STAR TREK 2d20
View RSS Feed

Minty23185Fresh

Let’s Use the Combat Tracker Effect Visibility Options Extension

Rate this Entry
Displaying The Defender's Effects

This is one in a series of Combat Tracker EVOE blog posts. An index can be found here.

In this article, I’ll discuss effects that the target of an attack, i.e. the defender, would use that influence the Hit or Miss of an attack roll and EVOE’s impact on what players see. These effects include AC and COVER.

Now for a few examples to illustrate the usefulness and caveats of EVOE.

Throughout this series I’ll use the following settings in the Options Manager, unless otherwise specified: (1) Chat: Show GM rolls - On, (2) Chat: Show results to client - On, (3) Chat: Show roll totals - On.

This time a bugbear will attack A Paladin. The Paladin’s AC is 15. He has an AC effect bonus of +3. The bugbear has a base attack of +4 and no addition attack effects.

The screenshot below contains Chat Windows for the GM (left panel), A Paladin (center) and Krystryd (right panel). Three attacks were made by the bugbear, the first (uppermost results) were with the visibility of A Paladin’s AC effect set to GM only. The second attack (middle results) with the visibility set to TRGT. And the third attack (lowermost results) with the visibility set to VSBL.

Attachment 15270
Items of interest: In all three panels for all three results, the only differences are the presence or absence of “[DEF EFFECTS +3]”, the Paladin’s AC: +3 defense effect. The bugbear’s base attack bonus of +4 remains the same as well as the total attack roll outcomes, in all results. The defense bonus doesn’t change any of the values but it does influence the hit or miss outcome. One can verify this by repeatedly rolling attacks until one observes a die roll of 13 misses (13+4=17 < 15+3=18) while a 14 hits (14+4=18 >= 15+3). Notice that when the visibility is set to GM (uppermost results of each panel) the defense effect is only shown to the GM. When the visibility is changed to TRGT, A Paladin sees the AC effect bonus in his Chat (note that A Paladin is the target of the AC effect as well as the target of the attack). And finally when the visibility is set to VSBL, the defense effect bonus is shown in everyone’s Chat (lowermost results).

And now to point out another inconsistency in display.

Same setup - bugbear attacks A Paladin but with an additional defense bonus of +2 due to COVER. In the screenshot below, the left panel contains the GM’s Chat Window and a portion of the Combat Tracker. The right panel contains A Paladin’s Chat Window only. The bugbear makes two attacks, the first (upper results) is with the visibilities for both effects set to VSBL (this is not shown in the Combat Tracker), the second attack (lower results) is with the COVER effect’s visibility having been changed to GM only (as shown in the Combat Tracker).

Attachment 15269
Items of interest: In the first attack the bugbear rolls a 14, for a total adjusted attack value of 18. The AC of A Paladin is 15so the attack should have hit A Paladin barring any defense bonuses. Even with the AC: +3 bonus the attack would have hit. But it is reported in the Chat as a miss so we can conclude that both defense bonuses were taken into account in EVOE’s determination of hit or miss. The inconsistency: When both defense effects’ visibilities were VSBL, “[DEF EFFECTS +5]” was displayed in all Chats (upper results). However when the COVER effect visibility was changed to GM only (lower results) no effect was displayed in A Paladin’s Chat Window. One would expect to see “[DEF EFFECTS +5]” in the GM’s Chat and “[DEF EFFECTS +3]” in A Paladin‘s Chat. The reason for the inconsistent display is defense effects are “grouped” together for display purposes and displayed according to the least visible effect visibility setting, in this case GM only. This is how FG behaves without EVOE and a lot of programming code would be required to display each defense effect separately. There aren’t as many defensive attack effects as there are offensive attack effects so I did not add all that additional code. If this presents an issue due to numerous complaints I’ll add the extra code in the future.

I suspect the usual player complaint might be, “Hey, I have an AC: +3 bonus effect, but it doesn’t show it. Did I get the bonus?” A quick look at the Chat by the GM, and he/she can tell the player, “You sure did.” And leave it at that.

I’ll cover the damage throw next time.

The Combat Tracker Effect Visibility Options Extension (EVOE) can be downloaded here.

This blog post was written using EVOE v0.1.0.

Please feel free to PM me or post comments, questions and/or criticisms either here or in the forums.

Submit "Let’s Use the Combat Tracker Effect Visibility Options Extension" to Digg Submit "Let’s Use the Combat Tracker Effect Visibility Options Extension" to del.icio.us Submit "Let’s Use the Combat Tracker Effect Visibility Options Extension" to Google Submit "Let’s Use the Combat Tracker Effect Visibility Options Extension" to Facebook Submit "Let’s Use the Combat Tracker Effect Visibility Options Extension" to Twitter

Comments

  1. MarianDz's Avatar
    Nice "Minty23185Fresh" sounds and looks logical. Some things is hard to explain without examples but these yours are clear and uderstant-able.
DICE PACKS BUNDLE

Log in

Log in