Come back fighting!
Well, Book Three is finally finished and off to the publishers. Now I have some (rare) time on my hands, I can start addressing some of the niggling things on my 'to-do' list The first of those is a DQ combat tracker!
After playing through Book Three (many, many times!), I ended up with about four notepads filled with my combat scrawls. As I looked back through those pages, it got me thinking about how I record and track my own combats. I thought other players might find that info valuable. Obviously, everyone will have their own methods, so the combat tracker sheet I have designed may not be to everyone’s tastes, but it mirrors how I record combat when I am playing.
The one thing I wanted to do with the combat tracker was to make it easier to track passive damage when fighting multiple opponents. This will have particular significance in Book Three, as a lot of the combats are against large groups of enemies. Obviously, if you have passives like thorns and barbs, you will be damaging all opponents every round – but then there are those opponents you will have wounded (i.e. inflicted health damage on them), and therefore they will be taking damage from your other passives, such as bleed and venom.
The area at the top of the sheet is to record the negative modifier of passive damage. In this example, all opponents are taking damage from thorns and barbs (-2 a round), whilst the first opponent has been wounded and is also taking damage from bleed (-3 a round). The hero is also taking -1 a round from a special ability. By having this at the top of the sheet, it should make it much easier (I hope) to see at a glance who is affected by what passive.
The second area of the sheet is pretty self-explanatory – here you can keep track of your opponents’ health and your own:
The final part of the sheet is for ‘notes and abilities’. Players will probably use this area in different ways, depending on the combat. For example, you may want to write down and record the abilities you have used, or note down any special abilities that your opponents may have. In some combats, you may need to record the number of combat rounds, so you could use this space to strike off each numbered round once it has been played.
I know the sheet is a little ‘rough and ready’ looking at the moment. It's essentially a work-in-progress, but I thought I would share it with you now (its available on the downloads page). I'd obviously welcome feedback – good or bad – so that I can continue to tweak it and update as necessary.
Happy adventuring!
MJW