Combat?

[RizzenGPC]

I recently bought the full version and found the sections in the manual, dealing with combat, lacking.

I'd like a walkthrough of how a combat might go and how you might efficiently administer it.

I found certain areas to be very difficult. Such as AC, Hitpoints etc. Also, when adding a monster to the combat roster... I had no way of dragging the weapon "to hit" modifiers or damage modifiers to the "die modifier" window...since those fields were not a "tab-able" field.

Any walkthrough or help with combat would be much appreciated.

Thanks,
Shawn

[RizzenGPC]

Since no one is answering this post, let me ask some more specific questions.

1) How do you easily track whether you hit the players AC? Do you ask them?

2) How do you add the "monster's" to hit modifier to the die roll? Since it is not in a "draggable" modifier field?

3) Same goes for creature damage?

[tdaraa]

On the first matter, you should be able to see the character's ac on thier character sheet, or thier mini sheet.

[Hayt]

Clicking on a player's icon brings up their character sheet. From this sheet you can open a mini-list which shows the character's armour class, hits points, wounds, and non-lethal damage.

Modifiers for monsters, etc can be set by scrolling with your mouse wheel on the modifer box in the bottom left hand corner. When you roll a die, this modifer will be added to it. You can also type your die roll with the "die" command and include the modifer, e.g. "/die 1d20+3". You can also add text to this command to show what the die roll is for.

[richvalle]

Since no one is answering this post, let me ask some more specific questions.

I've never run a battle so I was letting someone else grab this.

1) How do you easily track whether you hit the players AC? Do you ask them?

Hmm, I see what you mean. That would be usefull to have up on the init list. Can you pull up the 'mini' battle page for each character? I was using that as a chracter. Pretty much just shows you your ac and hp's. If you could open one up for each character maybe that would work. Though I'd hope their name would be on it somewhere.

One problem I had with the AC is that it can vary too much to really be usefull as a 'hard' number. The fighter I was playing switched from Axe and large shield to using an axe 2 handed quite often during the fight. I kept telling the dm what my ac was.

2) How do you add the "monster's" to hit modifier to the die roll? Since it is not in a "draggable" modifier field?

Yeah, thats annoying. I think the damage should be draggable as well. Anyone?? Is there a good way to do this?

Only way I know of is to move the mouse to the modifier box and use the mouse roller (if you have one) to change the mod to the right to hit/damage bonus. Drag and drop would be much better.[/quote]

3) Same goes for creature damage?

Yep. Guess I didn't really help much.

rv

[Visigodo]

Keep tracking the results for attacks , damages, hounds etc... is not easy with this software, if you dont have enough practice with the program this can be a big problem, you my have to use paper to take notes .

[richvalle]

I think all that is needed (I make it sound so easy!) is some extra fields on the init page to hold ac, npc to hit's (up to 5 attacks) and damage mods (up to... 3?). Even if you had to manually enter them at the start of the battle it would be worth while when there are a number of bad guys to keep track of and better then resetting the mod box for every swing and hit.

rv

[RizzenGPC]

I read another post from the devs that stated that they didn't want to put too many items specific to d20 in to the combat planning system. That they didn't want to automate too much because the program is not as extensible etc.

However, I see this as a real problem and barrier to this program. Combat is extremely difficult to run. A friend and I did a test combat and it was difficult and cumbersome to accomplish. We were both thinking how nice it would be to "drag" the creatures attack/damage on to a character portrait and have it determine hit/miss and damage all in one drag drop. If it has multiple attacks, it could compute all the attacks at the same time... It could even have discriptors in there if you didn't want to retype it.

Perhaps you can build something custom in to the XML to do this?

What can we or the devs do to make this better?

Right now its just too difficult to use the combat system... To me this is the most lacking part of this product, it really needs to have some attention.

I'm running a game tonight through it... I'm probably going to use mostly paper to do my combat. Which is too bad.

[Visigodo]

I think automate too much may go against the D20 license. This license is so... you know what i mean.

I my be wrong but Xml is for database only, you cant make a drag&drop option with xml.

[richvalle]

I like that drag and drop idea. If it could be kept 'unhooked' from the d20 system where what it used to determain the hit chance and damage was easily modifiable then everyone could be happy.

RizzenGPC, would having the numbers as drag and droppable from the init page into the mod box work for you? I know I saw one person asking about changing the init box to add more stuff. Maybe we can get them to post their changes or mod it into something better.

rv