Cergorach said:
You'll find the next release of RPM very useful for running encounters. It'll do spell casting, skill checks and attacks.
The attacks and opposed skill checks can be quite clever. For example, if you target several opponents, and try the "Hide" skill, RPM will automatically do the check against each creature's "Spot" skill.
- With spells, the saving throws and modifiers are viewable.
- With attacks, RPM will auto-roll attacks against the opponent AC.
- You can override with manual dice rolls.
- You can see all the attack an all the AC modifiers.
- RPM will pop up damage windows that can show different types of damage (eg. critical threat damage, as well as standard damage). Once again, you can enter your own rolls.
Try the new "Add Creature by Grid list". You can set up a combat of a dozen elves against a dozen orcs in a handful of mouse clicks!
If you're happy to go with standard armor and weapons for them, there's virtually nothing much you have to do.
Fair enough. RPM shows you all modifiers every step of the way, though, so it's hard to go wrong.
At worst, you just edit the Hp damage to fix a mistake.
Thoughts are appreciated and useful. If by "threatened", you mean AOO, it's up to the DM/Players to make the extra attack (initially). I've gone away from needing to use the BattleMap. From what I can work out, many seem happy just working from a list using other little utilities. In such cases, RPM won't know the distances, and automation is difficult.
As is standard with RPM, you don't get trapped into a "wizard style" forcing of a particular order of actions. This means that you can have several creatures "in the middle" of their actions, with a quick button press to return you to the "current turn" creature. Ths makes it easy to do AOO etc.
As above, you can always use your own dice
Unknown vorpal bonuses are easily done with a DM adjustment. This works particularly well with RPM, since the players can just tell you their D20 roll (in fully managed mode), and they get an end result.
Partially managed simply means that when 2 creatures oppose each other, one of them is not managed by RPM (as, for example, when a DM has all his creatures entered, but the player characters aren't enetered). In such cases, RPM can only automate one side of the opposition. For example, the attack normally has to hit modifiers in the top half on the screen, and AC modifiers in the bottom half. If the defender isn't entered into RPM, you need to manually enter in the final AC, and the attack can proceed as normal.
As another example, If you try the "Hide" skill, RPM might not have the stats for the creature attempting the "Spot", so you need to manually enter in the finally adjusted spot roll (or simply view the roll/final adjustment, and leave it at that.
Haven't yet completed the natural weapons and associated feats yet, but it all fits in pretty simply to the RPM D20 framework. Things like this are just about having enough tme now.
Not abysmal, but not good. In all, it may be naive of me to think that people can respond on the basis of screenshots. It's probably the sort of thing that needs a "hands on" play.
