Dungeons & Dragons® 3e: play aids

Combat Helper and Initiative Roller [combathelper.sxc]

This spreadsheet file has two sheets: a Combat Helper and an Initiative Roller.

The Combat Helper simply lists the vital combat statistics for different characters (the party, in my example). The sheet has Melee AB, Damage and Critical, Ranged AB, Damage, Critical and Range, AC and flat-footed AC, Initiative modifier, and saving throws. This is intended for quick reference.

The Initiative Roller takes this sheet's name and init values and pre-rolls initiatives - this is intended as a quick way to get the initiatives rolled for the whole party at once. (In theory, you could do the same for each encounter, too: Roll inits for party, then roll inits for a similar table for the creatures in the encounter.) You can print, recalculate the sheet and print again, and recalculate and print again, and never run out of Readiness in face of a Monster Attack.

"Three crocodiles? Piece of a cake!"

Playtested whole 1 time, and it worked wondefully. =)

Skill calculator [skillcalculator.sxc]

The most frustrating part of NPC building? Skills! There's a lot of them, and you need to be an egg-juggling math genius to add skill points up. Well, it isn't that difficult, nor does it really matter that it'd be 100% correct in case of NPCs (yeah, the NPC has +6 concentration - so what if the party is going to march in the room and just hack the guy's head off with one blow?)... yet, I'm often tempted to just pick one of the Generic NPCs from the DMG since nobody is going to notice anyway. =) But that won't cut for material that's going to be published!

This tool makes adding up all skill points really easy. There's a column for each level. Determine how many skill points the char has on first level and each successive level. Now, get the skills for the first level - put spent skill points on the first column. See the number in the bottom is what you wanted. Then the second level - less points to worry about. Then third. And so on. Finally, look at the right edge - total spent points is there. Then get those numbers and convert them to skill ranks, add ability bonuses, and tadah! You have a skilled NPC.