D&D 3.5 Attack rolls behaving badly, and isolated issues.

[Pdelski]

So I was doing some more testing today, one of those let's see which character would win in a fight situations. I have two identical laptops at home, mine has the ultimate license, and my wife's laptop has the free version. I'm slowly building a game to be ready to to play later and right now we have 3 characters programed in. For simplicity, I will just use the characters first initials, A, N, and T. When I make attack rolls on my computer using any character vs any other, everything seems to work normally. I have changed control of the characters between both computers in several combinations, between GM and player.

The strange thing is occurring on my wife's computer, and it seems to be two common variables involved. Her computer, and the character N. I have all 3 characters in the combat tracker to be targeted. When she has A attack T, or T attack A, things work normally. Also when she controls N to attack T or A, things also work normally. What goes wrong is when she either has A or T attack N, all rolls except a natural 1 hit, even when it's too low to get past the target AC.

We have tried restarting Fantasy Grounds, Restarting our computers, attacking N with different weapons, attacking N with and without armor on him, and also clearing the combat tracker and putting the characters back in. No matter what we have tried, any character she controls on her computer vs N, always hits except on a roll of natural 1. Sometimes a crit will trigger as well, even when it shouldn't be possible, but we haven't been able to establish a pattern yet, it seems random.

We have no idea why this keeps happening. Is it possible that there is some setting in FG that we accidentally enabled that allows auto hits? Maybe some sort of syntax error with N's defensive stats that will allow almost anything to hit against him?

We are currently at a loss, but haven't given up trying to solve this problem. Any help or insight from the community would be greatly appreciated, and Thank You, in advance.

[damned]

Can you post your campaign db.xml?

[Pdelski]

I Think this is it. Also, just to let you know, this is for a high level campaign and the characters aren't complete yet. We are still learning the program.

[damned]

Hi Pdelski,

Those are.... high level.

I cannot replicate your scenario so I suspect you are doing something wrong.

I have opened all three character sheets to the Actions Tab.
I have opened the Combat Tracker.
N has an AC of 54.

I drag the +14 or the +16 from T's weapons onto N and I hit only once and that was when I rolled a 20.
I drag the +16 from As weapon onto N and I hit only once and that was when I rolled a 20.

It appears to be working correctly from what I can see...

That being said - with the extreme numbers you have on these characters you could be outside of one or more calculation ranges that FG is using....?

[Pdelski]

I suppose that is possible, I don't know what those ranges are, but like I said, on my computer it seems fine too, but when she is using them on her computer it seems to get strange. I will keep trying to figure it out. If I find a solution, I will definitely put it here. Thanks for the quick reply, and for all your help.

[Pdelski]

I just had a thought. Would her computer with the free version have a copy of db.xml too, or does it just reference the copy I have when she connects to the campaign? Could there be something different in there because of the difference in Licences, if there is such a file on her computer, or would her computer store such information in a different file name?

[damned]

The data on a client computer - irrespective of license - is encrypted in a cache file rather than the raw data files the GM has.

[LordEntrails]

You candelete the player cache, from the log in / startup screen, click the nuke icon in the upper right.

[Pdelski]

Update! I have found a partial solution, but I still don't fully understand the cause. I found that if I release control of Character N and give control to My wife while she is logged into our campaign, then take control of N back as GM, the rolls work normally, but every time she logs off and then back, we have to do this process to normalize the roll results. I don't know if the root of the problem lies with the way ownership works in the program, or her data files, or even something else, but at least for now we have a temporary work around.

[Pdelski]

We tried the nuke option, but it still didn't make a difference. We even tried deleting both data and app folders for FG and reinstalling the client, still no difference.

[damned]

Update! I have found a partial solution, but I still don't fully understand the cause. I found that if I release control of Character N and give control to My wife while she is logged into our campaign, then take control of N back as GM, the rolls work normally, but every time she logs off and then back, we have to do this process to normalize the roll results. I don't know if the root of the problem lies with the way ownership works in the program, or her data files, or even something else, but at least for now we have a temporary work around.

There is definitely something screwy going on there.
One thing you might try is export the three pcs and import them into a new blank campaign.
Retest there...

[Pdelski]

I will give it a try and see what happens.

[Pdelski]

There is definitely something screwy going on there.
One thing you might try is export the three pcs and import them into a new blank campaign.
Retest there...

Looks like that did the trick. Thank you!

[Trenloe]

Just out of interest (to try to stop this happening again) - what player name (the user name used to "Join Game") was your wife using in the campaign that didn't work? You might still be able to see what it was by going to the old campaign and looking at who is the owner of the character she was using.

[Pdelski]

I already deleted the old campaign, but the username to connect was Joanna, it's still the same for the current campaign we are using. When she connected, it would say, 'Joanna' connected. We have not had the issues repeat since then. Another thing that comes to mind is that I started working on the old campaign before the major FG update, but I'm not sure if that would have had any effect on the results we were getting at the time. We didn't have attacks completely programed in at that point. She mentioned something about clearing the whole attack line, (Name, M/R, #att, Attacks, and Damage fields) and putting the information in fresh. She said she noticed the problem after doing this, after the new update.

When she was controlling a character, it would be owned by her username, or unclaimed after I would clear it, at which point it would be under her name when she loaded it on her computer during our testing.

[Trenloe]

Thanks for the info Pdelski. Not sure what went on there, very strange. Glad to hear you're up and running OK in a new campaign.