tactical console
 

Is there a way to start combat but not have it roll initiative . My group likes to roll for themselves and I like to roll once for all the enemies. Its time consuming to start a combat and sort through everything and update the rolls manually especially with a large battle going on.

You can enter initiative manually. I just over-ride the entries.

The quickest way is to start it and just start calling out the names of your players as you go down the list. Enter the manual result and a re-sort button appears.

Unfortunately you can't set all monsters to the same initiative step easily, need to enter manually for each also.

Thats what I was doing but it made things move slow. I dont want the tech at the table to seem like it interferes with play.

It would be nice if there were setting in the console to turn off auto inititatve, or even make it a litte fancier, like pop up a list of allies and allow you to enter them manually and then Enimies with a check box to assign the same value to all.

This would be simpler than going down the list if its long.

For me this became a case of table control. My player's were all rolling, yelling their initiative out and then I was finding them in the list and updating.

I have now trained my players to roll and wait. I click begin combat and simply start calling out names. As i yell a name, they respond with an initiative, i enter it and proceed to the next person. Once all are entered I just click re-sort.

I've even started leaving the monster rolls letting the application roll those initiatives for me.

It's become a very efficient process.

Thanks for the advice

I let HL auto generate initiative for NPCs/enemies. Then I have the players readout their roll and I type it in a resort. It takes less time than setting up the Paizo Combat Pad that I used to use before I started using HL's tactical console. May not be as fast as rearranging character tents, but is not much slower and is actually less distracting, requires less things to clutter the table, and it worth the few extra seconds for how much easier it is to manage combat.

Now if only the tactical console would help me easily track conditions and other time-limited effects.

It does track conditions doesn't it?

All great advice, and after thinking on it, it was still faster than what we usually do. Friday was my first time using the Tactical Console at the table, it may have just seemed slower to me at the time. I will definitely keep using it. I might have been over sensitive to the time I was taking, Im still a new DM and want to make everything just flow. I was probably being too critical of the timing.

I had to fight my players at first to be honest. We used to use a tile system where we had little glass tiles with numbers on them for each player and tiles with A-Z on them for monsters. Player's would call out initiative and one of the players would manage putting them all in order and then controlling it throughout the combat.

It took a bit, but once my players knew I would call out their name instead of them yelling out all at the same time things really picked up with Hero Lab and we never looked back.

You can indicate that a PC/NPC has a condition, but it doesn't track the rounds/time it is active.

It is easier to write conditions on another piece of paper with the round they will end than it is to enter it into the tactitical console and have to remember to look for and remove conditions.