Making your own power cards

Grandpa · Aug 17, 2008

Quick update: the card set has been updated with a previously missing a Rogue power, as well as several other small typo and information fixes. Up to 1509 cards now. ;-)

Grandpa · Aug 19, 2008

Errata update: the card set is once again current with the recent (8/11) errata from WotC.

grickherder · Aug 19, 2008

Wow. That's some fast updating! Thanks!

SBalrog · Aug 19, 2008

Hi I would like to suggest to differentiate the different cards more by adding more colors to the headings of the cards. Now all cards which are not Powers or Magic Items are blue.

How about using:
Dark Yellow for Normal Items
Steel Grey for Conditions
Purple for Rituals
etc.

Grandpa · Aug 20, 2008

SBalrog said:
Hi I would like to suggest to differentiate the different cards more by adding more colors to the headings of the cards. Now all cards which are not Powers or Magic Items are blue.

Heya, thanks. This is a reasonable suggestion, but I made it a point to be as "official" as possible in the presentation of the cards, so as not to stoke disagreements over personal tastes. But if you have PowerPoint and would be interested in information on how to make these changes yourself, I would be more than happy to write up a tutorial. It's really quite simple.

deleteme123456 · Aug 20, 2008

What about making encounter power cards for class features that can be used once per encounter, like a Wizard's implement, or even just recoloring those class feature cards red? Second Wind is also an encounter power, so that could be colored red. Are the RGB values you used available somewhere? I have no problems doing this myself, but it seems like those would be common / standard changes, since those really are encounter powers.

Grandpa · Aug 20, 2008

infocynic said:
What about making encounter power cards for class features that can be used once per encounter, like a Wizard's implement, or even just recoloring those class feature cards red? Second Wind is also an encounter power, so that could be colored red. Are the RGB values you used available somewhere? I have no problems doing this myself, but it seems like those would be common / standard changes, since those really are encounter powers.

Actually, they're not technically powers, and for the purposes of certain other abilities that reset powers, shouldn't be confused with them. I had to make decisions about what people will want to see when they look down at a handful of cards, and thought some people would want everything they could use once per encounter looking red in their hand regardless of how many cards that was (because it can be a lot), and others would want to be particular about distinguishing powers from other abilities. And technically, any other ability could have been built like an at-will ability (e.g., the basic melee attack and basic ranged attacks aren't technically powers, either, but they are green), but this would have left me with a ridiculous number of green cards. In the end, I decided to let Wizards make the decision for me (after all, they could have made power-like entries in the PHB for all of their abilities, including skills and other attack actions that would look fine with very power-like functionality), and compromised by adding daily/encounter/at-will icons to the set, which were already needed to be used with the weapon cards to look as "official" as possible.

Making decisions like these are hard, but I made a choice to err on the side of whatever would be considered more "official," and to give players the ability to make these changes in PPT easily while not making them myself. Here is an exerpt from my Power Cards PPT.zip file:

To apply a preset color template to any card, go to Format > Slide Design. Several templates will show up on the right under "Used in this Presentation". Right-click one to apply the template to a card or cards.

It really is as simple as selecting all the cards you want to change, right-clicking the encounter card template and choosing "apply to selected."

Hope this helps!

eloquentaction · Aug 20, 2008

Grandpa said:
Actually, they're not technically powers, and for the purposes of certain other abilities that reset powers, shouldn't be confused with them. I had to make decisions about what people will want to see when they look down at a handful of cards, and thought some people would want everything they could use once per encounter looking red in their hand regardless of how many cards that was (because it can be a lot), and others would want to be particular about distinguishing powers from other abilities. And technically, any other ability could have been built like an at-will ability (e.g., the basic melee attack and basic ranged attacks aren't technically powers, either, but they are green), but this would have left me with a ridiculous number of green cards. In the end, I decided to let Wizards make the decision for me (after all, they could have made power-like entries in the PHB for all of their abilities, including skills and other attack actions that would look fine with very power-like functionality), and compromised by adding daily/encounter/at-will icons to the set, which were already needed to be used with the weapon cards to look as "official" as possible.

Making decisions like these are hard, but I made a choice to err on the side of whatever would be considered more "official," and to give players the ability to make these changes in PPT easily while not making them myself. Here is an exerpt from my Power Cards PPT.zip file:
To apply a preset color template to any card, go to Format > Slide Design. Several templates will show up on the right under "Used in this Presentation". Right-click one to apply the template to a card or cards.
It really is as simple as selecting all the cards you want to change, right-clicking the encounter card template and choosing "apply to selected."

Hope this helps!

Grandpa -

FWIW, I also made the Class Features (such as the implement powers) on a Blue background instead of on a Red background.

And I take the same approach as you did; if you don't like my decision (and I'm sure many won't), you're free to change it back to red / green / black.

-- Hirahito

eloquentaction · Aug 20, 2008

Version 4 is Released!!

All -

I just released version 4 of my MSE-SET cards.

Here's a brief summary of what changed:

* IMPORTANT: These new sets all require version 3.7b of the MSE editor. You can download this version
at ( http://magicseteditor.sourceforge.net ). As far as I have been able to test, this new version does
not mess up anyone else's sets (tested: Tintagel, Ander00, Mercutio/Plauge, and Quindia's sets).

* There are now five styles: Dzokvik, Basic, Wax, Simple and Flashy.
* Each of these styles allows you at least 15 options on stylizing it, including an option that allows you to turn the background from full parchment, to light parchment to pure white.
* I've included over 15 fonts and each card allows any of these fonts to be used anywhere on the card.
* Each position on the card now has about a dozen colors it supports as well as many of them supporting an 'Auto' which changes based on the card color.

* I've included the 8/11 errata from WoTC.
* Just about everything from the DMG and PHB have been made into a card.
* Monsters will be delayed until Version 5.
* All five styles of the cards support at least two customizable side boxes and some up to seven. Whatever you place here will remain with the card.
* One of the styles is a Landscape style (Flashy)
* The sets have been split into 6; one that includes everything and others that are split as best as I could manage.
* All of the sets now 'auto-scale' the rule text based on what's in them.
* Some of the sets allow 'smart sizing' based on the size of the flavor text and the top section.
* The initial font for most of the text is now much larger for legibility.
* The icons got a revamp (yet again) - I stole all of the Magic Item icons from Grandpa's cardset.

* This set includes:
--- Rituals
--- Magic Items
--- Diseases
--- Poisons
--- Items
--- All Feats
--- All Multiclass Feats
--- All Powers
--- All Features
--- Gods
--- Alignment
--- Condition Cards
--- Class Cards
--- Race Cards
--- The Swordmage
--- ENworlds Bard
--- ENworlds Druid
--- Many ENWorld Races
--- Many ENWorld Options (All optionals have a new keyword 'Optional')
--- The Warforged, Genasi and Drow Races
--- 1695 cards, total

Check the link in my signature to get the files.

-- Hirahito

meandog · Aug 21, 2008

eloquentaction said:
All -

I just released version 4 of my MSE-SET cards.

-- Hirahito

These cards are sick Hirahito.....they look great ....were do you find the time to do this...Keep up the good work....they make D&D on saturday go alot faster and easier to keep track of stuff.
THanks alot!