How to do Effects?

[Maeth]

I'm having trouble trying to set effects to powers. I have no idea what the commands are, the key words that it uses or how to even read the thing.

For example:
Commander's Strike
Gives an ally a bonus to damage based on the warlord's intelligence modifier. I entered the text exactly as it is on the DDI compendium added an effect to the power (effect not attack/dmg as that didn't seem to be the right one to me), hit that reset button because I saw the tutorial do so... and it removes the effect part completely.

So I wanted to enter it manually if there's no other way but I don't know what I need to put on that line, what little color icons I need displayed and all that stuff.

I will probably need assistance on several other powers that have effects that I have yet to make so having some kind of "step by step" or examples or something would be very very helpful. Otherwise I will have to have players manually factor in buffs and effects (as well as myself on NPCS) which knowing us, we will probably always forget.

[Griogre]

First, the 4E ruleset power parser is pretty good but not perfect. This means that if you type the power description in *exactly* like it is in the book the ruleset will usually set the power up for you.

Using the example of Commanders Strike do do this power from scratch you would first have the player create a new At-will power. They would need to fill in the action, type, Range, and Keywords and then the power description.

Note: the power parser does *not* understand typos so you need to be very careful on the keywords. Also the character sheet does not have things in the same order as the power description.

Once the player has everything filled in correctly have him right click on the description and select "Reset power abilities". That will build the effects, damage, ect. Most of the time this works fine. The parser is a literal beast so if you have something like healing word it will parse the dice for each range of levels and it doesn't do well with powers inside of powers (ie the Warden's forms). You'll also find out in a hurry how well your players type. :p But it works very well and espeically if you are starting a game at 1st level each player will only have to type a in a few powers.

It works the same for monster powers. Just type them exactly and they almost always work. The biggest problems with monster powers are where they have a high crit weapon and have a crit entry after the normal damage - the crit damage doesn't parse right because there is no "damage" keyword after it.