Quick Initiative

I had a problem

I found 15 solutions

I made my own.

A Problem Solved With Patience, Prep, Pen, and Paper

“Roll Initiative!” - I say, as my party insulted the hostile envoy

The five of them all rattle off their initiative rolls while I am frantically scribbling down the list of enemy combatants. I ask each of them to repeat themselves one at a time and scratch it quickly on my note sheet. Now I roll for all creatures making sure to correctly assign the values next to my illegibly written names. Lastly, I rewrite the whole list in the proper initiative order.

Combat progresses, monsters have taken damage, and my notes are hardly functional. My party is doing chip damage and I am crossing out and rewriting health so many times that it’s getting hard to see who is assigned to what value.

Phase two starts and I introduce Legendary Actions between turns. Combat is becoming dynamic and it is more of a conversation than clear rounds. I look up after doing some research on a player question and go to take a creature’s turn.

“Hey, wasn’t I next?”

The Host of Solutions

First solution to one pain point, be explicit with my players that I want them to roll initiative and wait for me to ask for their results. This is something I have already done, but should have been something we went over in our first session.

When looking online for solutions to the management problem, I found plenty of options. A quick search of “dnd combat tracker” provides multiple hits to many battle tested applications. With most, my issue was that they were bloated: too many unnecessary features, account registration — and worst of all — advertisements. With the rest, I just did not vibe with the site styles.

The last solution was to make my own…

Introducing Quick Initiative

Now, setting up a combat encounter and tracking the state of the game has never been easier!

Enter player and monster data into any of the fields. NOTE: No fields are required and all SRD monsters are available for quick-add.
Add player or monster to the encounter. Repeating until all combatants are added.
Quickly roll initiative for all combatants using the “dice” icon above the initiative column.
Click the vertical elipsis to modify any value as desired.

This is enough for general combat management. Initiative, health, and clear visual indicators are present for reference. To take it one step further I wanted to make round management as simple as possible. Starting, stopping, and progressing combatant turns is as easy as clicking the button associated with your desired action. As a bonus I tossed a round counter in there as well.

Live and available for use: https://combat.boring-site.blog

Feedback

Please feel free to reach out with bugs, features, or really anything. I want this to be useful not just to myself but to others.