Helping a learning disabled player remember abilities?

[Elric VIII]

I have a learning disabled player in my game. She's playing a Bard right now, but she cannot remember what her class can do. The only thing she does is cast sleep, but we're at the point where the spell doesn't have any real effect. I can see she's getting a bit flustered.

My plan is to create 1 sheet of paper per level that very clearly spells out her abilities. Something very simple and visually clear. Before I start from scratch, does there exist something like this already? Or does anyone have any other ideas that work?

[8wGremlin]

Get some of the large index cards
https://www.amazon.com/Oxford-Ruled-Index-Cards-51/dp/B00006IFD7

And have each one with all information that they need on it.

We had some colour coded for differing reasons, and when used they were flipped over and they had the refresh criteria on the back - LONG REST, SHORT REST, etc..

We wrote them together, so that they would learn by actually writing them all down themselves.
Worked well, and they had a great time

Good luck and have fun storming the castle!

[Naanomi]

I use index cards and 'Spell slot poker chips' for my social skills group dnd game at my school; works great. A green chip per inspiration die, etc... give them back at rests as appropriate

[Elric VIII]

Those are good ideas. I was thinking of something along the lines of boxes on a sheet, but index cards achieve a similar result. Thanks.

[Beelzebubba]

In my day job I'm a UX designer that has worked with software for people with accessibility issues. Here are a few things that work in that environment that might help here:

--

Color code and label them for 'Offense', 'Defense', 'Utility' somehow. Makes it a lot easier to sort and read on the fly.

Use big, bold typesetting. Small font sizes hurt everyone.

Put the 'area of effect' illustrations from PHB p. 204 right on the cards.

Maybe add specific mechanical hints for when / where they're good to use - like:

Fog Cloud
- Makes opponents with missile weapons attack at Disadvantage
- Prevents spellcasters from using spells that require line of sight
- Anyone can take the Hide action inside the cloud

Stuff like that.

[nickl_2000]

Check out squire for Android as well. You can put the character in there and have all the available spells in a single screen. It may help.

If you like or pm me and I can send you a Google drive URL for all the missing non SRD stuff that I have put in

[The Cats]

Those are good ideas. I was thinking of something along the lines of boxes on a sheet, but index cards achieve a similar result. Thanks.

I have your exact situation at my table. The results will differ based on the nature and severity of your players neural differences.

Index cards did not work. They are either in a stack, so only one was in front of him at a time and he had to shuffle through all of them whenever he wanted to see what he could do, or they were spread all over the table in a disorganized manner. Both techniques made choosing abilities time consuming.

Boxes on a sheet worked. Use colour coding and group abilities by the situations in which they are useful. This way, when he is trying to find something to use to for a specific situation you can tell him to "Look at your red abilities."

Use bold headers for the categories. ATTACKING IN MELEE; DEFENDING YOURSELF; HELPING AN ALLY IN COMBAT etc.

Keep it all to a single sheet if you can to minimize the amount of getting lost in the papers.

Do not write full descriptions, keep it to a sentence or two. He needs to remember what the ability does and when it will be useful. You can handle the exact mechanics.

Put the bonus to apply to any roll next to the ability. Even if this is repetitive, having it right there without having to look for a second number somewhere else on the sheet when he chooses his ability saves time and frustration.

Keep a copy of the cheat sheet yourself for when he gets stuck and needs some help deciding or finding something.

I still need to remind him often and give him a little extra time to choose on his turn since he has trouble thinking about it while other people are taking their turns, but this approach has resulted in more improvement than others I have tried.