Preparing Combats in Advance

[bigdruid]

Apologies if this is elsewhere, I did some searches but couldn't find it. My group only meets every other week and have a narrow window so I try to prepare as much as I can in advance.

One thing I'd like to do is to prepare combats in advance, and by that, I mean put in the various critters in the combat tracker and put a link to it in the story area for that room and then do the same thing for the next however many combats. This would be especially helpful and important where the stats aren't precisely what are built in for the creatures (goblin sub-chiefs may have diff stats than the rank and file).

Thanks in advance all

Gary

[Cantstanzya]

Unfortunatly you cannot set the combat tracker up in advance, but using the stick pins (short cuts) on the map you can place these pins as links to events and personalities. If you haven't found the stick pins, right click on the map and then select the layers and then enable shortcuts. If you really want to get creative you can create a new button on your desktop that would be upcoming battles, or wandering monsters where like you said you could create in advance and have a map with the locations of the monsters. Then when you click the shortcut it would then pop up a small sheet that you could drag to the combat tracker. I'm always looking for ways to speed up combat. I may have to try this out myself. Thanks for the idea.

[Ged]

One thing I'd like to do is to prepare combats in advance, and by that, I mean put in the various critters in the combat tracker and put a link to it in the story area for that room and then do the same thing for the next however many combats. This would be especially helpful and important where the stats aren't precisely what are built in for the creatures (goblin sub-chiefs may have diff stats than the rank and file).
For speeding up the setup of an encounter, I create a category (tab) in the Personalities and drag the monsters I need from the Monster book (and create the required NPCs). When I've got them in the Personalities, I edit them to my liking. Then when the encounter is up I just drag and drop all the folks in the particular tab of Personalities to the combat tracker.

If you need to distinguish different tabs quickly, you can label them (just drag some text from the chat input and drop it onto the particular tab - the text will show up as a tooltip).

[bigdruid]

Thank you for taking the time to reply Ged. It isn't the whole solution but if it works for me, and I don't see why it wouldn't, it will definitely allow the most time-consuming parts to be done in advance.

Umm, can you please duck back into the code-cave now, we realllly want 2.0 :)

[Griogre]

I use a version of Cantstandzya and Ged's techniques. I use the pin short cuts on the players map as short cuts to storybook area descriptions. A nice thing about pins is that players can't see them. I put the room descriptions in chat frames on the story book. I drag all monsters into the personality book first like Ged suggested and make any changes or add any unique critters/NPC's. Once I've done that I add links to the creatures in that room/area in the story book.

At game time I only have the map open and as the party moves around I click on the pins to get the room descriptions/info and lists of monsters. If it is a combat encounter I click the link(s) to the personality list to open the personallities. Once you have the personality's open - you can drag them on the combat tracker.

This may sound a bit complicated but it is very fast. Faster than trying to find things in the storybook or personality list, plus it has the benefit is that the usually the only things you have open is the player map plus one storybook entry and any monsters you need.

[Jingo]

... Or-- and I know this might sound like going back to the cave man days-- you can just prepare it in advance on a sheet of paper (assuming you have the stats already in that format.) Sometimes just keeping a sheet of paper nearby and a pencil is easier. I did this GMing my first two sessions, and it's not too bad.

[bigdruid]

What's a pencil? :D

I may end up doing that, since screen real-estate is a bit cramped anyhow.

[Griogre]

Before I switched over to FG, I ran my encounters with Initiative Cards by Game Mechanics. I still use them for big combats. I like having all the player and monster info in one place including all the stuff not on the combat tracker like touch and flat-footed ACs, ect. I like them better than just a piece of paper because you can re-use them.

The blank initiative sheets are a free download here (https://www.thegamemechanics.com/freebies/index.asp). The Other Game Company also has some free blank sheets I here (https://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=2048&). Both companies also sell filled in versions which are a great time saver if you use alot of SRD monsters.