Tracking initiatives can be challenging at times, especially when many creatures and NPCs are in play. I once DMed a session with a combat encounter that lasted for over three hours. Trust me, tracking initiative for that combat was a nightmare, with over forty enemies, the players, their summons, and the NCPs.
At that point, I was tracking initiatives in the most basic way, pen, and paper. Later, I did some more research and found a better tool, which is the one I currently use.
Let’s start from the beginning though and learn what are some of the initiative tracking methods that you can use.
Tracking initiative with pen and paper
Tracking initiative with pen and paper is a method that existed since the first day that D&D was played. I bet that Gary was there in his garage with his friend and a notebook, taking notes and doing math.
This method is very intuitive to use. You write down the characters’ initiatives from the highest to the lowest.
There are different formats that you can use:
- All characters together, top to bottom;
- Players and NPC on a side, monsters on another;
- Players on the left, NPC in the middle, and monsters on the right.
Which one to use is up to you and your preference. I personally prefer the first one to have a full vision of the combat order.
In addition to the character initiative, you would want to track their HP and their AC if you don’t want to ask your players mid-combat.
The pen and paper method can be easy and quick to use when the combat encounter has a few characters. As soon as you start tracking more characters it can become overwhelming. Consider also that you have to quickly math the HP and you do not have an easy way to track characters’ conditions, other than just writing it next to their name. Furthermore, you need to manually count the turns.
It is the preferred choice for most DMs at the beginning, some of them stick to it even later. I moved away from it after a few months I started DMing because it was just too slow and too messy for me.
If you want a good notebook to take notes on, check out our Keep Calm and Take Notes Notebook!
Tracking initiative with sheets
Another method to track initiative is using a Google Sheet or Microsoft Excel, or any other similar software. It is very similar to the pen and paper method, but it’s digital. I never personally used this method, but one of the Elemental Beacon’s admins, Rareș, uses it although his sheet looks a bit different and simpler.
Let’s check an example Google Sheet:
This sheet contains the most important information you need for all the characters involved in the combat encounter:
- Column A is used to enter the initiative of each character.
- Column B where you enter their name. I prefer to use the character name instead of the player name.
- Column C is the character AC so that you do not need to ask every time.
- Column D is the character’s HP. This column’s value is calculated automatically, I will explain shortly how.
- Column E is for tracking conditions. The number next to the condition indicates the turn when the condition ends.
- Column F is for tracking the turns played.
You find the sheet here. Make a copy of it and use it for your encounters!
Automatically calculate the character’s HP
As I mentioned in the previous paragraph, column D is used to track the character’s HP and it is calculated automatically. Let’s see how.
You can see that on the right of the characters’ table I have another table with some columns from 0 to 15, and numbers in it. This table is used to track the initial character’s HP in column 0 (or H), and then the damage taken and healing received in each following column. Using negative values for damage and positive values for healing, we are able to automatically calculate column D by summing all the columns from H to W.
The table tracks up to fifteen numbers. You can add more columns if your combat needs that. If you do so and you end up with columns that are outside of the screen, I recommend freezing the columns from A to F. This way, when scrolling to the right, you still have access to the characters’ data.
Tracking initiative with improved-initiative.com
This is my go-to method. The website improve-initiative.com is a freemium tool that you can use to track initiatives in combat. It comes preloaded with all the monsters and spells from the free Basic Rules, and you can add more monsters to the catalog manually, or with a browser extension if you subscribe to the author’s Patreon.
The tool has many features and I will not go through all of them, but I will show you the layout and the features that I use most frequently.
The interface
As soon as you visit the website and build your first encounter, you are presented with the main interface of improved-initiative. In the black left sidebar, you have buttons to quickly access everything you need and perform some actions. Hre you can start or clear a combat encounter, reset HP, remove all monsters, etc.
After the sidebar, the first column is the catalog, where you can filter by Creatures, Characters, Encounters, and Spells. Here you will choose what creatures to add to your encounter by clicking on their name in the catalog. You can do the same with the Player Characters, or pre-created encounters. In the Spells tab, you can click on the spell’s name to see what it does.
Hovering the mouse over the magnifying glass will show you the stat block of the creature.
When you start a combat encounter, the left section is replaced by the stat block of the character who is currently active.
In the middle column, you find the initiative tracker. Here you will see all the characters as they are added and their data:
You can see the initiative roll on the far left followed by the character’s name. Next to that, the current and maximum HP, color-based for ease-of-use, and the character’s AC right after it. On the far right, you find the conditions and other data as they are added manually by you using the quick tools that you can see on the Aboleth. The conditions can also have a round counter that removes them automatically on that round. As you can see on Nyrus, he will lose the Stunned condition automatically on round 3. Clicking on the x will remove the condition earlier.
In the tool’s settings, you can choose what quick buttons to show in this section. In the screenshot, from left to right, you can find the following buttons:
- Apply damage;
- Apply healing;
- Apply temporary HP;
- Add tag, used for conditions and custom tags;
- Remove from encounter;
- Rename, useful with creatures with a specific name, like the BBEG;
- Hide/Show from player’s view;
- Edit Stat Block for this encounter.
Lastly, on the right column, you will find the stat block of the selected combatant:
Here you can see the creature’s abilities, traits, and actions. By clicking on any of the underlined numbers, you will quickly roll the corresponding dice. For example, looking at the trait Explosive Death of this Acid Ant, you can see that it does 2d4 of acid damage to the surrounding characters when the creature dies.
If you click on that 2d4, improved-initiative will roll for you 2d4 and give you a value that you can then apply as damage manually to any character as necessary.
This section will also show spells and legendary/lair actions if the character has any. You can also track their spell slots or legendary/lair actions when they are used.
You also have the ability to view the spell’s details by clicking on the spell’s name in the stat block. This will allow you to quickly roll for damage for the spell.
Creating PCs
You can create player characters to track the players at the table. You can add all the features they have, but personally, I track only AC, HP, Passive Perception, and Languages.
I find that the other data are not necessary for combat and I can ask quickly the player when I need to know them.
The Passive Perception and Language though I find useful. Asking for the passive perception of a player basically reveals that there is something to find in the area. If none of them has a high enough score, they will ask to do a Perception check to find what they are missing.
By tracking it, I avoid this metagaming and I only tell something if one or more of them pass the Passive Perception check.
The same is valid for languages. I do not like to ask around the table what languages they speak because it takes time from the game. Being able to check it myself increases the immersion when I tell them that “You see runes carved on the coffin. Raegar, you recognize the script as Dwarvish but you do not understand what it says”.
Pre-made Encounters
Improved-initiative.com also allows you to pre-make encounters, if you wish to. You can add all the monsters to the initiative tracker without the player characters, and save them as an encounter.
Simply click on the pre-made encounter to add all the monsters at the same time to the initiative tracker. Be careful, the monsters will be added in addition to whatever already is in the tracker.
I tried using this feature but I did not love it. I find that it takes too much preparation time compared to quickly adding monsters on the spot.
Player View
A cool feature of this tool is the Player View. You can share a link with your players that they can visit from any device to see the initiative tracker. Of course, they will not see the same as you. You can configure in the settings what they have access to.
In my case, they can see the initiative order, including the monsters present and the HP of each player character. They do not see any details of the monster other than their name and their initiative roll.
When we play at my table, I have an iPad showing this view at one end of the table. Everyone knows exactly when their turn (and that of a monster) comes.
This has greatly sped up combat encounters for my party. I highly recommend it.
Premium Features
If you subscribe to the author’s Patreon, you get access to some premium features such as some additional settings for the Player View, options to color code some elements of the tool, and the ability to change the font and the background image.
The best premium feature that is worth entirely the $ 5 of the Patreon subscription is the D&DBeyond StatBlock Importer. This browser extension allows you to quickly import into the catalog any monster from D&DBeyond.com. Let’s be serious, nobody would manually import monsters by writing complex JSON code manually. This extension saves hours of your time.
How do you track initiative?
Now you know some of the most common methods to track initiative, and my preferred one. There are more methods than the ones outlined here, for example, Index Cards, but I never even tried them and I am not sure about how to efficiently use them in a game.
What method do you use and why? Let me know in the comments!
