Survival Gear Essentials: Building Your Prepper Arsenal with Tactical Tools
Are you prepared for any emergency or disaster? Discover the essential survival gear you need to build a robust prepper arsenal with tactical tools. This comprehensive guide highlights the must-have items for every survivalist, ensuring you're equipped for any situation. From durable knives and multi-purpose tools to versatile shelters and advanced communication devices, we cover it all. Learn about the latest innovations in emergency preparedness, wilderness survival, and self-reliance. Whether you're an outdoor enthusiast, a prepper, or someone concerned about potential disruptions, this guide will help you navigate through challenging times with confidence. Gear up, stay prepared, and safeguard yourself and your loved ones with these tactical tools.
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Conditions are an interesting beast. They can add a lot of book keeping, but they can also theoretically force some interesting tactical choices.
In practice, things seem to weight heavily on the "book keeping" and less on the "choices."
Condition cards are one way to reduce the book keeping. There are far prettier ones out there, but I just make mine in MS Word.
Others are a little more "classic."
 The shifts for those are mostly moving around the rolls so players don't have to make saves immediately. This serves two purposes:
Pushing the rolls to times they can be handled without disrupting turn order.
Letting them stew in their terror a bit... I mean, see what they might be up against.
The second reason might not seem like much. Keeping secrets close to your chest is tempting, but meaningful choices can't exist without at least a little information.
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One common problem with tactical combat is that all that decision-making slows down combat. Once you've got the map rolled out, most of the innovation goes into making cool encounters and making cool encounters that don't take forever.
I found that the biggest slowdown on the GM side is handling enemy statblocks. There are a lot of options you don't need with the information you do need, buried between them.
I longed for the days of stat blocks so short you could fit them in-line. The balance, of course, is getting them to be simple enough to use and interesting enough to make for tactical challenges.
My first try was a direct condensation, something like this:
Goblin (B1 Goblin)
Perception -1 darkvision, Stealth +4, Init +6
AC 16, HP 6
Fort +3, Ref +2, Will -1, CMD 12
30'
Short Sword +2 1d4/19-20
Short Bow +4 1d4/x3
That helped a lot, but it was still clunky. So I condensed more and started folding in new abilities to make combat more tactical:
Stone Giants (Large, 40', 10' reach)
AC 22, HP 102
Fort +12, Ref +6, Will +7, CMD 30
Great Club                     +18                            4d8+12
Club Smash (standard) Â +18 CMD Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 4d8+12 and push to edge of reach
At higher levels, the simple process of rolling all the enemies' attacks takes more and more GMing time. As part of the condensation, many attacks became one attack.
Bone Devil (Large, 40', 60' fly)
HP 105, AC 25, DR 10/good, Immune cold, poison, SR 20
Fort +12, Ref +12, Will +7, CMD 31
Osyluth's Sting (melee 10') 3d6+27 (+28 on critical) plus poison
           Bone Devil's Sting see condition
So my blocks have started drifting fairly far from the source material. And they're still being refined, but combats have gotten both faster and actually more interesting.
I'll probably get more into my process later. And talk about condition cards, which are a more recent development.
So, you might expect I use maps so the next post is minis.
You have committed one of the classic blunders: assuming I can afford minis on an independent game designer's budget.
Also, minis are kind of a pain to store and you never have enough to run combats with several of the same enemy.
Allow me to introduce plan B:
Basically, I just print out the appropriate images and punch them out (or cut them out if I'm feeling very industrious).
Color works way better, for what it's worth.
Anyway, counters like these have some definite other advantages:
You can write on them. You don't have to worry about tracking damage for each enemy and figuring out how they relate back. Similarly, you can mark status effects directly on the counter.
You can fold, spindle, and mutilate them. A brutal crit cut a goblin in half? You can tear the counter in half. It's surprisingly satisfying.
You can store hundreds of them. A simple craft case can hold all you need for an entire campaign and keep them organized at the same time.
You can paperclip them. A simple paperclip can keep an encounter, its map, and all its monsters together.
The Process
There's nothing really magical going on with the process. Cutting little circles all the time is a pain, so you can get one of these:
It's just a 1" hole punch. You can get them at craft stores.
The key part is to get one where you can see through to what you're cutting out. In this one's case, you can look in from the bottom and see what the counter'll look like.
Some clever folks at GenCon were selling them a while back, with the added suggestion of using them to turn old CCG commons into counters. That's value!
Templates
The weird earthtone frames in the first picture are because I use hexes. Basically, they're templates so I can drop a 1" counter and still get everything to be the right size.
You could do the same thing with squares or just get a whole set of punches. For squares, 2" is large, 3" is huge, and so on.
I made the templates out of spare bookbinding materials, but anything that'll hold up and contrast with your maps will work. If you're already at the craft store for a hole punch, check out the various foam sheets.
Image Sources
Since these are for your private use, you have a lot of options. Personally, I prefer the official illustrations so the pictures I show players match what's on the counter.
As far as outside sources go, there are always the Counter Collections from Fiery Dragon. You can also look at this old thread at ENWorld that has all sorts of suggestions and counters.
Minis and Pricing
Recently, one of my players noted she has trouble picking out the minis from her spot on the couch. Which is understandable (especially in greyscale).
Which led to a solution that I hadn't considered: she's actually started buying the Pathfinder Pawn Collections for the group.
I mention this not just to brag about my players being awesome, but because it might actually be a good solution for other groups. GMs tend to be the ones buying adventures, so letting the players ante up for visual aides is actually a huge help.
When we began using more tactical combat, we started with a laminated piece of hex paper.
In principle, this is awesome. You only need one sheet ever and even its cost is negligible.
But we found that it smeared... constantly... on everything. Part of that is my fault, for updating the map when things collapse or burst into flames.
But if you're not having things collapse and burst into flames, why are you drawing maps?
The Tan Knight
We picked up a few rolls of Gaming Paper from GenCon and started using it for everything.
It's basically just a roll of wrapping paper with mapping grid or hexes printed on it instead of holiday stuff. As an added bonus, need to give a gift to a member of your gaming group? Wrap it in the sweet fight their character shined in a few sessions ago.
Originally Gaming Paper just came in this sort of tannish color. You can get it in all sorts of colors now, including black for all your creepy interdimensional spaces.
As you can see, this one is marked up a bit. We record initiative on the sheet and the gold circle was a Prayer, I believe, laid down by the party's cleric.
For quite a while, I drew the maps free-hand as I was describing them. That works okay, but having the paper really shines when you prep it in advance and just whip out a map like some kind of over-prepped wizard.
Gaming Paper: The Next Generation
You can also get 8.5 x 11 sheets of Gaming Paper too now. You may notice this map looks terrible compared to the one above, I'll explain that later.
So now I do all the maps I expect to need before the session and, if I screw up badly enough, can redraw it without wasting table time. Then the only time I need in-session is explaining the battlefield, which is actually easier with the visual aid.
As is the case with any prep, some maps end up not being used. This one, for example, hasn't shown up in game yet.
But, just because it didn't show up before doesn't mean that the party won't get followed back there by an army of lamias and demons. As a purely hypothetical example.
Delegation
My favorite to do with the maps actually has to do with cliffhangers.
If you stop the session right before a major battle, you can rope one of the players into drawing the map for you. You might be surprised by how much your players enjoy drawing it and getting a bit of a preview.
In my case this results in much prettier maps, like the one above, and takes some prep time back off my plate.
