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mattcolville
November 23rd, 2010, 05:35
A friend of mine is connected here and he's making a dude. It's taken an hour and we're almost done I think, but the last issue is that he's got a feat from a dragon magazine that's not in any of my modules.

Can he simply add the feat himself? Can I add it for him?

I ask because he can "create item" in the feat list, he can name the feat, but neither he nor I seem able to then add any information to the feat. We can't describe it, give it an entry, do anything other than give it a name.

someoneinatree
November 23rd, 2010, 05:53
Here's a quick way of solving it:

You can easily create a note with the details of the feat or ability in it and just drag the little dragon box (or other link-icon) from the note into the blank box on the feats and abilities page of your character sheet.

That way, clicking on the icon on the character sheet will just bring up the note so you can recall the details of it.

mattcolville
November 23rd, 2010, 06:20
I feel like I should be making a list of feature requests for this ruleset.

Well, what you describe sounds like it would work. I appreciate the rapid response! Seems unusual to me that I can't just...add a feat. Ah well.

Hye Roler
November 23rd, 2010, 17:47
I am not an expert and am still learning my way around creating and editing modules... but I think the most complete way would be to parse that particular Dragon issue using the 4EParser utility and then load it when creating/using that character.

The "how" to do that is detailed in many posts on these forums.

BTW: Don't give up as the rewards of using FGII are vast in comparison to any VTT out there... and hands down is the most beautiful in its presentation and user interface.

mattcolville
November 23rd, 2010, 20:18
I am not an expert and am still learning my way around creating and editing modules... but I think the most complete way would be to parse that particular Dragon issue using the 4EParser utility and then load it when creating/using that character.

The "how" to do that is detailed in many posts on these forums.

BTW: Don't give up as the rewards of using FGII are vast in comparison to any VTT out there... and hands down is the most beautiful in its presentation and user interface.

I'm not giving up, I can see the value in the tool, but I'm really, really not looking forward to having 12-15 players, all with different levels of computer-skill, all pounding on this thing. It's taken me over a week just to get this far, I can't imagine how frustrating it's going to be for them.

I was sorta hoping to avoid a situation where a player is sitting there, waiting for me to go scrub the compendium so he can see his Feat.

Manually adding it should be no problem...it's just a feat and as far as I can tell, FG2 doesn't parse feats. It just treats them as text. So I should just be able to create a new item in the feat section of the character sheet, and type in the details. I can't for the life of me imagine why this functionality, enabled in other sections of the sheet, is disabled for feats and abilities.

Zeus
November 23rd, 2010, 21:28
As an interim until your able to scrape and parse the particular Dragon magazine, I would simply add the Feat Name to the charsheet Feat list for the player, any text for the Feat could be applied as a manual note in the Notes section. Then if there are any associated powers, simply create those manually under the Powers tab. Job done.

mattcolville
November 23rd, 2010, 23:46
Ok, I think I'm giving up. I'm going to take a break from this thing and if I'm still feeling the way I am now, I'm going to see if I can get my $150 back as I am now officially disgusted with this software. In my defense, I would like to point out that I worked on this thing for nine days and have not yet reached the point where I can get a single CHARACTER into the builder. Trying to play with this thing would be absurd. All I'd achieve is making a lot of my friends *incredibly* frustrated with me.

The last straw was the feat debacle.

Expected Behavior: I could create a new feat, in the feat column of the character sheet, and enter the feat's text.

Actual Behavior: If I create a new feat, I can give a name, and that it. I can't give it any text.

That ALONE is ridiculous and at this point I no longer think the software is buggy, I think it's broken. I can't even enter just regular text. No parsing, no data modules or libraries, I just want to type. Using my keyboard. Into a text field. Negative.

So I read the reply from chezcaliente and while my response is "That's ridiculous," I give it a try.

The first problem is that entering a new Feat in the Notes section and dragging it over to the empty feat column of the character sheet does nothing. No error, no feedback. None of the behavior I'd expect in a Windows program. Just nothing.

If I create a new feat in the feat section of the character sheet, and THEN drag the feat over from Notes, I get a new feat, with NO NAME, but the text from the Notes.

If I then delete the text from the notes, the FEAT GOES AWAY! "Of course!" You're saying, "because all you did was create a link to the Notes tab!"

Yes but I didn't WANT to do that! I just wanted to make a feat! This was a kludge to allow me to do that! I was just using the Notes tab as a worksheet and then I wanted to clean up that worksheet because I don't intend to have a big list of crap in my notes.

I feel like I'm the first person ever to use this program. But I know I'm not. I can't believe people put up with this.

someoneinatree
November 24th, 2010, 00:53
Probably a good idea to take a break if it is frustrating you that much.

As stated, the two options most people currently using the software would use in that situation:

1) Parse the Dragon magazine in the same way you parsed other books. (I generally use the "append" feature of the compendium scraper so I can make a module of multiple issues).

2) Use the notes workaround. I think you're confused as to how the linking works though. You first need to create an item in the feats list on the character sheet and give it a name. Then write your note consisting of the feat text. Then drag the little link box icon from the note and carefully place it into the empty link box next to the item you created on the feats list.

Hopefully that makes sense, and it certainly works at my end.

And generally I agree, the functionality to create text fields from within the abilities tab of the character sheet in the same way you can on the powers tab would be great. For me its not a high priority though as I have all of the publications parsed. Moonwizard will probably add it to the feature request list though and get around to it eventually.

While it is not necessarily intuitive to start with, and the learning curve is a little steep... I actually find it is worth the time spent. Creating a 4e character in FG2 takes me about 10 minutes; and combat runs faster than a real life game if everyone knows how the ruleset functions.

Fot5
November 24th, 2010, 02:36
I'm not sure why you don't want to parse the data from the compendium. Personally, I think that that is much easier than having 12-15 players trying to input their information by hand. Have you tried the parser (https://tenian.eugenez.net/Parser/)? It's actually pretty easy to use in compendium mode, and it does do what I think you're looking for. To my knowledge, you cannot create a tab that pops up when you "create" a feat from text entry. About all you can do is enter the feat text into the name, which isn't really going to give you anything useful, or you can create a note that you drop into the empty box on the feat list on the abilities tab.

My players and I don't really bother inputting feat data because feats are not features that are typically used during combat. If a feat does have a feature that is used during combat, my players enter that information on the powers tab entries. For example, the rogue's backstabber feat increases sneak attack damage to d8s, so I'd just put a "situational" power entry on the powers tab. Other than that information, I'm not sure that I see much value in inputting the feat text into FGII because you can always look it up in your book during a game (that is, if you don't have the feat parsed into a module).

I'm not sure that I understand what problem you are having typing text into fields in FGII. It sounds like you can enter text from your keyboard, although your post also says that you cannot. I do know that if you have FGII maximized and you navigate to a different window that you can still be viewing FGII on the monitor and not be able to enter text into it. If this is the case, then you can either <alt+tab> and select FGII or you can run FGII without maximizing the window. I doubt that this is your problem though because it looks like you are able to enter some text from the keyboard.

I agree with the post above. If you have scraped the data into library modules from the compendium with the parser, you can enter a character into FGII in about 10 minutes. I think that the combat tracker works well enough to justify the cost of the program. It is the best use of entertainment funds I've spent.

If you're having a lot of trouble with the program, you should look for customer service to problem solve the source of the difficulties. There are a lot of folks happily using the program without any significant problems.

Griogre
November 24th, 2010, 03:34
I think you are making it a bit too hard. If you were filling out a character sheet for a game you played face to face would you really write all that feat stuff down on a character sheet? I suspect you would just put the name of the feat down and maybe what book and page number it was from.