Character Sheet Mod: Tracking Actions/Dice Penalties

[Liquidsabre]

Greetings fellow SWD6'ers!

I've recently stumbled across an interesting action/penalty/wound mechanic for tracking on a player card or character sheet that I wanted to share.

Below is a pic of one of my favorite online fan char sheets and I've modified it to include a Condition Track at the top to mark the number of character actions taken each combat round. This requires the use of tokens/counters of at least 3 different colors, or as I have been using, Green, Red, and Yellow d6s.

Green = Action Penalty
Yellow = Reaction/Stun Penalty
Red = Wound Penalty



The idea is that at the beginning of each combat round a player decides how many actions they would like their character to take as normal. For example, the human smuggler Koth has decided to take two actions this round. The player then places two green d6s in the first and second squares (proceeding from left to right).



The penalty shown after the last die is -1. This tells the player that they have a -1D to all dice rolls for this combat round. The two green d6s on the character sheet is also clearly visible to the GM who can tell at any time during the combat how many actions the character is taking for that combat round. Where the mechanic begins to show its usefulness is during combat and tracking all penalties, reactions, stuns, and wounds that may arise during combat.

Back to Koth our intrepid smuggler. He has taken two actions this round and is using his first to pull out his blaster carbine! A hidden foe, however, has their blaster ready and fires on Koth! Koth decides to take a reaction to dodge (without sacrificing his next action) and adds a yellow die to the end of his Action Track, which now shows a -2D penalty for all his rolls.



However our unlucky hero fails to dodge and is hit by a blaster bolt for 1 wound! The red wound die will carryover to subsequent rounds so it is added to the first square of the Condition Track and shifts all dice one to the right.

The GM moves on to second actions for the round and sees that Koth has a second action to take (noted by the 2nd green die). Koth takes his second and last action to fire on his attacker! We can see at a glance that Koth's penalty is -3D!



Thoughts and reactions? I've refined this concept a little since I first introduced it to one of my fellow SWd6 gaming buddies and he seemed to like it a lot.

PS - Inspiration for this idea came from a euro-style board game called Eclipse that uses a similar mechanic for simplifying tracking of modifiers for each player's empire. (btw if you are fan of 4X board games I highly recommend!)
_________________
Belsarius: "All clear!"
Sarge: "Alright, now....wait a sec kid. Do you mean 'all clear' or is this a slavers-on-Daysum III 'all clear'?"

[Bren]

That's a nice idea. Great graphics by the way. 8)

Usually I do all that with scratch paper and in my head, but I think something concrete and tactile like this would really appeal to some players (one of mine in particular) and having tracks laid out for all the PCs would make it easy for the GM to track and see where they are and remember when the temp penalty for stun comes off.

Personally I wouldn't use the character sheet though since it takes up a lot of table space and there is usually something on the back of the character sheet that needs to be seen. So probably a separate tracking sheet for in game use.

[Liquidsabre]

Thanks Bren! I was going to create a graphic handout for ease of explaining the mechanic for players anyhow so figured I'd use them here. Yea most veteran GMs won't need the tracker but my hope is that this mechanism could help reduce the time/energy burden for vets and make it easier for new players/GMs to play the game.

I agree with using a Player Card rather than the character sheet. While play testing the concept last night I ran into the same issue when I wanted to check my equipment list on the back side of the sheet.

The only remaining concern I could fathom is the chance of knocking the dice askew, scattering them, or rolling dice rolls into them and mixing them up. For folk worried about that my only suggestion is to use single-row custom Warhammer unit movement trays or something like these:.

Either that or use the small, flat, colored glass stones you can find at any hobby stores!


_________________
Belsarius: "All clear!"
Sarge: "Alright, now....wait a sec kid. Do you mean 'all clear' or is this a slavers-on-Daysum III 'all clear'?"

[dadofett]

I like it a lot....I'm going to give it a try!
_________________
Alpha-ØØ "Nihl"

[Bren]

[Liquidsabre]

Here is a SWd6 Core Rules character sheet (1 page) with the mod at the top in case anyone might be interested. Shared somewhat successfully as a pdf via google docs.

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B6Fb_Pj_tZ5SMjNlMzZhNWItN2FmNS00MGQ5LTljN2ItMDFkNTVhOTU2YTRi
_________________
Belsarius: "All clear!"
Sarge: "Alright, now....wait a sec kid. Do you mean 'all clear' or is this a slavers-on-Daysum III 'all clear'?"

[Bren]

Thanks. The STAR WARS logo is a nice touch.

I may try that out this weekend.

[garhkal]

[Fallon Kell]