Alternative Power Formatting about dnd4ebeta HOT 6 CLOSED

Thanks so much for the reply. Of course, I'm not the one behind any of this, but I wholely support the work both of you have/will put into this. Thanks so much for the insight!

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I genuinely hope you don't take my enthusiasm as negativity. I love the fact you are supporting are seldom considered system, and I just want to try and do my part to help it grow.

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Currently one of the big things I want to do moving forwards to reworking the HTML / CSS of the entire character sheet as well as the power cards. asacolips#1867 had drafted some concept art of what an much more ideal character sheet would look like in the future. And while they're busy at the moment on their own projects, I think that improving the user experience with a better character sheet and power cards is a high priority task I would like to engage with for the next milestone.
Also I'm thrilled with all the feed back and constructive criticism you've provided so far. And while I haven't been able to address all your issues and suggestions just yet I would would like to complete most of them in the foreseeable future.

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So, looking at that character sheet concept, I am in love! Everything is where it belongs with the ability scores and skills all neatly stacked on the left, full character info at the top with I assume more in the details tab, HP/AC/NADs/Surges/APs all across the top, etc. It all just looks so nice. I'm not like, super incredibly fond of the "powers" tab, but it's definitely without a doubt a solid step up from where we are currently.

To explain that a bit, I still firmly believe that powers should be sorted by action used, not source or frequency. The color coding from the system makes frequency a non-factor as green is atwill, red encounter, black/gray for daily, plus you have charges getting tracked, so it won't matter too much there. As for source, I personally don't ever really care about that kind of stuff. Like, I don't care if my encounter power came from my race, theme or class, I just care that it's an encounter power I can use. I just keep hearing my players scrolling through their sheets and looking through all of their powers to find out "Do I have anything that can work for a minor?" and, in my experience, I've always had better enjoyment when sorting by action because you can completely ignore whatever actions you don't have available.

My ideal sorting for powers would be like this:

1. Standard Action
   A. At Will Powers with attack rolls in alphabetical order
   B. At Will Powers without attack rolls in alphabetical order
   C. Encounter Powers with attack rolls in alphabetical order
   D. Encounter Powers without attack rolls in alphabetical order
   E. Daily Powers with attack rolls in alphabetical order
   F. Daily Powers without attack rolls in alphabetical order
2. Minor Action
   Same exact order as above, but for minor actions.
3. Move Action
   Same exact order as above, but for move actions.

This would be a natural way to sort powers so that a player's turn can result in a "Choose 1 of each" kind of mentality. Then, just by checking if the powers have the "attack roll needed" box checked you can have the sheet auto sort between attacking powers and utility/other powers, then sorting alphabetically to auto generate a "Default" sorting order. Then just allow players to move them to any order they want like currently.

For experienced players, I'm sure this is unnecessary, but for less experienced players or noobs like in my current game, this would be an amazing "Ease of Play" option that would definitely help them out.

Stepping away from the sheet itself, I'm not sure if the powers in the chat log on that screen shot are examples as well, or just something from that actual campaign that made it's way into the screenshot, but I will say that they do look nice, they appear to have the associated color coding that 4e uses for at wills, but the formatting would (in my opinion) need to be changed to more accurately replicate the look of CBLoader power cards as, in all honesty, pretty much anyone playing 4e will be using CBLoader, so it might as well match that styling so that it's easy for people to have a familiarity. I do also ABSOLUTELY LOVE the integration of the attack and hit rolls being in-line rolls.

(Also, after looking at them more, I'm almost certain that there's no way those are 4e power cards as they are calling out things like "odd miss" "even miss" "(Flow)" etc, but they do look good. However, if you're starting from scratch, I highly request making them as close to CBLoader cards as possible.

Also, if there is ANY way, at all, that I can help you with this monumental task, PLEASE let me know. I would be happy to help in any way I can.

from dnd4ebeta.

@NuptupTDOW in the 13th Age system, which the mock-up @EndlesNights linked earlier was based on, we actually have multiple sorting options such as by power type, power action, or custom groupings via a field on each power that can take any text value. Combine that with some filtering options on the output, and it will likely work in a very useful way for your group!

I also noticed some of the issues you described regarding impossible scenarios when I created the 13th Age system, as it uses dice rolls in even more arbitrary places than 4e powers sometimes. What I did to solve it there was to make powers in 13th Age as items where each field is either a free form text field or text editor (WYSIWYG, like the Description field is) and then handle all of the rolls via inline rolls. This page in the 13th Age system documentation has an overview of what inline rolls on a power look like for users.

That’s a pretty drastic switch on the power item structure from what this system currently has, so I wouldn’t assume that this is part of the work that I’ll be doing for the theme, which would be aesthetically focused. However, I did want to go ahead and include it here in case it does make sense as an option to explore later.

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This has largely now been implemented. A bit more tinkering will be done but I'm comfortably to close this issue now.

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