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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Luke" data-source="post: 1335313" data-attributes="member: 602">No problem Todd.RolePlayingMaster actually does pretty much all you can hope for from a program. You can do more if you have a fully worked 3D world (like NeverWinter Nights, except you lose badly in other ways).From the images above, there's obviously a very large database of feats, items, classes, abilities, conditions etc which can point the way fairly clearly to automating your work for you.Nevertheless, RPM does absolutely everything that it can to avoid forcing a gaming style on you, at every possible opportunity.Experience has shown that trying to play from manually entered statblock-type figures quickly becomes inaccurate once the current situation starts involving conditions, spell effects and other things (such as poison - which changes Str or dex, and all the things that subsequently depend on it - which is an awful lot).It becomes a particular problem once you start to realize that the *type* of modifier is almost as important as its value, since stacking rules can mean that the true results are quite different from what you expect.Given all that, its still up to the individual to decide how much automation they want. If you want, don't bother to enter in conditions and spell effects as they happen. You then get what the other combat managers typically give you (DMF, DMGenie?) which is a set of numbers per a static statblock. In that case, you try to juggle the effects in your head, hopefully keeping the stacking rules in mind as you go.An interesting example of stacking rules is what you're supposed to do when you're wearing gauntlets of ogre power and somebody casts bull's strength on you. It actually takes a careful reading of the manufacturing prerequisites of the ogre power gauntlets before you can determine what *type* of bonus it gives your strength - which means that combining the two isn't nearly as good as what you would hope for. Its great to just have a program that has already considered all that, and just pops out the right numbers for you.At the start of creating RPM, I considered that many people would accept a program that would manage things inaccurately for them, and just accept what it spat out, even if it was actually not very accurate. I *love* 3rd edition, and went the extra miles to actually make that accuracy a very viable option for those that want it.I really don't think that ignoring this is a case of "the other 10% of the time". Any creature (be it a PC, NPC or monster), can easily undergo a bewildering set of stat changes from relatively simple and common game effects. This is about getting the basics right - as described by the rules.I find that is actually quite inflammatory for many people. We (this community) love our 3rd edition fairly unconditionally, and many people understand and *love* the 3rd edition they read about in the rule books - but they really don't want to know about how inaccurately it gets played out around the table. My own gaming group includes a bunch of people who rate their intellects very highly. This includes the individual who scored the top high school marks in my state, warranting a congratulatory letter from our premier (read "governor" if you are American - and no, thats nothing like a Russian premier of old <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> ).Yet, to a man (without a laptop), frequent mistakes are made (includes referenced super-brain).Hey, bottom line:  Whatever works for you, and is good fun - works!!Still, if you can manage a laptop, give some good D&D in-game software serious consideration. Actually play the game that you love reading about in the books! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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