D&D 5E Color coding 5e Conditions

[MNblockhead]

If you use status markers, such as poker chips, tiddly winks, mini rubber bands, etc. to indicate conditions on a miniatures, which colors do you use to represent which conditions?

I'm interested both in just a list of colors you use and also suggestions for the specific color palette below.

After trying a lot of different options, I finally spent the money and bought a set of Alea Tools magnetic status markers (Ultimate Gamemaster Pack, original colors).

VTT's and physical systems other than color markers of some sort are outside the scope of this post. Yes, I know VTTs are great and track this for you. I also know Galeforce 9 has condition markers, but I'm just looking for a color code in this thread. I've made my choice of tools, I just need to figure out what colors will represent what. I figure others have gone through this and would like their thoughts on what worked and didn't work for colors representing 5th edition conditions.

I'm using white and red for numbered bases. If there are lots of allies, they will be white and adversaries red.

That leaves:

1. Light Blue
2. Medium Blue
3. Dark Blue
4. Light Brown
5. Medium Brown
6. Dark Brown
7. Orange
   
8. Yellow
9. Medium Purple
10. Dark Purple
    
11. Light Green
12. Medium Green
13. Dark Green
14. Light Gray
    
15. Dark Gray
    
16. Black

I'm not adverse to buying additional colors for greater contrast.

While I can certainly select a color on the fly, I think it would be helpful to be consistent from one game to another. Or maybe I'll have consistent colors for the most common conditions and just select others on the fly.

Any thoughts and advice would be appreciated!

 

[thethain]

Blinded - Black [everything is black]
Charmed - Medium purple [kinda close to pink for love]
Exhaustion - This needs either 5 shades or a number notation Dark green works as its similar to poison.
Frightened - Yellow [lol]
Invisible - Light Gray [signify semi transparent]

Poisoned - light green


Prone - Light Brown
Grappled - Medium Brown
Restrained - Dark Brown [these are all physical conditions, with darker becoming more severe]


Incapacitated - Light blue
Stunned - Medium Blue
Unconscious - Dark blue [All these three include incapacitated, so best to keep them same color, with darker being more severe]
Paralyzed - Dark Purple [dark and in blue family]
Petrified - Dark Gray [turned to stone]

Deafened - Orange [its not in use, honestly no color is associated with sound]

Best color associations I could think of.

 

[Quickleaf]

For Invisible, we use to use those clear plastic dice boxes that fit neatly over 25-35mm figures.

We used Alea Tools magnetic status markers as well, mostly during 4e. While some were pretty obvious, like green for Poisoned, we found that everyone would forget when we tried to set up a color-coding system in advance. What worked for us was just applying whatever status marker seemed right spur of the moment.

A good example of how color-coding didn't work is Blinded and Frightened.

For some strange reason people (in the US, Germany, Mexico, Poland, and Russia) tend to associate fear with Black. Maybe in Africa (or with a different polling sample), you'd get a different result for Frightened, like White. But anyhow... Black is also logically a good choice for Blinded. So which is it? Is Black Frightened or Blinded?

I found that leaving it up to the players was the best way to ensure people remembered. Something about choosing the color for Bloodied, Blinded, Frightened, or whatever, makes the players remember better.

 

[Oofta]

I don't use many markers anymore (other than the general "something is affecting that creature"), but in 4E I used small wooden tokens that I painted. Therefore I could have multiple colors - so Yellow for fear, Green for entangled, Yellow and Green for poisoned.

I also had a chart I gave people or displayed where everyone could see it.

 

[MNblockhead]

Quickleaf raises some good points about cultural and even individual player differences regarding color associations. I tend to play with fairly stable groups of the same people, though, so I'm not sure it is as important as if I were a Convention GM for example. Is does raise an interesting issues, are the status markers mostly for the players or the DM? Answer seems like it should be obvious—both. Well...

If I'm running a pure pen-and-paper game with no digital tools, I NEED to look at the board and quickly ascertain the status of the different participants. I don't want to be noting that down on paper, especially for larger battles. Typically, however, I'm using Hero Lab's tactical console, which allows me to track status. In this case I could live with just having the numbered bases. It is the players that need the colored bases to known which participant is affected by which condition. That said, once I put these markers into use, I'll probably not even mark status in Hero Lab. Too many clicks. Still easier to use the physical markers.

Another thing that I am having to give some thought to is tracking the time a status is in effect. For many combats, I know that they are going to be over before I have to worry about it, so I don't bother tracking. But now that the party is moving into Tier 3 play and encountering higher powered magic users and beasts, I could very likely have the same condition imposed on multiple participants but starting and ending on different time. I could use different shades of the same color to differentiate; e.g. first participant/group that is poisoned use dark green. Next time, use medium green. I could use more numbered bases, but then I would have to have a lot more sets of numbered markers AND I don't like the idea of having two sets of numbers on the same miniature. I've decided that I will just make a note on the paper where I'm tracking initiative and players can ask me when it will end—which may require a skill check, but more likely I'll just say something like "he's looking a little better now; he's stopped vomiting but still looks to be very uncomfortable" — based on how close the effect (in this case poison) is to wearing off.

I could just leave it up to the players, but I'm inclined to go with Oofta's approach and prepare a chart. Partly because I had only played 1e before I started playing again after a very long hiatus and I love me some charts. But I'm also a fan of quick, efficient processes. If I have to rethink what the markers mean for each group of players I play with, I be needing to make multiple references. But if I just stick to one, I'll quickly have that memorized. That said, the player do ultimately end up choosing many of these things. If I'm playing with a group that has a strong preference one way or another I'll go with the flow. This isn't the place to pull rank on the players. I don't, however, see it being something that the players will have strong opinions about.

 

[MNblockhead]

BTW, Alea has another set of colors (their Kickstarter colors). These have a lot of neons, which can give some more contrast. So I may get one few of these as well and build my own, personal 5e ultimate kit in the hard-case I bought from them. The KS colors are:

Neon Blue
Neon Green
Neon Yellow
Neon Orange
Neon Pink
Neon Purple
Wine
Rust
Burnt Orange
Slime
Forest
Plum
Yellow Pearl
Red Pearl
Blue Pearl
Silver Pearl
Gold Pearl
Copper Pearl
Spiced Cider
Peach Shell

 

[Satyrn]

We have about 4 colors to choose from in my group because of the markers we have (I don't know where they're from, pill bottles or something) so we don't do preset color coding.

Indeed, I don't think we ever need to mark many conditions, so we don't worry about what color we use - we just use whichever one we have at hand and remember the condition.

Along with markers, we also use beer caps - they fit perfectly under the WotC plastic minis (medium sized ones at least) So stunned might be represented as Bud Light. *shudder* I wholeheartedly recommend using them to mark off your warlock's hex target. I used them for whatever it was my 4e warlock's mark was called. It ws hilarious when half the enemies were standing on beer caps.

 

[MNblockhead]

So here is where I am at, using the Alea original Gamemaster Ultimate Kit colors.

1. Blinded = BLACK
2. Charmed = DARK PURPLE
   • Purple makes me think of magic and the fey. Medium purple is otherwise unused, so it will also be used for the Charmed condition. Charmed is common enough that it doesn't hurt to have more markers for it.
3. Deafened = Orange.
   • Mainly because orange was left over. It was between Orange and one of the shades of Brown. I think many of us who are not deaf would choose some muted color like gray or brown, because you are losing a sense. Yet I'm thinking lose of hearning makes sight that much more important and so a vibrant color like orange makes a kind of sense to me.
4. Exhaustion = No status marker.
   • This so rarely comes up in combat for the baddies. Players track exhaustion on their character sheets and I can easily make a note of player exhaustion levels on my scratch pad to keep the forgetful honest. I searched all published 5e spells for the condition "exhausted" using the DnD Beyond advanced filter and there are no spells than apply this condition. So it would only come up if the players are chasing or being chased by baddies for a long time. In that case I would be inclined to make GROUP exhaustion checks for the baddies, so not need to mark them all individually. For creatures like Golems and undead that are not effected by this condition, I don't need to a marker to distinguish them from those that are affected by exhaustion.
   • IF this EVER actually comes up in game where I need to mark different exhaustion levels on different baddies, I would just select from unused colors on the fly.
5. Frightened = YELLOW
   • Cultural. In English (at least in USA), calling someone "yellow" is calling them a coward.
6. Grappled = No status marker.
   • This isn't a condition that imposed by remote spell or on a group. I just wrap a rubber band around the mini doing the grappling and the mini that is grappled.
7. Incapacitated = No status marker.
   • As far as I can tell, this condition is contingent on another condition, namely: grappled, paralyzed, petrified, stunned, and unconscious. If you are are subject to one of those five conditions you are also, always subject to the incapacitated condition. Incapacitated is an effect of one of those other 5 conditions. I suppose it could be a condition itself. But that's never come up in any of my games, so I don't see the need for it having its own marker and I'm certainly not going to put two markers for, say petrified & incapacitated. I just need to put petrified, and so on.
8. Invisible = No colored status marker.
   • I use invisible marker sets, such as those made by Litko or WoTC for this. If I know that there is the uption of mass invisibility for the bad guys, I have a Silhouette paper-cutting machine. I would just take one of my existing paper mini patterns and cut out them out on plain white paper so I have the shape of the creature only. Any of these options allow me to use a base with a magnet on the bottom and transfer any status and number markers. I used to use clear plastic dice boxes and tubes but I don't like fiddling with them at the table (pick up box, move mini, put box back over it) Any of these options are far more intuitive than some colored marker under the mini. Also invisible-miniatures are fun!
9. Paralyzed = LIGHT GRAY (like petrified)
10. Petrified = DARK GRAY
    • Dark gray makes me think of stone.
11. Poisoned = DARK GREEN
    • Because "Mr. Yuk" is dark green. The government did its research and Dark Green = poison, at least to the past few generations in America.
    • Since poison come up fairly frequently and often from multiple combatants, I may reserve all shades of green to distinguish different instances of poisoning.
12. Prone = Nothing. I knock the mini over.
13. Restrained = LIGHT BROWN
    • Mainly because only light brown, dark brown, and orange are left over as easily distinguishable colors and brown makes me think of mud as in "stuck in the mud."
    • Lots of things can restrain you, so I will just use all three shades of brown for restrained, similar to how I use all shades of green for poisoned.
14. Stunned = LIGHT BLUE
    • I like using Blue for consciousness-related statuses
15. Unconscious = DARK BLUE
    • Fully unconscious, so dark blue, as opposed to mostly conscious but "out of it" like stunned, for which I used Light Blue. Medium Blue is otherwise unused and the unconscious condition is not uncommon, so I will likely use medium blue for unconscious as well.

So, using the Alea Ultimate Gamemaster Pack, original colors, I have (the numbers are the number of markers that come with the kit):

• 10 Red = Adversary. I've applied numbered edge marks to these 1 through 10. Used to just distinguish orc 1 from orc 2, etc.
• 5 Orange = Deafened
• 5 Yellow = Frightened
• 10 White = Allies. I've applied numbered edge marks to these 1 through 10. Used to just distinguish soldier 1 from soldier 2, etc. I can also use for bad guys to have another 10 markers.
• 5 Light Gray = Paralyzed
• 5 Dark Gray = Petrified
• 5 Light Blue = Stunned
• 5 Medium Blue = Unconscious.
• 5 Dark Blue = Unconscious
• 5 Medium Purple = Charmed
• 5 Dark Purple = Charmed
• 5 Black = Blind
• 5 Light Brown = Restrained
• 5 Medium Brown = Restrained
• 5 Dark Brown = Restrained
• 5 Light Green = poisoned
• 5 Medium Green = poisoned
• 5 Dark Green = poisoned

Additional buys? I plan on buying at least another 10 red and another 10 white. Alea only sells edge marks to 20. But at least I could go to 40 with white 1-20 and red 1-20.
After going through this exercise, I don't think I need to buy any of the Kickstarter (neon, etc) colors. I have more than enough for most adventure-scale combat encounters.

 

[MNblockhead]

We have about 4 colors to choose from in my group because of the markers we have (I don't know where they're from, pill bottles or something) so we don't do preset color coding.

Indeed, I don't think we ever need to mark many conditions, so we don't worry about what color we use - we just use whichever one we have at hand and remember the condition.

Along with markers, we also use beer caps - they fit perfectly under the WotC plastic minis (medium sized ones at least) So stunned might be represented as Bud Light. *shudder* I wholeheartedly recommend using them to mark off your warlock's hex target. I used them for whatever it was my 4e warlock's mark was called. It ws hilarious when half the enemies were standing on beer caps.

Yep. I've got color rocks, beads, punched circles of paper, metal and wood blanks, color rubber bands.

But I am starting to get into some more complex encounters and I really like the magnetic markers. So easy to move minis around WITH their status markers.

That's why I'm most interested in hearing what color codes folks use. I've already committed to a physical product. It is bought and paid for. Now I'm looking for the best way to use it.

 

[aco175]

All we use are the rings from soda bottles. There are several colors. Aside from red when something is bloodied, and players trying to get the cleric's attention, we only need one, maybe two in most situations. The bard tends to use purple when making someone have disadvantage or under confusion or such. Most of the time green is poisoned or even blessed- there is no set list of things.

The main reason for them is to see what is affecting the PCs/monsters. Players see something other than red on them and remember what it is. Like I said, rarely is there more than one thing going on to track.