to be a picture of just what I am describing on these boards but I cannot recall where.
I typically do the same sort of thing. In your example, I'd probably have the goblins all go on the same initiative. As you get more experienced you may want to do individual initiatives for important fights. But in general, it is easier to roll initiative for groups of monsters. For example, let's say you're running a battle with 5 goblins, 2 gnolls, and the goblin leader. Roll initiative once for all 5 goblins, once for the 2 gnolls, and once for the goblin leader. Then you need only keep track of 3 initiative counts instead of 8.
Tracking HP can be a challenge however. If the situation warrants it, I often write a number next to given enemies (i.e. goblin 1, goblin 2 etc.) to help track HP. Models do come in handy for this as you can use models of monsters in different poses or actually label the model to help keep track of hps.
Getting a Combat Pad is a great tool. Before I had one however, making my own initiative tracker (on a sheet of blank paper that I would then photocopy several more of) served me quite well.
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I use three tools:
* The Combat Pad (sadly, currently unavailable) to keep track of initiative. It's great.
* Pencil and index card to keep track of hitpoints.
* Alea tokens to map monsters to hit points.
When you have a big herd of monsters it can be very difficult to know which monster was which, hit point wise. So I drop a colored alea token under each monster, and on the combat tracker put in the color as the name of the monster. Then on my index card I have a running counter that looks like:
Blue: 9 7 5 2 -5
Red: 9 -1
Green: 9 5 3
etc. That way when a monster gets hit I don't have to figure out how to map the mini on the map to the name on the index card.
For me, all non-PCs act on my initiative count. To get this count, I add up all of the enemies' initiative modifiers and then average them-- I do this per monster 'type', adding once per monster type present on the table. So, two driders with +1, ten drow with +10 and one umber hulk with a +7 would end up being a +6 on my roll. Pretty simple to adjucate. Sometimes I roll and then announce a random number, or if I want to get through this combat quicker, I announce I rolled a one.
Usually, I let someone else track initiative, but always prompt that person to tell me who is next.
To do initiative... I draw a table, from my perspective. Difficult to understand, but...
So, let's say... I'm at the head of the table. Greg and Sally are on the sides of the table nearest me, while Bart and Mary are on the sides of the table furthest me. Zack is on the other end of the table.
We roll initiative. I roll 7, Greg and Sally roll 18 and 9, Bart and Mary roll 10 and 11 and then Zack rolls 26.
26_
10| |11
18| |9
~ 7
Fairly easy. I do this for all of my games now, and it eliminates the need for the initiative tracker or for a notepad or names or anything. Makes initiative simple.
I make a player track initiative.