The Combat Tracker

Once the fight starts, the tracker is the scoreboard. Both hats get one, in the same place, in the same order. What differs is what each is allowed to see and touch.

On a phone or tablet it is a floating panel in the top-right corner of the map. Closed, it is a small shield pill; tap it to open the panel, and tap the dimmed map behind it to put it away. The screen header above the map reads the encounter's name and the round, like "Bridge ambush, Round 3".

Reading the order

Combatants are listed by initiative, highest first, ties keeping the order they were entered in. Two markers do most of the work:

• The current turn is pinned to the top, with a purple bar down its left edge, a tinted background, and an "On turn" label.
• Everyone who has already gone this round drops below a divider reading "Already acted, Round N", dimmed.

So it reads top to bottom as: who is up, who is waiting, who is done. When the last one ends their turn, the list wraps back to the top and the round number goes up by one.

What a card shows

Each card starts with a small token swatch in the owner's color, doing two jobs at once. Its shape tells you what kind of piece it is:

• A circle is a player character.
• A horizontal oval is a familiar or a movable spell-effect token.
• A rounded square is a monster.

Its fill tells you how hurt that creature is. The color drains from the bottom as status worsens: full when Healthy, three quarters at Wounded, half at Heavy, a quarter at Mortal, and an empty outline when Dead. The outline stays in the owner's color throughout. An assigned portrait sits inside that same draining frame, dimmed to a ghost when the creature is dead. There are no hit point numbers anywhere, by design; chapter 23, Managing Combatants, covers who sets those five statuses.

The rest of the card carries:

• The name, and "Init N" for the initiative you entered.
• The word "acted" once that combatant has gone this round.
• Orange condition chips, one per active condition.
• A small crosshair icon, in the marking player's color, when the player on turn has marked that combatant as a target.
• Sub-rows for a caster's aura, static shapes, and spell-effect tokens. Those never take a turn of their own; they ride along on the caster's.

Ending a turn

Both hats get an End Turn chip beside the panel header, only during an active fight. The two chips do different things.

The DM's End Turn advances the fight directly. It moves to the next combatant with its own initiative, skipping piggyback pieces, wraps and bumps the round at the end of the list, resets the new combatant's action, bonus action, reaction, and movement, drops any "acting as" back to the player's own character, and clears the dice photo on screen.

A player's End Turn is a request. The DM's device applies it only if that player controls the combatant currently on turn. The chip is always tappable, so a player can press it out of turn; the DM's device simply ignores it, with no prompt and no scolding message.

What only the DM has

The DM's tracker adds two things players never get:

• An action row with + Token and + Monster, which swaps in place for the add form while you use it (chapter 27).
• End Combat, or End Encounter before a fight has started, at the bottom of the panel (chapter 29).

Tapping a card differs by hat too. The DM's tap selects that combatant and opens the Unified Combatant Panel; a long-press, or a right-click on a Mac or Windows machine, arms placement so the next tap on the map puts that token down or moves it. A player's tap, on their own turn only, marks that combatant as a target.

Hidden combatants are the sharpest asymmetry. Players do not see them at all. The DM sees them dimmed with a "hidden" badge that flips to "in view" with an eye icon when a party member could currently see that piece. It is a warning light, not a button.

On a Mac or Windows machine

Desktop drops the floating panel for a permanent column beside the map, with the same cards, pinned current turn, and already-acted divider. A chevron toggle in the map's top-right corner collapses and reopens it.

The DM's End Turn is a full-width button at the top of that column, with End Combat at the bottom. A player instead gets a five-button row across the top: To Hit, Damage, Roll Check, Initiative, and End Turn. Initiative grays out once combat is running, and the row only appears if the machine has a paired phone to photograph dice with, per chapter 20, Dice Are Photos.