D&D 4E Who's still playing 4E

[Fox Lee]

I mean what's really the alternative? I have HTML templates that you can hand edit to make a reasonable looking statblock, and you can kinda make a halfway usable one in OO Writer if you screw with it long enough, but in none of those cases do you get any math help (not that there's much reason to have something do the math, but its convenient at least).

Like I said, I tend to use Masterplan - sure, it's a bit silly to keep it around for editing monsters when I don't use its other functions, but it does monster maths for me and that's what really matters. Just getting things to look right isn't something I really need help with (desktop publishing and CSS are kind of my bag) but not having to work out the numbers myself - and having the existing monsters stashed so I can adjust/adapt/refluff them - is what makes a monster builder valuable to me.

You do remind me that an enterprising individual could knock together a decent monster builder just using HTML and JavaScript, though. I wonder if it would be worth the bother?

Indeed there was an offline monster builder packaged as part of their adventure tools software package. It came out about 4-6 months after the offline CB. They were doing demos of it at GenCon where they were showing the campaign building capabilities that never materialized. To this day I still use both of these offline tools (MB & CB). Yes the offline MB has issues but it saves me quite a bit of time so it is still quite useful.

That's the one! Yeah, I'll grant that it's better than nothing, but since the alternative isn't nothing it's been a while since I've used it

With CBLoader the offline CB is fully expandable, which makes it very nice to have.

Why hello there! I didn't know about this. Can one freely mess with any part of the rules?

 

[Demorgus]

My home game is still playing 4th Edition. We however use the D&D Insider tools. We're basically going to keep 4E until we don't have a browser that supports Silverlight.

 

[D'karr]

Why hello there! I didn't know about this. Can one freely mess with any part of the rules?

Lots of expandability once you figure out how the CB files are organized. They are simply glorified XML files that are loaded into a database.

I've modified Themes, added feats, added magical equipment and modified existing magical equipment. CBLoader has .part files that are XML and you modify these to expand the offline CB. It does take a bit of work, but it is worth it.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Like I said, I tend to use Masterplan - sure, it's a bit silly to keep it around for editing monsters when I don't use its other functions, but it does monster maths for me and that's what really matters. Just getting things to look right isn't something I really need help with (desktop publishing and CSS are kind of my bag) but not having to work out the numbers myself - and having the existing monsters stashed so I can adjust/adapt/refluff them - is what makes a monster builder valuable to me.

Ugh! As a software engineer, and one of the earliest people to do web applications, and still fairly adept in that space, I hate HTML and CSS and all the technology that goes with it. Nothing is more of a monstrous pain than trying to make a statbloc in HTML and have it look even halfway like it should. Even pilfering a lot of elements from the statblocks generated by the Compendium never really got me there. You can spend HOURS trying to get the stupid thing to not be 1.5x wider than it should or mess up all the margins, etc etc etc.

The NUMBERS? To me THOSE are trivial. I have a chart I drew up 5 years ago with the last batch of numbers for the 'MM3' update of monster math. If you know what level 1 is supposed to be, you hardly need even think about the rest. If a number is 2 points off this way or that its fine anyway, nobody will really care.

As for building an MB in HTML, no thanks! Consider the implications of having to try to dynamically add all the various bits to a power section, and all the possible little glitchy gotchas that will exist depending on exactly the size of each bit of text, etc.

 

[thanson02]

Indeed there was an offline monster builder packaged as part of their adventure tools software package. It came out about 4-6 months after the offline CB. They were doing demos of it at GenCon where they were showing the campaign building capabilities that never materialized. To this day I still use both of these offline tools (MB & CB). Yes the offline MB has issues but it saves me quite a bit of time so it is still quite useful. With CBLoader the offline CB is fully expandable, which makes it very nice to have.

Speaking of the Adventure Tools, I remember it working fine when I had Windows XP (glitchy, but it worked), but once I upgraded my OS, it stopped working. I have Windows 10 now and it will come up to the load box with the dragon, but the "Launch Adventure Tools" button will not highlight, so I cannot actually get into it. Has anyone else run into this?

 

[D'karr]

Speaking of the Adventure Tools, I remember it working fine when I had Windows XP (glitchy, but it worked), but once I upgraded my OS, it stopped working. I have Windows 10 now and it will come up to the load box with the dragon, but the "Launch Adventure Tools" button will not highlight, so I cannot actually get into it. Has anyone else run into this?

I have it running on Windows 7. I have not tried it on Windows 10. The software uses one of the older .NET frameworks so it is possible that you have to select it for Win10. I'm not as versed in Win10 but we have a laptop with it, so when I get a chance I'll check.

 

[Balesir]

Speaking of the Adventure Tools, I remember it working fine when I had Windows XP (glitchy, but it worked), but once I upgraded my OS, it stopped working. I have Windows 10 now and it will come up to the load box with the dragon, but the "Launch Adventure Tools" button will not highlight, so I cannot actually get into it. Has anyone else run into this?

I have Windows 10 on my laptop and it works OK, so it is possible.

I am slowly (as I use monsters) going through editing the library to update everything to MM3 maths and format. In the long run I think this should work well, since the builder itself I find can be copied between machines, but the monster library does not work there. Once I have modified versions of all I'm interested in, though, I can export them and import into my next PC instance.

 

[Pobman]

I ran a one-off D&D game the other week and used 4E. It was for 5 people - 3 have played 1st edition, 1 hasn't played anyhting and my wife who is very experienced with 4E. Everyone really enjoyed it. We played The Radiant Vessel of Thesk as I wanted to use an adventure we could finish in one session that wasn't just "go here, kick the crap out of everything".

 

[Nibelung]

The NUMBERS? To me THOSE are trivial. I have a chart I drew up 5 years ago with the last batch of numbers for the 'MM3' update of monster math. If you know what level 1 is supposed to be, you hardly need even think about the rest. If a number is 2 points off this way or that its fine anyway, nobody will really care.

Numbers stopped being a problem to me since I found the "MM3 in a card" thing.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Numbers stopped being a problem to me since I found the "MM3 in a card" thing.

Yeah, that thing is famous, its a great one. I actually took the damage expression chart that someone had put out and made an MM3 version of it, with all the various number per level. Not strictly needed, but its nice to have a quick reference to say "oh, yeah, 26 damage is 5d8+1"