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View Full Version : Making a Character: Question about Importing Items from Library Modules



mattcolville
November 17th, 2010, 03:58
I've learned a lot about this app in just the last two days thanks to the people here and the videos so I'm starting to feel a little confident and to that end I wanted to put down the DM stuff and try making a character.

So I have a bunch of modules loaded, enough to make a level 2 Warden, and my level 2 Warden has a Great Hunger Weapon +1.

I can open the Adventurer's Vault module from the library tab, I can find the Great Hunger Weapon +1. If I click on the little red dragon icon there on the left, I can see it's properties.

If I grab that little red dragon icon, I can drag the weapon onto the Combat tab of my Warden and viola! My Warden appears to have a Great Hunger Weapon +1 right now.

However! When I click on the little red dragon icon of the Great Hunger Weapon in the combat tab of the Warden, it shows nothing. A blank Item box comes up with "other" checked and no information of any sort from the Adventurer's Vault. Appears totally blank.

Am I doing something wrong?

Griogre
November 17th, 2010, 04:49
Making weapons and armor are a two stage process and one the DM has to do. This is because the magic component, in your example Great Hunger Weapon +1, has to be combined with a normal weapon like a bastard sword, long sword, etc. If you are the DM then it's usually easiest to drag the Great Hunger Weapon into the list of magic items book. The open the entry in the book and drag and drop the appropriate normal weapon on top of the entry. You will know you did it right when you Great Hunger Weapon +1 title changes to Great Hunger Bastard sword +1 or what ever weapon you drag and dropped on the entry. Armor works exactly the same way. The DM need to then identify the weapon for it to show up for the players.

If you are a player you can drop the Great Hunger Weapon +1 one weapon in inventory and ask your DM to drop the normal weapon on top of the magic item and identify the weapon.

As a player you could also build the weapon from scratch by dropping a normal weapon onto the combat tab and then manually building out the magic component parts.

mattcolville
November 17th, 2010, 06:46
Hm. Ok. Seems a bit severe, requiring DM validation or do it all yourself.

I guess I'm not sure how a player is supposed to create a dude offline. But I'm working on it. I get the impression characters are meant to be stored Server-side? I'm unclear on the whole thing, but I'm making progress. We'll see if it becomes more obvious.

Thanks again for the help, Griogre!

Griogre
November 17th, 2010, 23:24
You're welcome on the help.

The 4E ruleset, like most rulesets don't support making local characters. The ruleset expects you to connect to the DM's server and build the character there while connected. However, if you have the full version or better you can usually build a local character except for the magic items.

When you connect to the DM's server you can select a local character and a copy of it is transfered over to the DM's server. If you do this its important to always select the server character thereafter because the transfer is a one way trip and the local version will never be updated. If you keep selecting the local you will just make another copy on the server.

mattcolville
November 18th, 2010, 04:25
When you say; "When you connect to the DM's server you can select a local character and a copy of it is transfered over to the DM's server."

That's predicated on the player having the Full Version? So someone who downloads the free version so he can log into my Ultimate Version and play, cannot actually make a character on his own?

What's...what's the advantage to that? Is it like a version control issue?

I guess its not that big a deal, the players will probably be making their dudes in the Character Builder and then entering or importing them. So they'll have a dedicated tool they can use anytime to make dudes.

I ran across a new thing I don't understand. :D I have a character here I imported using the import tool EugeneZ wrote. The import process didn't work smoothly, none of the class abilities linked properly but I can fix that manually. The powers seemed to work and that's the tough stuff.

But while I can see him in the Character Selection window, and I can open him...I can't figure out how to...what? Load him? Load him into the campaign? In Xorn's video it looks like he just clicks on the character sheet, and a square portrait of the dude appears in the upper left of his screen. Is that a pre-defined function, that area of the screen saved for displaying active characters? Or just the way he has it set up? It doesn't seem to matter where I click or what I do, I can't get the character to appear anywhere except

I can drag the Token for the character onto the map. Is that the extent of loading him into the campaign? He also has no "owner" and I'm not sure what to do about that.

I also note that I never see the little red dragon symbol. /sadface. I just see an empty box next to every ability and power and whatnot.

I haven't yet tackled tokens, but I'm working on it. :D

someoneinatree
November 20th, 2010, 23:05
But while I can see him in the Character Selection window, and I can open him...I can't figure out how to...what? Load him? Load him into the campaign? In Xorn's video it looks like he just clicks on the character sheet, and a square portrait of the dude appears in the upper left of his screen. Is that a pre-defined function, that area of the screen saved for displaying active characters? Or just the way he has it set up? It doesn't seem to matter where I click or what I do, I can't get the character to appear anywhere

As a DM, you can open a character from the character selection screen and roll their powers, but you don't control the character (appear in the upper left) unless you join the game as a player. You can do this yourself by opening a second instance of FG2 and joining the game you're running with the server listed as "localhost".



I can drag the Token for the character onto the map. Is that the extent of loading him into the campaign? He also has no "owner" and I'm not sure what to do about that.


Once a player has controlled a character, they will be listed as the owner, and will be the only person to see that character in their selection screen on login as long as they use the same login name each time. The DM can clear an owner, thereby letting other players pick up that character, by right clicking in the character selection menu and using the radial menu.