Hiding enemy names

[arnon]

Hello people,

I'm sure I saw this once somewhere on the boards, but I cannot find it anywhere:

On a map, when the players hover their mouse-pointer over a token the name of that token (if linked to the combat tracker) will pop-up.

Is there any way to hide it (from the players at least)?

Thanks,

[Valarian]

Change the name in the combat tracker before adding the token to the map.

[zabulus]

Or after, I think?

[arnon]

That's a possibility, but... in the combat tracker, I want to know who it is that is acting...

[Griogre]

I change the names in the combat tracker to things like Critter 1, Human, Elf, Monster, Invis Thing, Voice in the Dark, Player Killer, ect if they don't make their knowledge checks. The drag and drop still works and the token is highlighted so I don't find it important to have the actual name in the tracker (for some reason they really seem to get excited about the Player Killer one ;) ).

On the 4E ruleset I am thinking of just loading in Humanoid, Abbarition, ect in the Encounter list.

[Oberoten]

Shouldn't be too hard to put a little checkbox next to the names that'd prevent names from being sent to the token?

- Obe

[Tenian]

You'd think that, but your options with tokens are very limited.

I looked at the possibility of modifying a token's tool tip in order to add conditions ("marked by","bloodied","dazed",etc) and found it to be clunky.

Near as I can tell the "name" field is directly linked to the token tool tip. There doesn't seem to be any code behind it, nor have I found any way to set a token's tool tip, short of changing the value in the "name" field.

What you would have to do is create a new field, "altname" for example purposes. You could then display both "name" and "altname" on the GM tracker. "name" would have to be what the players see, where "altname" would be the true description. You could then add some additional control (a button/checkbox) that set the "name" to match the "altname" when the players have identified the monster.

Of course someone with more knowledge than me may post that there is a better way to do this :)

[arnon]

OK, thanks for the advise people :)

[Angloson]

Hey, any new possibilities on this?

[Griogre]

In 4E because you use passive knowledge checks to ID monsters and you know what your parties passive knowledge checks are, I now change the encounter names to what they will know or not know.

Last night when I was running, the paladin looked around the corner into a room and was the only one to see a monster and had absolutely no idea what it was so I just put Tarrasque down for it's name. A few rounds later the wizard saw the monster and yelled out the right name to the group and then the two characters argued back and forth on what the monster was. :p

[zabulus]

<deleted since what I wrote was already mentioned. That should teach me to read a whole thread before replying>