Stacking Modifiers!

[Mr. Analog]

Captain Lymewyre drunkenly approaches you in the tavern...

Y'arr, here be a tale to scare ye. I were at at sea when a storm hit me boat, we was bein' tossed about like a cork, the ship moving violent-like beneath our boots. There had been a fire on board and the deck was covered with the ruins of the rigging, making it differcult to move around. Not to mention the rain poundin' and the resultin' smoke from the fire was obscurin' our view. Y'arr then the attack hit, we was attacked by some vile harpies that live on yonda'rr cliffs, many of me crew with smoke in their eyes and pussyfootin' around broken deckin' got caught offgaurd and... well... are down in Davey Jones' locker. But let this be a warnin' to ye, in battle ye have to account for yer terrain and how well ye can see. Remember that and ye might just survive!

Ok, so, your characters already have some modifiers that they use in battle that changes their stats on a per turn basis, but scaling challenges is one of the things that makes D&D fun and one of the best way to scale a challenge is to intruduce environmental effects (such as fog, uneven ground, noise, heat, cold, etc). With this in mind I may start bringing a whiteboard of my own to record stacked environmental modifiers so that everyone can see what they have to add (or subtract) to their scores as a group. The thing that our heroes can do is maybe get some 3x5 cards and print out their own common, stackable modifiers and put them on the table when they are in use so that at a glance you can see what all your modifiers are!

I had this brainwave while thinking about how to make it eaiser for everyone to tally up modifers (before things like the above start to complicate things).

[Thorin]

So for instance, Aerindra casts Bless and a I put a card on the table that says

   Bless

   +1 Attack
   +1 Save vs Fear

   Duration 40 rounds

   PHBxxx

or Aerindra uses Total Defense and I put a card on the table that says

   Total Defense

   +4 Dodge bonus to AC
   Cannot make Attacks of Opportunity

   Duration 1 round

   PHBxxx

In the case of the former, it applies to everyone so it'd be displayed prominently somewhere.  In the case of the latter, it applies only to Aerindra so it'd be displayed prominently right in front of me.  The trick'd be to use something smaller than a 3x5 card.  Something the size of a regular playing card would be great.

I like this idea, should help remembering all the modifiers.  And they get worse as our characters level up