Chapter 3: Launch
3.12 Enter the Matrix: Create Your Combat Tracker
“True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous and conflicting information.” – Winston Churchill
Why Create a Combat Tracker?
Today you will learn how to create your own custom Combat Tracker. Whether you build one from scratch using the suggested Excel example here, or take the concepts and apply them through a more advanced digital application, a whiteboard, index cards or tokens, you’ll create a tool that helps you quickly find, communicate and update critical information throughout combat.
The Combat Tracker Triple-Threat
A great Combat Tracker helps you reference and track three major encounter components:
1. Core combat rules 2. Party statistics
3. Encounter (i.e. area and monster) information
Let’s explore each of these Combat Tracker sections, including specific advice and the value of including each component in your own custom Combat Tracker.
1. Core Rules
• Color Code and Highlight – Colored fonts and highlighted cells are instant visual communicators. If your game includes a critical monster state at half hit points (i.e. bloodied), then color or highlight that field red, for example. Or gray out or hide the lines of defeated monsters.
Also color code major areas of your combat tracker – make sure its three core sections of basic rules, part info and encounter info stand out.
Do the same for different members of the party by theme, role or class. For example, tribal characters might be highlighted green, while martial or melee characters might all be highlighted brown.
• Page Reference – Include page references to your rulebooks throughout your Combat Tracker, at least for complex or frequently referenced combat rules. • Encounter Start Distance – Include the basic rules that determine starting
encounter distance. A small table that displays starting weather or visibility conditions and typical distances makes an excellent, simple and consistent reference.
• Monster Readiness – In the upcoming encounter and adventure, are the monsters going to be on high alert? Intoxicated? Somewhere in between? If your game has rules on monster readiness or alertness levels at encounter start, include a small table of this info as well.
Even if there’s no strict rules on this for your game, a quick one-word note for each encounter (i.e., high alert, drunk, etc.) gives you a sense of how much of a jump the party might have once they encounter the monsters.
• Knowledge DCs – What does the party know as far as automatic knowledge of the monsters they are facing? You’ll need a short table or listing of the standard difficulty or difficulty classes (DCs) for this type of information in front of you. • Skill Check DCs – How about for all other non-combat checks, talents, knacks
and knowledge? Keep a standard skill check DC reference on your Combat Tracker as well, as many of these secondary abilities come into play in combat (i.e., acrobatics, diplomacy, intimidation, trap disarming, etc.).
2. Party Intel
• Party Senses – What level and quality of vision does each member of the party possess? Can they see in the dark? Can they see in the earth beneath their feet? There may be rare information about the combat only certain heightened or special senses bring out.
• Party Languages – Not every combat need be prolonged or even come to fruition. A witty or sharp tongue can end a battle before it begins or at least
change the odds. Know what tongues your party speaks, as languages – especially uncommon ones – can occasionally make for great parlay options.
• Party Defenses – List out all the core defenses of your PC party.
• Key Party Skills – List out the party’s special talents, knacks and knowledge. Know their specialties and be ready for their creative inclusion and application in the context of the encounter.
• Skill Bonuses – Just how good is someone at disarming traps, recalling the history of ruined sites, or imposing their charms on a simple-minded guard? List out the specific bonuses of your characters’ top three to five skills.
3. Encounter Intel
• Encounter Name – Give your encounter a memorable name, similar to many published adventure modules. Focus on a single theme, emotion, place, monster or event. Give your encounter this pillar of personality for you to use as a flavor and improv tool from start to finish!
• Encounter Features – What important mechanically impactful features of the area exist in this encounter? Note them all and optionally list the relevant skills and DCs (i.e. Listen/Spot 20, History 25).
• Initiative Scores or Modifiers – Decide whether you want to track pre-rolled or average initiative modifiers or scores. I typically go with average init scores or modifiers, saving the time of rolling for separate monsters or groups of monsters. I also like how an average initiative result approach yields a consistency of more realistic and immersive role-based quickness through an entire campaign’s worth of combats. Monstrous insects tend to always act faster than slow-moving giants, for example.
• Monster Max and Conditional HPs – The most critical hit point totals are 1) maximum, 2) half-maximum and 3) zero. For 4E GMs especially, make sure you have a column that displays the first two easily and visually. Often, new abilities or attacks in 4E trigger at half and zero monster hit points, so it’s important to have these two numbers in front of you so you don’t forget those triggers. For PFRPG and GMs of other systems, just have one column for starting hit points. • Monster Defenses – List out all the core defenses of your monsters.
• Damage Done – Use a simple Excel formula to total up damage done, or add up the damage manually in a single cell. I’ve come to prefer the former method lately, actually listing out each instance of damage in nearby cells in that monster’s row.
This way I have a detailed blow-by-blow history of damage dealt to the monster and a simple automated formula that steers the value ever closer to key half-hit point or zero values as the combat unfolds.
• Conditions Applied – In addition to visual aids (colored rings, beads, etc.) on the miniatures or tokens atop n the battlefield, map or tiles, I like jotting down a
few notes of the conditions that now plague my monsters thanks to those meddling PCs!
• Notes – A space for any observations, ideas or other inspirations that hit you as the combat develops is helpful. Improvising or wrapping up sooner rather than later might just come out of your scribbled thoughts here.
• Treasure – Why do your PCs do all this insane stuff like battling giants, demons and evil gods anyway? For knowledge, good, honor and glory, certainly – but also for the shiny, enchanted treasure! Write down the encounter’s magical and
monetary rewards.
Example Combat Tracker
Here is a screen shot of a Combat Tracker that includes nearly all of the elements above. This particular snapshot was taken from my recent tribal campaign in the frigid north – a campaign that just wrapped up this very weekend!
Fast Alternative: GM’s Cheat Sheet
A quick alternative when you’re short on set up time and table space is a simple GM’s Cheat Sheet.
The focus of my half-page Word cheat sheet is on party statistics, to give me a quick sense of what they can handle plus a leg-up on inevitable points where I need to improvise the encounters and adventure based on the party’s inevitably surprising actions. After all, they’re the stars of the story, right?
This cheat sheet doesn’t include detailed encounter area or monster information, so I track that in my session notes or in the margins of monster stat block
printouts, for example.
Here’s an example of a recent time- and space-saving GM’s Cheat Sheet from my tribal frozen lands campaign – fresh from the cataclysmic campaign finale!
Metrics & Monsters
Well done! You’ve learned how to create your own custom Combat Tracker including what critical information should be included and how best to track it. Arm yourself with a dashboard of fantastic but well-organized combat data and watch as your combats take off!
What’s Next
Next, we’re going to focus on managing your maps, miniatures and monster tokens. How can you save time and quickly get organized? You’ll learn the answer to that and more in the next lesson.
Resources
Roleplaying Tips: 9 Tools and Integrating Them Into Your Game, The Session Checklist: Ingredients to a Successful Game Session Part 1 and Part 2, and Know Your Players - Building Your Session Checklist Part 1 and Part 2.
More at Leonine Roar: 4e DM’s Cheat Sheet, D&D 4e Condition Markers and Condition Cards, Faster Combat: Combat Triggers Checklist, Mapping Options Deathmatch, and Treasure Cheat Sheet: More Magical Rewards.