Chrisalanh
First Post
I had planned to post all of this on the Fluid boards, but that doesn't seem to be an option right now. I had also planned for these to be separate posts for ease of subject-line browsing, which is why this is a series of short posts with subject lines.
Here's my list of bugs. Suggestions are in a different thread.
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Character sheet doesn’t indicate how a weapon is wielded.
The regular character sheet and the portrait character sheet don’t give any indication of whether a weapon is wielded one or two-handed. You can infer this from the damage bonus, but you shouldn’t have to.
This information is present in the Battle Block format.
--
Druid weapon proficiencies - halfspear problem
The Druid class features screen lists them as being proficient with the halfspear, but if a druid equips one, it socks him with the non-proficiency penalty. This goes away if he takes Simple Weapon Proficiency as a feat.
The Halfspear was not listed as a druid weapon in early copies of the Player's Handbook, but was later added to accommodate druids of small size. Maybe whoever wrote the class description had an up-to-date PH, while whoever coded the proficiencies had an early copy.
--
Stat blocks useless without Flat-footed/Touch AC.
Let me say first that while I’ve played D&D since 1980, I only converted to the third edition about two months ago. As I went through the last two years of WOTC output, I was very pleased to see that they changed their stat block format from listing a total AC and then (modifiers) to stating the Normal, Flat-footed, and Touch AC outright. After all, why else were the modifiers listed than to perform those two adjustments?
One of my three main reasons for buying the e-Tools was to get access to all of the stat block info for creatures from the Monster Manual. I have twenty years of my own material plus lots of old TSR stuff that I want to convert, and I gleefully scrapped plans to painstakingly build my own MM database when I read that this information would be easily produced in e-Tools.
I am very disappointed. AC is probably second only to attack information as the most often used piece of the stat block. The fact that the e-Tools output follows neither the older (modifiers listed) nor the newer (FF and T listed) formats, but instead lists only the normal AC, makes them almost if not completely useless to me.
It does me little good to cut and paste a bunch of stat blocks for whatever I’m converting, and then have to access another source to complete them. I could almost as easily have generated them myself.
I've read that calculating Touch AC is a problem for e-Tools because of the way it stores AC modifiers. This is something they ought to rectify. Failing that, I hope that a patch will at least change the stat block format to list the AC modifiers, so I can go back to calculating FF and Touch AC on the fly.
--
Bastard sword non-proficiency penalty calculated wrong.
A character with Martial Weapon Proficiency can use a Bastard Sword without penalty with two hands. The Exotic Weapon Proficiency is needed only to use the Bastard Sword proficiently with one hand.
e-Tools applies the non-proficiency penalty to the Bastard Sword whether it’s wielded one or two-handed, if the user does not have the Exotic Weapon Proficiency.
--
Monk character could not equip Unarmed attack.
Here’s a curious little glitch. When I sat down for the second time to enter my second level dwarven monk NPC (after discovering how to use the non-intuitive User Entry stat method properly) I found that while his club and javelin were available to be equipped, the unarmed attack was not. I spent a while trying to figure out how I had managed to make it available on my first try with the character, but could find nothing I’d done differently. I eventually resorted to revising my first try with the character.
Here’s the weird part: after saving (and overwriting the version that had no unarmed attack) I tried to recreate the problem and could not do so. Every other character I’ve started has had "unarmed" as a freely selectable choice for equipping.
So I can’t attach the glitched character, and I can’t reproduce the problem, but for 15 minutes there I was really aggravated.
--
User entry of statistics is non-intuitive.
I got very frustrated the first time I sat down with e-Tools, when I tried to simply enter a character I’d generated by hand and already created in the old Character Generator. I entered the stats using the User Entry method, and couldn’t understand why my skill points and hit points were coming out so low.
After checking the boards, I realized that I’d entered the adjustments in the User slots, rather than using the Adjustment slots on the far right. I felt kinda dopey and got back to work.
Since then, in reading these boards, the WOTC boards, and the ENWorld boards, I’ve come to the conclusion that while this makes perfect sense once you know how it’s supposed to work, it is not very easy to figure out on intuition alone. You shouldn’t have to consult the manual or the message boards to perform such a fundamental action.
Doesn’t it seem logical to use the USER slots when performing a USER entry? Some better indicator of the proper procedure was certainly called for here.
--
Here's my list of bugs. Suggestions are in a different thread.
--
Character sheet doesn’t indicate how a weapon is wielded.
The regular character sheet and the portrait character sheet don’t give any indication of whether a weapon is wielded one or two-handed. You can infer this from the damage bonus, but you shouldn’t have to.
This information is present in the Battle Block format.
--
Druid weapon proficiencies - halfspear problem
The Druid class features screen lists them as being proficient with the halfspear, but if a druid equips one, it socks him with the non-proficiency penalty. This goes away if he takes Simple Weapon Proficiency as a feat.
The Halfspear was not listed as a druid weapon in early copies of the Player's Handbook, but was later added to accommodate druids of small size. Maybe whoever wrote the class description had an up-to-date PH, while whoever coded the proficiencies had an early copy.
--
Stat blocks useless without Flat-footed/Touch AC.
Let me say first that while I’ve played D&D since 1980, I only converted to the third edition about two months ago. As I went through the last two years of WOTC output, I was very pleased to see that they changed their stat block format from listing a total AC and then (modifiers) to stating the Normal, Flat-footed, and Touch AC outright. After all, why else were the modifiers listed than to perform those two adjustments?
One of my three main reasons for buying the e-Tools was to get access to all of the stat block info for creatures from the Monster Manual. I have twenty years of my own material plus lots of old TSR stuff that I want to convert, and I gleefully scrapped plans to painstakingly build my own MM database when I read that this information would be easily produced in e-Tools.
I am very disappointed. AC is probably second only to attack information as the most often used piece of the stat block. The fact that the e-Tools output follows neither the older (modifiers listed) nor the newer (FF and T listed) formats, but instead lists only the normal AC, makes them almost if not completely useless to me.
It does me little good to cut and paste a bunch of stat blocks for whatever I’m converting, and then have to access another source to complete them. I could almost as easily have generated them myself.
I've read that calculating Touch AC is a problem for e-Tools because of the way it stores AC modifiers. This is something they ought to rectify. Failing that, I hope that a patch will at least change the stat block format to list the AC modifiers, so I can go back to calculating FF and Touch AC on the fly.
--
Bastard sword non-proficiency penalty calculated wrong.
A character with Martial Weapon Proficiency can use a Bastard Sword without penalty with two hands. The Exotic Weapon Proficiency is needed only to use the Bastard Sword proficiently with one hand.
e-Tools applies the non-proficiency penalty to the Bastard Sword whether it’s wielded one or two-handed, if the user does not have the Exotic Weapon Proficiency.
--
Monk character could not equip Unarmed attack.
Here’s a curious little glitch. When I sat down for the second time to enter my second level dwarven monk NPC (after discovering how to use the non-intuitive User Entry stat method properly) I found that while his club and javelin were available to be equipped, the unarmed attack was not. I spent a while trying to figure out how I had managed to make it available on my first try with the character, but could find nothing I’d done differently. I eventually resorted to revising my first try with the character.
Here’s the weird part: after saving (and overwriting the version that had no unarmed attack) I tried to recreate the problem and could not do so. Every other character I’ve started has had "unarmed" as a freely selectable choice for equipping.
So I can’t attach the glitched character, and I can’t reproduce the problem, but for 15 minutes there I was really aggravated.
--
User entry of statistics is non-intuitive.
I got very frustrated the first time I sat down with e-Tools, when I tried to simply enter a character I’d generated by hand and already created in the old Character Generator. I entered the stats using the User Entry method, and couldn’t understand why my skill points and hit points were coming out so low.
After checking the boards, I realized that I’d entered the adjustments in the User slots, rather than using the Adjustment slots on the far right. I felt kinda dopey and got back to work.
Since then, in reading these boards, the WOTC boards, and the ENWorld boards, I’ve come to the conclusion that while this makes perfect sense once you know how it’s supposed to work, it is not very easy to figure out on intuition alone. You shouldn’t have to consult the manual or the message boards to perform such a fundamental action.
Doesn’t it seem logical to use the USER slots when performing a USER entry? Some better indicator of the proper procedure was certainly called for here.
--
