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Maybe it's just me but... I don't get it. I love the map tool, token tool, all that... But the initiative tool escapes me. I really don't see how having this around is actually easier than simply keeping it written down in a text file. You already have the NPC's and players' stats laid out before you, and you have to do calculations and all that anyway... Why have to just type it in all over again, just to have a check mark next whose turn it currently is?

"Hello" to you too, Chazz.

Chazz wrote:Maybe it's just me but... I don't get it. I love the map tool, token tool, all that... But the initiative tool escapes me. I really don't see how having this around is actually easier than simply keeping it written down in a text file. You already have the NPC's and players' stats laid out before you, and you have to do calculations and all that anyway... Why have to just type it in all over again, just to have a check mark next whose turn it currently is?

I'll bet you don't track spellcasting correctly right now, do you? If you did, you'd see some benefit.

For example, say Alfred the wizard casts Haste at initiative 20. Bob the fighter moves to attack a bad guy. On the next round, Alfred delays until his initiative is after Bob. Does that mean Bob gets an extra round of Haste? (You may have to think hard to understand why.)

InitTool is good at tracking that kind of thing. And it's much more flexible in the gaming systems that it can support. In MapTool the init panel gets close but it only tracks tokens so to track spell durations requires that a token be created and added to the init. But that's kind of an ugly solution; InitTool is a bit cleaner.

Be aware that InitTool has had some of its functionality added to MapTool's init panel and that means the standalone tool probably isn't as necessary for groups using MapTool.

What Azhrei said.... It really depends on your game systems in use. For D&D 4E, it's not quite as needed as most condition last until you save or until a full turn has elapsed(till end of my next turn, etc). In older versions of D&D, spells had a cast duration:

Init 10 - Alfred casts Lightning Bolt which has a casting time of 5, so the Lightning Bolt is added at init 15. If Alfred is hit BEFORE the lighting bolt goes off (on init 11,12,13, 14, or somethings 15), he would have a chance of spell failure. This is MUCH easier to deal with using an automated tool such as InitTool.

Ah that's probably it. Yeah, our group does 4e, and if we do delayed actions and like that rather than exact numbers it's basically "I want to delay my attack until after Vallo makes his move," and then after that happens "Okay now I charge in using this power instead of a basic."

There are also games like Heroes & Eclipse Phase where a character goes multiple times in a turn. Hero even has a bunch of special rules to sort within it's various phases that IT can handle as well.

jay wrote:There are also games like Heroes & Eclipse Phase where a character goes multiple times in a turn. Hero even has a bunch of special rules to sort within it's various phases that IT can handle as well.

Thanks, Jay!

If it's not D&D 1.x/2.x/3.x or PF, I pretty much don't have a clue. (Well, maybe a little of BattleTech and Travelers, but only a very little -- it's been a long time!)