Encounters with treasure

[MathemAddicts]

How do people deal with creating encounters, where each creature/NPC has specific treasure they can use during combat or drop once the combat is over? I am having a difficult time setting up my first encounter while taking this into consideration. I must be over-thinking it.

Thanks,
Roy

[Griogre]

It might matter what ruleset you are asking about. But, in general, if a monster is different from stock drag it on the NPC list, change its name if you want and update any combat abilities to reflect its treasure. Typically this is really minor like giving it a bigger plus to hit and/or damage or adjusting its armor - it takes a few seconds.

You might want to get a specific case of what you want to do so we can walk you through it.

[MathemAddicts]

It's for D&D 3.5.

Let's say I have an encounter with a bunch of different creatures; however, the typical bad guy has specialized equipment like a bugbear with 2 potions of healing, a +1 longsword, chainmail, and 6 sp. Do I just track all of those items in a parcel for the encounter, or can I actually add these items to the creatures "inventory" (I don't see an inventory tab, so I am guessing no). The bugbear may wish to use one of those potions of healing partway through combat, so I need to decrement the number of healing potions by 1. If this is in the bugbear's inventory, it's no big deal, but if it is in the parcel, I need to keep that open and remember which item belongs to which creature. What is the best way to do this?

[Griogre]

Ah. Potions and consumables are going to be tricky. Personally, I would put it all on the treasure parcel and then at the end just delete the number of potions used by the bugbears. However, as a reminder after dragging the Bugbears to the NPC list go to the other tab, unlock it, and delete the Character Level adjustment info and add inventory there under skills. It's not like you need level adjustment to run the bugbear and then you can see it's special inventory as an equipment reminder. I would change the name to Bugbear Elite, Scouts, Guards or whatever these guys are too.

There is something you need to know though. Copies of the monster are copied into the tracker and the tracker copies are unique and are not linked back to the NPC list or Encounter. This means inventory changes once a monster is on the tracker are only going to reflected in one place not both. This is why I would just use the parcel list to keep track of potions remaining.

How serious I would be about inventory on these guys would be based on their status to your party. If they are low level cannon fodder I would just eyeball it and reduce the parcel by a reasonable amount at the end of the encounter and not bother with detailed inventory management. On the other hand if they are like the climatic encounter holding the gate while a BBEG gets away, I would track the potions on a scratch pad of paper because its just easier (and faster) to not mess around digitally with inventory management and reduce the amount if potions by the exact amount they used.

[MathemAddicts]

Thanks, Griogre.

I see why the NPC/Creature list is not linked to the Combat Tracker (otherwise, wounds in the Combat Tracker would affect the base creature in the NPC list). Should I consider the creatures in the NPC list as the "standard, fully-prepared" atypical creatures, and those in the Combat Tracker as the current state of a specific version of that creature?

[Griogre]

Yes that's good. Basically the Bugbear Guard on the NPC list is how we equip the Bugbear Guards (the template) and the bugbears on the tracker are the individuals: Broken Fang, Droopy Ear, and Six Claw (or more likely Bugbear Guard 11, Bugbear Guard 23, and Bugbear Guard 3).

Edit: FYI you can drag one of the Bugbear Guards onto the Encounter list and rename it there to Broken Fang, and then drag another Bugbear Guard to the Encounter list rename it to Droopy Ear and so on. When you load these guys into the tracker they will have the individual names and initiatives even though they are all "Bugbear Guards".

[MathemAddicts]

Are you saying that NPCs added to the Encounter list can be individualized (just as in the Combat Tracker)? That is, I could drag my Bugbear template from the NPC list to the Encounter list seven times, and modify each of these separately so I have seven completely different Bugbears borne of the same template which I can thereafter just drag into the Combat Tracker as a group of seven different NPCs?

[Griogre]

Individualized is too strong a term (personalized?), each can be given a unique name and since the combat tracker groups NPCs by name this would get a separate entry on the tracker. This is a good way to deal with monster that don't usually wear their own forms, ie a Succubus or Doppleganger because you can also change the token on the encounter form to override the normal token.

Also to be clear you don't usually drag entries from the Encounter list, you press the down button and they are loaded into the tracker for you, in case you didn't mean that.

[MathemAddicts]

Okay. Got it. I have not run an encounter yet, so the learning curve is somewhat steep. Thank you for the help.