Engineer Suite - Equipment Engineer thread

[Maasq]

Hi folks

I'll delete this thread once Equipment Engineer is mature, but this will let all discussion about its development be held in one place for now.
I have been slaving over the GUI today, and I have it working how I want. Elements become active/inactive as needed, allowing me to get everything onto a single tab. I've posted a brief video (https://www.patreon.com/posts/22209215) showing this on the Patreon site - this is a public post; please go look at it as I need feedback on the GUI.

The same video on YouTube (https://youtu.be/fPFPQDcvnjk) if you prefer :)

Have I missed anything out that you'd need for equipment?

One thing to mention - the 'Save to NPC List' button will write a weapon to the list of weapons available to use as actions in NPC Engineer. I intend putting a 'partner' button in NPC Engineer too, to export weapons you may have saved to equipment files.

I will add an image tool, and also a non-ID field. Anything else missing?

Maasq

[mattekure]

This looks amazing. For weapon properties, there are 3 I noticed that are not on the UI in the video.
magic - marks the weapon as magical for bypassing resistances
reroll X - makes the weapon reroll damage dice less than or equal to X. For example the fighters great weapon fighting technique
crit range X - makes the weapon roll a crit on X or higher. for weapons that have a superior critical range.

[mattekure]

One thing I couldnt tell from the video. Is it possible in your interface to have a weapon with multiple damage types for a single damage roll, and is it possible to have a second damage roll. It looks like this in the FG UI.

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[Maasq]

Hi Matt.

My feeling is that many of your suggestions belong in the next segment - Artefact Engineer - that deals with magical items. This one is for mundane items. I deliberately left the 'magic' flag off the list of flags for this reason. I took a similar approach with multiple damage types - mundane weapons don't cause lightning damage as well, do they? It's a real question, btw - it may be that I need to broaden my outlook here. My preference is for that sort of stuff to be part of a magical weapon, and so consigned to the next instalment.

'Reroll X' - what you have typed makes this look more a function of an effect rather than something baked into a weapon. Or are you telling me that it is a weapon property that can be added to any weapon?

Crit Range X was pointed out by someone else too. I'll see if I can get Zacc or someone else to offer some wisdom here. I don't play enough to have an intimate knowledge of these bits :)

One thing I'd really love to tease out of a Dev is how to code for contents of a pack. I can't reverse engineer the XML because I can't make a copy of a full pack to save out as a new module!

Maasq, open to suggestion.

[mattekure]

If they fit better into another segment, great although I'm not really sure how a mundane item is any different from a magical item within FG. From what I can tell, within FG a magic weapon just has the magic tag, possibly a bonus, and perhaps more than one damage type. A magic armor just has the magic tag, and a bonus. For the rest of the magic items, its just descriptive text as items cant carry FG Effects.

The Effects for the items would have to be created on the character sheet separately. The technique I have been using for creating magical items with Effects was to create the Effect as a power on a character sheet, drag that to the spells to create a spell from it, then drag that spell and link it in the items description. That makes it easy for players to add the effect from the item description. This is likely beyond the current scope though.

There are some mundane items that may do more than one type of damage. A poisoned blade for example.

I do see great utility in the ability of creating magic item templates though. The DMG has a ton of templates which can be applied to any weapon/armor/item to make them into the magical versions.

Reroll X is a weapon property within FG. Its not documented but it does work. Normally on a character sheet you can change it for all weapons using the weapons header, but they added reroll X to enable it per weapon.

[mattekure]

For doing the contents of a pack, could you code it as a parcel with the items in it? Then when it is added to a player it automatically gives them the items?

[Maasq]

If they fit better into another segment, great although I'm not really sure how a mundane item is any different from a magical item within FG. From what I can tell, within FG a magic weapon just has the magic tag, possibly a bonus, and perhaps more than one damage type. A magic armor just has the magic tag, and a bonus. For the rest of the magic items, its just descriptive text as items cant carry FG Effects.

You may be 100% right, but I will probably only know for sure when I get to the end of Artefact Engineer and think 'bugger, I could have combined those two.' Having said that, Par5e treats/treated them separately, the official books have them in separately named sections, and they have separate XML nodes in the module. For simplicity's sake I'll leave them separate. It makes the number of choices less at any point as well, so the GUI will be more manageable in each.


The Effects for the items would have to be created on the character sheet separately. The technique I have been using for creating magical items with Effects was to create the Effect as a power on a character sheet, drag that to the spells to create a spell from it, then drag that spell and link it in the items description. That makes it easy for players to add the effect from the item description. This is likely beyond the current scope though.

This piques my interest. An 'add effect to item' button where there is some help in designing the effect... Come back to me with this one when Artefact Engineer has made its début.


There are some mundane items that may do more than one type of damage. A poisoned blade for example.

Good point, well made. I can't see a way of adding more than one damage type to a weapon, though. I believe both things that you asked for are only doable by adding to the character sheet. Look at the frost brand weapons for examples - the extra damage is only stated in the text description and would have to be added by the player on their character sheet.


I do see great utility in the ability of creating magic item templates though. The DMG has a ton of templates which can be applied to any weapon/armor/item to make them into the magical versions.

I'll look into this as part of Artefact Engineer, but this is definitely something I'll be asking for suggestions on as it taxes the limits of my imagination. I'll be back with questions :)


Reroll X is a weapon property within FG. Its not documented but it does work. Normally on a character sheet you can change it for all weapons using the weapons header, but they added reroll X to enable it per weapon.

I spoke to Zacc re: this and he said what you said. Look out for this and crit range x in the next iteration.

Thanks for all the suggestions and help!

Maasq

[mattekure]

I was taking a closer look at the item record. When creating a weapon in the FG interface you define the damage of a weapon in the Damage field. You can actually put in "1d6 piercing,acid + 1d4 fire" and it will create the multiple rolls and damage types when added to the character sheet. So I think it is possible.

Looking at the xml. The damage string "1d6 piercing,acid + 1d4 fire + 1d8 force" produces the following xml.

<item>
<id-00001>
<ac type="number">0</ac>
<bonus type="number">0</bonus>
<damage type="string">1d6 piercing,acid + 1d4 fire + 1d8 force</damage>
<description type="formattedtext">
<p></p>
</description>
<name type="string">sword</name>
<type type="string">Weapon</type>
<weight type="number">0</weight>
</id-00001>
</item>

When added to a character sheet, it produces this.
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[Maasq]

Well now, that's good to know. This is why I need people who know FG more intimately than me to reply to me!
Excellent - noted.

Maasq
happy :)

[LordEntrails]

I think you can pull the xml of a pack out of the SRD equipment module, since I don't think that one is encrypted... But, not sure. I do know it has been asked and answered somewhere else in the forums. I'll do some searching and if I find it will come back here and post the reference.

[LordEntrails]

Yep, here are two xml code examples;
- https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?43996-Equipment-Packs-Kits&p=391229&viewfull=1#post391229
- https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?42136-Making-a-new-equipment-pack-or-kit-Uh-can-t-seem-to-figure-this-out&p=373934&viewfull=1#post373934

[Myrdin Potter]

I need to create thousands of individual treasures (items). The DMG has sub-types for art objects and such. Will you have that?

[Maasq]

@LordEntrails - thank you so much for these. I bumped up against the more recent discussion for another system and never searched any deeper. This will come to a pack generator near you soon!

@Myrdin - yes, somewhere. I am off to look at exactly where :)
OK, found it. I will add it this evening.
Type: Treasure
Subtype: 5 values of Art Objects and 6 values of Gemstones.

Need anything else added in?

Maasq

[Myrdin Potter]

The treasure listed above is great.

We will be able to make our own categories, right?

[Maasq]

Hi folks

Based on the chat here and on Discord, I made some adjustments to the GUI. As before, I added some lovely music to it and you can watch it here (https://www.patreon.com/engineersuite).
I hope you enjoy, and as before - suggestions and comments are welcome. I'm no expert in the mysteries of FG and welcome anything that lets me build a better application :)

Maasq