[RPG] How to keep track of X-per-day abilities

dnd-5eorganization

A very common situation in the games I DM: my friends have all returned from a couple week break to restart our campaign. We sit down and review the character sheets and briefly discuss where we left off. Everything makes sense and is accounted for, except X-per-day abilities (ie, the Fighter's Action Surge, the Barbarian's Rage, etc.). "Did I use this? How many times? Did we rest yet?" Bah!

I'm a computer interface designer, so to me the 5e character sheet is terribly missing some location where players can emphasize items and abilities that have limited uses per day and how many uses they have done. Even just another column in the abilities section (though this gets cluttered so fast!).

How do others handle this problem of keeping track of these abilities. And yes, "Just write it down" occurred to me. What I am hoping for is something novel or home-brewed that hasn't crossed my mind.

P.S. I have the same problem with things like hit dice for short rests and other limited resources the characters have that aren't explicitly tracked on the character sheet.

Best Answer

Use card tokens

Every player who has an once-per-day ability writes the ability (and their name) on a card and keeps it. Whenever they use that ability, they put the card in a box.

Whenever they rest, they get their own cards back from the box.