During the thrill of combat in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dungeons & Dragons a lot can be happening all at oౠnce. Managing players and all your enemy creatures can pile up and cause slow-downs. While many tips and tricks will help you sp🍬eed up your gameplay, using good tools makes the management of your combat much easier.

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To keep the chaos of combat♛ in check try out the tracking tools listed here. Just one piece of assistance can take a lot of the men൩tal load of managing your games away, and pairing multiple of these products together will make running your encounters a cinch.

The Best Ways To Keep Track Of Your Dungeons & Dragons Combat

Best Tool To Track Spells
Official Dungeons & Dragons Spellbook Cards - Arcane

Using this set of Spellbook cards will help you find any arcane magic you need during your session. With reference cards for hundreds of spells you can keep out what you'll need for every comb🐓at. By having the spells that come up most or which your NPCs will be casting out and ready, you can avoid the hassle of searching through books for answers.

Pros & Cons
  • Includes massive spell list
  • Keep relevant info accessible
  • Great value for the cost
  • Some buyers recieved misprints

Although players who are running a spellcaster can certainly slow down gameplay, it is compounded further when DMs are controlling spellcasters in an encounter. With the arcane spell cards you can lay out the spells you'll need for each session to keep play 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:quick and easy to resolve. Better yet, when you need to track concentration or durat🅰ion, the cards serv🎐e another function.

Most spells with a duration last for one minute, and if you are playing D&D you'll already have ten-sided dice at hand. You can use spare dice placed on spell cards as counters for how many rounds are left on an effect. For players who struggle to remember spell times or effects, you can hand them an easy reference to keep their casting smooth.

Best Way To Manage Active Effects
Grajar 52 Unique DND Miniatures Condition Rings

This kit with dozens of tracker rings will help you display and track active effects or𝔉 debuffs. During combat, many different abilities or conditions can come into play, and even when not using miniatures handing these to players can help remind them of their character state.

Pros & Cons
  • Wide variety of conditions/effects
  • Multiple rings of each type
  • Some minis will not fit well

On the topic of concentration, keeping your mind aware of a dozen different creatures with various conditions strains the mind quite heavily. Using condition rings you can easily mark off enemies or players who are maintaining a spell, grappled, knocked prone, or poisoned for just𝕴 a few examples.

On the battlefield of combat more than anywhere else knowledge is power, and if you have strategic players you've probably experienced slow combat due to confusion on what the state of enemies are.

This lets both you and your players easily understand what's happening at a glance. Knowing whats what on the play area speeds up decision-making, and lets you focus on things other than tracking active effects.

Best Way To Handle Monster Stats
StatTrackers - A GM Accessory for 5th Edition

The box set from Stat Trackers offers hundreds of stat cards with monsters, animals, NPCs, and blanks for anything you'll need. You can usꦇe them eas🐽ily with or without a DM's screen to keep needed stat blocks at hand.

Pros & Cons
  • Includes blank cards for custom stats
  • Full range of monsters and NPCs
  • Folding and erasing can wear out cards quickly

You want to make an interesting and fresh encounter, with 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:monsters besides the standard goblin or ogre. But that begs the question, what were that creature's stats again? With these tracking cards, it is easy to pull out monsters and creatures for any encounter and easily reference all their important stats.

The cards 💖can be folded ov🌼er a DM screen or stood up on their own for easy reading.

For those who want their players to know what they are up against you can leave the name visible at the top 🤡of the cards. When tracking the health of enemies or effꦑects on them you can place counters and markers on or beneath the card for reference.

You can avoid a lot of wasted time keeping books open or searching throug🎀h page𓆉s for monster abilities or statistics.

With the included blank cards you can also track your own player's capabilities for quick saving throws or other checks. Simply knowing the armor class, passive wisdom, and initiative of your players at any given moment is worth the cost of these cards, and you can track even more with ease.

Best Method Of Tracking Turns
C4Labs 12-Flag Expandable Initiative Tracker

Use this flag-based initiative tool to track turn order and display who has spent their actions easily. You can write on and erase the panels to write names or monster turns down. For visual notice of wh💝os turn it is, you can turn the flag away as a turn completes, easily tracking the order.

Often getting combat started at all can be a major headache. Everyone rolling initiative and checking who's first and who's second can take a lot of energy and time. If you make use of the common trick for speeding up combat encounters where you roll initiative beforehand, you can prep this flag tracker in advance.

With the turn order already known and easily seen you can jump right into the action by prompting the quickest player. As the round progresses, you can adjust the flags to show whose turn has already passed to keeꦦp things flowing. Dry-erase flags make it easy to set up for each game, and with the number of flags available, there should be no issues even with large player groups.

Stratagem 5-Pack Sci-Fi Pocket Health Trackers

Making use of stat trackers with numerical wheels makes quick work of knowing health, armor class, and other important scores. Often used by 🐽players these work great as a DM for tracking the state of your players or monsters.

Pros & Cons
  • Great price for pack of five
  • Track multiple stats per tracker
  • Easy to use and read
  • The wheels sometimes feel flimsy or get stuck

You might be thrown off by the theme of these character trackers, but they work for Dungeons & Dragons or really 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:any other system. Normall💜y thes♛e are most used by players to track their own hit points and armor class, but they work wonders for a DM as well.

These conveniently track the to-hit bonus, health, and armor of enemies, or those of your own players. For larger combats, you can even track multiple monster's hit points on a single tracker. With each tracker able to mark two three-digit numbers the pack of five could track 10 monsters' health with numbers up to 150.

When using these for Fifth Edition characters, the best uses for the numbers on the tracker are hit points, armor cla💖ss, and the attack bonus for your weapon. This still leaves you with an additional three-digit number, which could be your hit point maximum, equipm𒐪ent charges, or a passive ability score.

Best Way To Show Objects At Play
ArcKnight Flat Plastic Miniatures - Objects and Scenery

Keep your environment interesting yet e♔asy to read to allow for truly unique play at the table. Throw down a bookcase, break through barricades, and know exactly where🃏 that mimic- I mean crate, is placed.

Pros & Cons
  • Lets you mark the location of important objects
  • Includes many options for decor or interactables
  • Looks great while easy to set up
  • Other solutions can be cheaper

The game state on the table is important to understand, as discussed 🐠when looking at active effects in play. Dynamic▨ combat is best when it involves making use of the items and things around you. Flipping up a table to use as makeshift cover, throwing down a quick trap, or lighting some oil with a nearby torch keeps your fights exciting.

Often when you use a map or draw out an arena for combat you will include objects and furniture. But a static environment, or one that requires constant dry-erase writing makes dynamic play difficult to encourage or keep track of. By using stand-up figures you can easily let players loose on the environment without getting caught up on what's where.

This kit and others from ArcKnight make for beautiful and practical displays of items, doors, and other important points of interest. Although the kits they offer are a good deal, simple paper and pen or other markers can easily track these types of interactions as well. However, if you want something quality to show off your entry points and interesting locales then you'll want to pick this up.

FAQ

Do I Need A Map And Fancy Tools To Play?

Just paper and pencils can get you through many combats and encounters. Playing out your combats in theatre of the mind also lets you skip on maps and other physical resources. If you are starting out, then the best help are spell or monster reference cards. They let you check rules and statistics quickly at the table so you don't feel bogged down or like gameplay is slowed.

What's Most Important To Keep Track Of?

The hit points of your monsters and players are one of the more important metrics to know during combat. Turn order is less important if you use a "right to left" system or another initiative substitute. Besides the health of the creatures on the field, their armor class, and their attack bonus are important to keep handy so you don't need to ask for every combat roll. Other things to keep available are common spell effects and the abilities of your monsters.

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