How do you manage NPC CA's

[Cuediin]

Other the weekend I ran Devil's Gulch scenario.
I have found it incrasingly hard to manage the NPC's with their missing/ forfeit CA's, or CA's where they cannot attack but only defend.

So, I think I have come up with a solution.
As noted before I am using poker chips to manage CA's.
However, I have enhanced this now so that now, I do the following:
Blue chips = attack/defend
white chips = defend only
red chips = forfeit/miss

Each NPC starts with their number of CA blue chips.
IE 3.
If they can only defend for their next CA(eg, after a minor stumble or an evade roll) i place a white chip at the top of their action stack. (this does not matter, because I monitor the discard pile)
As they discard chips, i ensure that the number of chips that are in the discard pile never exceeds the number of CA's they have.

By piling on red or white chips to their action stack, I can monitor how many CA's they are missing due to stun location affects, or, being stunned/dazed. but also monitor the white chips to ensure they dont attack when they can only defend.

I now plan to make up some cards, with the discard pile and action pile markers, HP's, base SR, and a status box (prone etc).
This is to compliment the main NPC stat page, which will have their various skills or abilities as a master sheet, but, then i can have these cards which deal with the more specific actions on that particular NPC.

Does this sound like overkill?
How do you guys manage all these different parameters?

Cheers,
Cuediin

PS. They only got to the Great Hall (after 5hrs of play they got lost on the way there and then they had a major fight with 6 scorpion men hanging off walls. That took 2.5hrs to complete, partially because i was floundering a bit)

 

[Deleriad]

That's pretty similar to what I do.

Pen and pencil is the other way. For each NPC I have a number of shapes in pen "O" for CAs that can be used for anything and "[]" for those that are restricted in some way (usually dual wielding).

Each time a CA is used I cross it out with "X" in pencil. If some future CAs are "defend" only I put a single line through it "\" then X it once it's been used. if something else happens I'll either X out a number of future marks or put an appropriate number of symbols next to the NPC and rub them out as required.

Hope they had fun with Devil's Gulch even though they didn't finish it. It's a tough fight and probably most unprepared parties will have to retreat first time and take stock. If your players haven't played RQ before they're likely to have new levels of respect for the dangers of combat.

An awful lot of the time taken in RQ combat tends to be players (and sometimes the GM) worrying over the right thing to do. There are a lot of options. The actual mechanics don't take as long as you might think and once players get used to what works for them you start to see them making decisions more quickly.

 

[riordan]

you could use two-sided chips or mark their bottom side. so whenever someone's next CA is missed/forfeited you'd just have to turn it over instead of having to check the discard stack.

this would also work with different colored chips for "parry only". instead of juggling with four different colors, just put a cross on their underside.

 

[DamonJynx]

We just started using poker chips in our last session for managing CA and it works really well.

I was using an Elenoin from Elric, 5 CA's 2 of which must be used for her hair (used to entangle and parry). I used a different colour chip for the hair and that seemed to work well enough.

As a GM, I reckon you've too much to do already so I like to simplify wherever possible. I use a combat tracker for initiative and NPC damage.

 

[Pruneau]

I use a home made CA board to keep track of CA, SR, Stuns, Long spell duration...

I use magnetic nameshields with whiteboard film to write the name, base SR, current SR and CA
I use small square magnets for CA, a yellow one for the extra CA, red magnets for stun, blue ones for spells. Works perfect. I leave it out in the open and let players see it, it allows them to plan better and they get a feeling of control, they can decide how risky they wanna play it.

Here's a pic before I started using the blue magnets for long spells.

http://runequestfun.blogspot.com/2011/06/combat-action-tracker-for-mrq-ii.html

 

[Jay Bonser]

I am using maptools. (This does require everyone to have a laptop or access to a computer) Go to www.rptools.net! I have created some macro to keep track of CA's and added in some "states" that are represented on the computer (like stunned for ,1 2, or 3 CA's, or bleeding, etc...) I have recently slowly begun to figure out maptools and use it effectively with Runequest. It really helps to keep track of all the information.

 

[Jujitsudave]

I found the most efficent thing was to write down the combatant's name, the initiative #, then a number of circles indicating how many CAs they had. Worked well.