What are these green arrows?

[Tiqon]

Hi.

new SW GM. Hey all :). Long time FG user (mostly RM. A bit of Pathfinder long time ago, before Core was made).

I have read through the short intro PDF for SW that came with the ruleset and the much long and VERY nice guide made by Kevin Hogan (Awesome work man!), fund here on the forum (as it is the most recent).

Still I have some questions, so I hope you will all help me in the comming weeks where I will try to learn the SW ruleset. It has SO MANY FUNTIONALITIES!

Ok first question:

1.) I have one character I made that has small green arrows beside his skills and his attributes. They seem to tell me how many times the skill or attribute has been raised (one green arrow if the attribute is D6, tow if D8 and so forth). I have tried to make many other characters in many ways, but they do not get these small green arrows. How come?

best Tiq12338

[Tiqon]

And I actually found out myself.... I had boosted the attributes with the right click/boost... How is that different from just CTRL + mouse wheel?

[Skellan]

It is probably useful to do it like that if a spell effect of something has raises the stat temporarily. Just a guess but I thought that's what it might be good for

[Tiqon]

Yeah guess your right Skellan. That's my thought also. So Gm and Player alike can get a clear indication that this has been tampered with. Hmm it DOES affect the attribute calculation thingy (clicking on the plus mark on the sheet t get how many attributes and skills raise you got atm).

[Mask_of_winter]

Yes, it's for temporary boosts. Before that feature was implemented it was easy to forget about a boosted stat.

[Ikael]

Like others mentioned, this is one way to tackle boost/lower traits. However, personally I feel that this is deprecated feature already; the most efficient way is to utilize new Combat Tracker Effects feature. Instead using the boost/lower trait feature during combat you as host can add effect to character that states what trait is boosted and how much. For instance if you want to boost character's Vigor by two dice types, you as host can add effect to character in combat tracker with text: Boost vigor [Vigor +2d]
Thereafter whenever you make vigor roll from the character you can see that dices that are being rolled are higher than ones displayed in the character sheet. Combat Tracker effects DOES NOT indicate that your trait has been boosted/lowered BUT whenever you make the roll the adjustment is taken account. The format you must use in combat tracker effects is following: DESCRIPTION [TRAIT +Xd] The DESCRIPTION can be whatever you want and it will be used in roll results to indicate that roll was adjusted by this. TRAIT must be name of any attribute or skill (letter cases does not matter but notice the brackets wrapping this part), for instance Vigor, Strength, Fighting, Stealth, Climbing etc. you name it (it can also be derived stat). The +Xd part indicates the adjustment, where X is number, you can also use -Xd to lower the trait; for instance [Vigor +2d] to boost Vigor's dice type by two, [Fighting -1d] to lower fighting dice type by one step, [Stealth +4d] to boost stealth skill's dice type by four steps! If the boost goes beyond d12 the remaining boost is converted into bonus, for instance if you have Fighting of d10 and it's boosted by three steps it becomes Fighting d12+2. As a side note, you can use combat tracker effects to give bonus to trait rolls as well, use the same approach but do not include the d to the end, for instance [Vigor +2] will grant +2 bonus to vigor rolls, but does not adjust the dice type. Note also that one combat tracker effect can include more than one adjustment, just type them within []'s as comma separated entries, for instance Crazy Boost [Vigor +2d, Strength +2d, Fighting +2] will grant +2 boost to vigor and strength plus will grant +2 bonus to fighting trait rolls.

Although I said the "green arrows" is deprecated feature it has some pros compared to this. Pros and cons are listed below for both approaches (+ is pro while - is con)

"Green Arrow" boost/lower trait approach

+ You have nice graphical indicator on your character sheet about boost/lower
+ You can see how boost/lower affected your derived stats (derived stat values are updated by the boost)
- If you have group of the same NPCs in your combat and you want to boost single NPC's trait you CANNOT use this approach. The adjustment is global to all of them
- There is no indication of boost/lower in rolled result
- If you boosted/lowered multiple target's traits you will need to setup the adjustment manually to all of them, it might be lots of work especially if your players don't know how to do it
- You can adjust trait only by 1 or 2 steps
- You will need to remember to remove the adjustment manually when effect expires


"Combat tracker effect" boost/lower trait approach

- You don't have any graphical indicator about the boost on character sheet
- Derived stats are not updated according to boost/lowers BUT in case of targeting and hit-detection you can setup the derived stat adjustment to the effect as well. For instance if effect grants you Vigor +2 dice types your toughness should be increased as well; just add the Toughness +2 to the effect to apply the change
+ You can setup adjustments individually to single NPC even if there is group of them
+ Adjustment is indicated in the roll results
+ Host has control setting up adjustments; s/he can quickly setup them in combat tracker without needing to open character sheets manually, finding the trait and adjusting it manually. Setting up the same adjustment for multiple targets is breeze as well: Create the effect for one character and then drag-and-drop the effect line to all combatants who are affected by it. Note that you don't need to create the effect beforehand, you can do it on the run in combat tracker
+ Adjustments don't have any limits (unlike in "green arrow" approach you can adjust or by 1 or 2)
If you setup duration for the effect the adjustment will go away when effect expires, no need to manually remove them.


As summary, the combat tracker effect approach is more flexible and takes less time to manage BUT because there is no graphical indication or change on character sheet, players must be taught to know that adjustment will exists and it really applies when they make the rolls. Everyone can use whatever approach they like. Someone might even use both approaches; the green arrow approach for PCs and combat tracker effects for NPCs, it's your call.

[Tiqon]

Thanks for that Ikael, good points. I did not know that feature existed. Very usefull. Any plan on making it so you can add a timer to that?
In RM when you got a Crit that eg stunned you for 2 rounds, you would get that effect on the combatant on the CT and it would count down each time it passed the combatant. I know boosts goes on for as long as the caster wants and has PP, but some effects are timed right? (very new to SW, so I can't pick anything at the top of my head).

[Mask_of_winter]

Thanks for that Ikael, good points. I did not know that feature existed. Very usefull. Any plan on making it so you can add a timer to that?
In RM when you got a Crit that eg stunned you for 2 rounds, you would get that effect on the combatant on the CT and it would count down each time it passed the combatant. I know boosts goes on for as long as the caster wants and has PP, but some effects are timed right? (very new to SW, so I can't pick anything at the top of my head).
Effects have a countdown box, that's your best option at this point.

[Ikael]

Thanks for that Ikael, good points. I did not know that feature existed. Very usefull. Any plan on making it so you can add a timer to that?
In RM when you got a Crit that eg stunned you for 2 rounds, you would get that effect on the combatant on the CT and it would count down each time it passed the combatant. I know boosts goes on for as long as the caster wants and has PP, but some effects are timed right? (very new to SW, so I can't pick anything at the top of my head).

Each effect on combat tracker has field to input duration. The duration will decrease according to SW rules and when the duration reaches zero it will expire. If no duration is set (ie. Set Duration field to 0 which is default ) it don't expire. There is even support for maintaining powers: each power can be marked as maintainable and in these cases when the duration reaches zero it won't remove the effect immediately but ask if you want to maintain it and thus increase the duration. I am not sure if these are documented anywhere which is shame but best way to learn is to try them

[Tiqon]

I found the effects now! Thanks, gold! I added the stuff manually.... So no countdown there.

I have played around with the small flash icon and VERY HARD to see hourglass ( I have the hinderance Bad eyes). Yeah could not find any documentation on those, but I came to the same conclusion, almost. Thanks for clearing things up :).