How Does Avrae's Initiative Tracker Work?

Updated

Avrae's initiative tracker is a combat-management tool that runs inside a Discord text channel. It keeps a live turn order for the encounter, sorts combatants automatically, and tracks the numbers that change during a fight — HP, AC, resistances, and status effects. It also connects to Avrae's character sheet manager and 5e content, so the same bot that rolls your attacks can also run the battle they happen in. It's built for D&D played over Discord, where there's no tabletop to hold tokens or a physical tracker to write on.

What the tracker actually does

The initiative tracker is described as "a fast way to track combat in a text channel." In practice, that means one message or embed in the channel becomes the shared source of truth for the encounter: who is in the fight, whose turn it is, and what condition everyone is in.

Its stated capabilities are:

  • Automatic combatant sorting — once initiative is rolled, the tracker orders participants rather than making you maintain a list by hand.
  • HP tracking — damage and healing are applied to combatants as the fight progresses.
  • AC tracking — armor class is recorded per combatant, so hit or miss can be resolved against a known number.
  • Resistance tracking — resistances are tracked, which matters when damage type determines whether a hit is halved.
  • Status effect tracking — conditions such as the ones that expire after a set number of rounds can be followed in the same place as the turn order.

Because all of this lives in the text channel, every player sees the same state without anyone asking "whose turn is it?" or "how much HP does that thing have left?"

Why the integration matters more than the tracker alone

A standalone initiative list is just a sorted set of names. The reason Avrae's tracker is useful is that it's wired into the rest of the bot.

Avrae reads character sheets from D&D Beyond, Dicecloud, or a Google Sheet, and from those sheets it automatically generates macros for attacks, ability checks, and saving throws. A player can then run a command to make a check, save, attack, or cast, and the necessary rolls resolve automatically.

The tracker integrates with that same character sheet manager, plus 5e content. The practical result: when a combatant's turn comes up, the rolls that belong to that turn can be produced by the same system that is holding the turn order. You aren't copying numbers between a roller and a tracker.

A concrete example

Say four player characters and three goblins are in a fight in a text channel.

  1. Initiative is rolled for everyone in the encounter.
  2. The tracker sorts the combatants into turn order automatically, so the sequence is fixed and visible.
  3. On a player's turn, they use their character's generated macro to attack. The roll resolves against the target's AC, which the tracker is holding.
  4. Damage is applied to the target's HP. If the target has resistance to that damage type, the resistance the tracker records is what determines the final number.
  5. If a condition is applied — something that lasts a set number of rounds, for instance — it's tracked alongside the combatant rather than in a separate note.
  6. When the round ends, the order is already there for the next round, with no re-sorting needed.

The value shows up in the moments that normally stall a game: checking a defense, remembering a condition, or working out whose turn is next.

What you need before it works

  • A Discord server where Avrae has been invited. The site's invite flow asks you to select your server from a dropdown and to ensure that "Read Messages," "Send Messages," "Embed Links," and "Manage Messages" are enabled. Those permissions are what let the bot post and maintain the tracker in the channel.
  • A text channel to run combat in — the tracker is designed for text channels, not voice.
  • Character sheets, if you want the automatic macro generation. Avrae reads from D&D Beyond, Dicecloud, or a Google Sheet. Without a connected sheet you lose the automatic attack, check, save, and cast rolls, though the tracker itself is still a combat tracker.

Where it fits in a game

Use Avrae's initiative tracker when you're running D&D over Discord and want combat state — order, HP, AC, resistances, and conditions — to live in one place that every player can see. It's most valuable in encounters with several combatants and multiple conditions, where manual tracking gets error-prone.

It's less necessary for a single quick skirmish with one or two combatants, where the overhead of setting up the encounter may exceed the benefit. And if your group plays in person or on a virtual tabletop with its own combat tracker, Avrae's tracker is solving a problem you may already have solved elsewhere.