How to improve the Savage Worlds ruleset

[zackspacks]

Hi there
Regarding the out of ammo problem above, I would like to see a statement appear in the chat log. Top let it go unnoticed ( e.g. the silent -1 option ) will most likely mean that, it will go unnoticed, then three months later, the likes of myself will be posting a picture and asking for it to be changed

Point of clarification though regarding the next release - I am reading your blog, and the suggestions tracker, but I cannot recall seeing a list of 'this stuff here is what is going to happen' as in your blog there are lots of funky features turning up, that I don't recall reading about before they appeared there. Apologies if it is somewhere, but i don't recall seeing it.

The reason for asking the above, is that I have been watching Xorn's latest videos, and the D&D combat tracker has a lot of other options on, and I see you are implementing some of them, but are you planning to implement them all ?

This post is starting to ramble, so briefly a couple more things I have picked up from Xorn's latest D&D4e vlogs, that IMHO would be invaluable in Savage

1) I stated about having the mooks/enemy WC attacks in the Combat Tracker, the new D&D one, has several lines for each attack mode, that are clickable in the combat tracker. This would get us away from multiple personalities having to be opened.

2) Drag and Drop modifiers. You succeed in Intimidation, and inflict -2 Parry. You can now drag this onto the target token, and the combat tracker picks this up, and penalises the targeted token.

3) Highlighting (a) who's turn it is on the map, esp for mooks, and (b) targeting opponents. I think this sometimes sort of works, but often it doesn't for some reason. From Doswelks vlog, he deleted the tokens and put them back on. I have found this doesn't always work either.

Finally keep up the good work mate, I really appreciate what you are doing
cheers
Paul

[phantomwhale]

The wishlist - look to the bottom ! It's in my sig. (along with the blog)

Re: points
(1) I'll have to take a look - like I say, not being familiar with 4E and the D&D ruleset coming with no reference libraries makes it hard for me to explore and understand what the 4E ruleset is capable of. Particularly around combats, where I struggle to setup a simple roll !

Adding it to the list is probably the first step. Providing details, images, or anything to help make the idea more concrete will both help the idea get more votes, and to be honest those are the tasks I'd prefer to tackle first. Trying to work out all the design detail myself as well as coding takes twice as long, so can get left to one side for a while.

(2) I like the sound of this - can see two things there. Firstly we have the concept of "effects" in the combat tracker, but these just mark how long an effect lasts for. So would be good to tie actual adjustments (-2 Parry, +2 Toughness) to effects such as "intimidated" and "deflection". So the first part would be "add ability to link adjustments to effects"

Once that's in place, it's simply a matter for the GM to key in an effect that does that (-2 Parry, lasts one round), and share it with the players. Then we'd need to support dragging and dropping effects onto tokens. That'd be the second part.

(3) Known bug - targeting works fine without grouped enemies. Even though there is no solid entry for it on the wishlist, fixing up grouped enemies on the tracker is something I wanted to do even for v3.1. But I needed enough time to get more familiar with the code before doing big changes (v3.1 was mainly smaller bugfixes and tidyups) like this. Should be ready to kick it into shape now

My pleasure - good work should continue, although got a big contract coming up in a week or two which will slow me down, so have been pushing hard to get to a "release candidate" by then but not sure I'm going to make it (unless I leave the grouped combat bugs for v3.3 - which I hate the idea of doing).

Ben (-PW-)

[krb243]

thanx phantomwhale for taking a look at my suggestions. i'm a security guy, which means part-time hack, so i have an idea as to the effort and time it takes to improve the ruleset. i appreciate the hard work

[NEPHiLiX]

I might be reiterating someone else's post here--haven't read through the entire thread again--but I was noticing that shaken results or status effects for minions don't stay from round to round, they get cleared (for enemies that you have in a sub-list in the combat tracker). I usually just put the token on their side when they're shaken and upside down when there dead as a work-around, but it'd be nice to have the tracker work for this.

Also, and I think this is probably an FG thing as opposed to a SW thing, the dice rolling borders are TERRIBLE! I don't know how many times I've had to re-roll the free dice (the ones below the chat pane) 3-6 times to get the result to display. It used to be that when you tossed the dice into the pane that it'd record as long as they first landed in the pane. Now it appears as though at least one of the dice has to land once and for all inside the pane in order to register.

And last--and this may just be a noob error, but for the life of me I can't figure out how to have the tracker count down spell effects that I enter. I have to manually re-enter the number every round until it expires (a step I often forget).

Thanks again (and keep the blog posts coming, it's great to see how much work you're doing on this and what you're focusing on from day to day).

[Doswelk]

I might be reiterating someone else's post here--haven't read through the entire thread again--but I was noticing that shaken results or status effects for minions don't stay from round to round, they get cleared (for enemies that you have in a sub-list in the combat tracker). I usually just put the token on their side when they're shaken and upside down when there dead as a work-around, but it'd be nice to have the tracker work for this.

This is on the list of outstanding fixes and I'm sure Phantomwhale will get it done.

And last--and this may just be a noob error, but for the life of me I can't figure out how to have the tracker count down spell effects that I enter. I have to manually re-enter the number every round until it expires (a step I often forget).

I made a video about how to do just this... it was part 4 of my combat tracker series and I cover effects at around 3:30 seconds into the video.

[NEPHiLiX]

Perfect! Thanks Doswelk...I've watched the videos before and must have forgotten how to do this.

[NEPHiLiX]

I searched through another SW thread that apparently claimed that the improved level headed feature was repaired, but I can't for the life of me get it to work--though the regular level-headed edge works fine. I've tried dragging and dropping it from the player's guide every which way, with no luck.

Was this fixed then disrupted somehow since?

[phantomwhale]

I searched through another SW thread that apparently claimed that the improved level headed feature was repaired, but I can't for the life of me get it to work--though the regular level-headed edge works fine. I've tried dragging and dropping it from the player's guide every which way, with no luck.

Was this fixed then disrupted somehow since?

I'm guessing this is the issue :

Currently, when PCs / NPCs are added to the combat tracker, the list of edges (or special abilities for NPCs) are scanned, using case-insensitive string matching to look for "Quick", "Level Headed" and "Improved Level Headed". If it finds one of them, it marks the entry as special, and redeals accordingly, when required.

So if you alter a PC / NPCs edge or ability list AFTER he has been added to the tracker... then it won't work, short of removing the entry from the tracker and re-adding them.

An improvement might be to maintain a link back to the original PC / NPC, so the edges / ability list can be rechecked every round. This would pick up on edge / ability changes done after the tracker has been set up. If that's something that sounds worth having, add it to the wishlist (below).

If that's NOT the issue your having, then show me a screengrab or explain what's happening, as it SHOULD work....

Ben (-PW-)

[NEPHiLiX]

Strangely enough, I tried adding both edges to a newer character (that I made in June) and it worked fine, drawing three cards and picking the highest. But for the first character that I made with the SW ruleset (I made this character when I started playing SW--around mid-April) it still won't draw three cards, only two. I've tried deleting and re-adding the Edges, to no avail. Maybe I should just break down and re-make him from scratch?

[phantomwhale]

Strangely enough, I tried adding both edges to a newer character (that I made in June) and it worked fine, drawing three cards and picking the highest. But for the first character that I made with the SW ruleset (I made this character when I started playing SW--around mid-April) it still won't draw three cards, only two. I've tried deleting and re-adding the Edges, to no avail. Maybe I should just break down and re-make him from scratch?

Have you deleted and then re-added this character from the combat tracker in question ?

It's not doing anything too cunning under the hood - literally reading the character's edges at the moment it's added to the combat tracker, and looking for the value "improved level headed" (case insensitive). It doesn't matter if it's a "proper" draggable edge or one you've typed in yourself, although using the former can help avoid the other potential issue, which is spelling mistakes !