Critique my D&D tool

[eriktheguy]

I think what you're asking for now is advice. There's no real standard number of attacks for powers by secondary role, especially not with the way The Monster Vault changed things.

Well when you design a monster the tool adds some standard guidelines to the card for reference (ex. attack bonuses and damage values). It would be interesting to see things like 'minions deal x damage', 'solos should be able to attack X players a turn' etc.

 

[mneme]

Finally got a chance to try this tool (as it doesn't work under Mono, more's the pity).

Pretty neat!

One thing: Any chance the die roller can handle hetrogenous dice? As a player, probably the most game stopping moment for me (at paragon levels) is a crit, as I go from "I hit for X" to "I crit, gimme a minuite". Also, being able to handle brutal would be a plus.

 

[twisted.fate]

I'm not sure if this has been requested, but it would be nice if we could stretch the sticky notes. I like to type up walls of text for my NPCs, and it'd be more readable if I could have the information in wider boxes, rather than really tall skinny boxes.

Possibly also, could you allow for basic formatting in the notes? Like bold, underline, italic? Again, it's just helpful when writing out NPC notes.

Otherwise, may I simply add to the crowd of voices saying THANK YOU. This tool is so elegant it makes me want to weep.

 

[brehobit]

Very nice! I really like it.

I'll provide some feature requests if you get a chance:
* Changes in monster levels aren't reflected in attacks or damage. Attack rolls at least should be fairly easy. Scaling damage sounds tricky but doable.
* Monster skills also don't scale with level.
* Kobold Dragonshield won't display correctly ("invalid markup") no idea why. All the "warcasters" have the same problem.

It's really neat! Thanks!

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

I'm not sure if this has been requested, but it would be nice if we could stretch the sticky notes. I like to type up walls of text for my NPCs, and it'd be more readable if I could have the information in wider boxes, rather than really tall skinny boxes.

Possibly also, could you allow for basic formatting in the notes? Like bold, underline, italic? Again, it's just helpful when writing out NPC notes.

Otherwise, may I simply add to the crowd of voices saying THANK YOU. This tool is so elegant it makes me want to weep.

I will second this. Good idea!

 

[nnms]

I needed to make some Companion characters out of monsters for today's session. It worked brilliantly. I used the compendium's search to filter by level and role, then brought it up in power2ool and edited it to make a lizardman into a human, a goblin into a halfling and a bugbear into a human swordmage.

I grabbed screen shots and cropped them to print on recipe cards.

Faster and easier than copying right out of the compenidum or using the old monster builder.

I think power2ool is now my first choice for monster building.

Is there a way to copy a monster stat block in a format that it could be pasted into a document?

 

[eriktheguy]

[MENTION=83293]nnms[/MENTION]
There is a print function. I print the power cards to a pdf using a program such as cutepdf CutePDF - Create PDF for free, Free PDF Utilities, Edit PDF easily;.

If you aren't familiar with cutepdf or similar programs, it just adds an extra 'printer' to your computer. Select this printer when you want to print, and the output will be a pdf file instead of a physical document.

Then just use the snapshot tool in any pdf viewer.

 

[the-golem]

I know this is contrary to the whole web app approach, but something like this that can be run locally on my computer without internet access would be awesome. Having it as a web app makes sense considering how prevalent internet access is becoming, but I do still like the idea of something that is local and will work whether or not I have net access.

I think the issue with this is storing data meant for online (like the compendium) as offline.

Also, someone needs to make something like this for a character builder. Wait, can this thing create characters? I mean, full characters, not just grab a specific power?

It'd be cool to go from something like this, to exporting the data to a customized character sheet for printing.

 

[Nullzone]

Just wanted to keep echoing that this tool is awesome. I've already done up some 40-odd monster statblocks and 2 custom items with it for my campaign, and I'm sure will continue using a ton of it going forward. Keep up the good work! (And it was nice to meet you at PAX East!)

 

[Nullzone]

@nnms
There is a print function. I print the power cards to a pdf using a program such as cutepdf CutePDF - Create PDF for free, Free PDF Utilities, Edit PDF easily;.

If you aren't familiar with cutepdf or similar programs, it just adds an extra 'printer' to your computer. Select this printer when you want to print, and the output will be a pdf file instead of a physical document.

Then just use the snapshot tool in any pdf viewer.

You don't even have to print to PDF. When the printable sheet is rendered, every card is a separate png image. Just right click on the card(s) you want in your browser and copy or save the image, then place it in your document.