L4W Discussion Thread III

[weldon]

I used the Character Builder to model my character and then transcribed the info from the generated character sheet to the wiki math section. I also included a link to the Character Builder file in my character wiki page so that a judge could download it if they wanted.

I thought it was a good compromise and it certainly helped me get the math straight, even if I still made some mistakes. I'm certain that I made far fewer than I would have without the Character Builder. Editing the math section was still tedious though.

The problem I found was that I couldn't find much info on many of the templates that are used and so I made several mistakes related to the syntax of the templates. If someone can point me in the right direction, I would like to make the new character creation guide a little more explicit with detailed explanations of the templates. I'm a little unclear on the process for creating branches in the wiki (approval, structure, etc.).

 

[dimsdale]

Another leveling question (last one, I promise)

I've recently sent in my character sheet for level 2 approval, with many changes. Until I'm approved, am I able to adventure? If so, do I adventure with my level 1 stats. The reason I'm asking is that I've been asked to participate in a level 1 adventure.

 

[Lord Sessadore]

As long as the DM is OK with you adventuring while unapproved, you can adventure with your level 2 stats. 'Course, you still have to be approved again before you can be awarded XP.

 

[dimsdale]

As long as the DM is OK with you adventuring while unapproved, you can adventure with your level 2 stats. 'Course, you still have to be approved again before you can be awarded XP.

thanks Lord S.
I'll ask the DM

 

[covaithe]

I'm back from the howling, internet-free wilderness, and (very) slowly catching up on stuff. Games I DM take priority, followed by games I pay in, but if there's anything else waiting for my input, feel free to point it out to me and I'll try to get to that soon-ish.

Regarding using the character builder for approvals... Besides the logistical difficulties regarding who has what version and so on, there are other reasons to avoid relying on it too much. For one thing, there's no guarantee that it will be freely available indefinitely. WotC could decide to yank it at any time, and if we've built our approval system around it, game over. For another, we already have some house rules, e.g. how we handle battlerage vigor, that aren't present in the character builder. Finally, and IMO this shouldn't be underestimated, a manually written-out character sheet makes you much more familiar with the mechanics of your character than a programmatically generated one. L4W characters are intended to last a long, long time; you should know how yours works.

That said, our math section could be a lot better. It's repetitive, hard to work with, and large chunks of information are simply not used the way we thought they would. What we have now is only very slightly changed from the original sample character sheets, which were intended as works in progress.

I'll probably have more to say on this once I work my way down to character approvals in my list of stuff to catch up on. But that could be a while yet; sorry to all you guys who are waiting.

 

[Atanatotatos]

Welcome back cov! Quagmire is still doing fine

 

[Atanatotatos]

Btw I noticed Dunamin has been missing for a while, am I mistaken?
Hope he didn't go *puff*, that'd be a problem...

 

[weldon]

That said, our math section could be a lot better. It's repetitive, hard to work with, and large chunks of information are simply not used the way we thought they would. What we have now is only very slightly changed from the original sample character sheets, which were intended as works in progress.

I'd like to help if I can. Is there any documentation on how the templates work? Any documents that describe the goals for the templates?

 

[Lord Sessadore]

I believe there are pages in the Wiki that describe how each template work; if I'm not mistaken it's essentially these pages that tell the wiki what to do with the information entered in the template. The only way I'm aware of to get to them is to edit a page which has them. At the bottom of the edit page, there should be a list that says something like "Templates used on this page:", with a link to each of those pages. ... I really hope that made sense, I don't think I'm at peak alertness today.

Anyway, does anyone else have any other references for the workings of the templates and their intended goals?

 

[stonegod]

Anyway, does anyone else have any other references for the workings of the templates and their intended goals?

Erekose13 would be the one to ask as he did a lot of work on them.