Encounter Builder
Ability Score Generator
The Ability Score Generator, well, I would have loved to have had this the week the books were released! Would have been a great way to walk through those first steps in character creation, and check my "by hand" work. Other options were available, though, and I got past that hump. However, there will always be new players, and they'll find it useful. Just not that great as a "Subscription" option, unless it grows with new capabilities, or interfaces with the coming Character tools?
Kudos for more steps forward!
I try and use it (Encounter Generator), and I can enter stuff on the party page, but I can't get to the next part. No matter what I press (Build Encounter) nothing happens. That is with FF3. With IE7, it works perfectly.
The Encounter Builder is pretty spiffy. It auto-calculates your xp budget based on the # of PCs and their level. When you add monsters (looks like it has everything from the MM), it compares the total encounter xp to the budget xp and tells you the generalized difficulty ("easy," "standard," etc.).
One improvement I can think of: The "Other" option should let you type in your custom thing's name. I know you can copy and paste to a text editor and fix it there, but extra steps suck.
Ghostintheshell
Interesting tools.....I could make the same thing in C++ in 10 minutes. When are you guys gonna show anything worth the subscription cost???? I am drunk as **** and could code half of what took you a year just to beta beforeI get sober. Your development team must be made of people who haven't gotten through the basics in a programming language. I am drunk and laugh at your achivements. Your whole software team is laughable.....
Ghostintheshell
Friends don't let friends drink and post.
Here are the llinks to the tools:
Encounter Builder
Ability Score Generator
Well, the Encounter is good, but that Ability looks incomplete...
You give us a half dozen ways to do abilities in the PHB, including a great chart and so forth, and yet this tool seems locked down. It doesn't appear to be done yet.
But as for the ability generator... what's the point of a random feature with point buy? And putting out a program that someone could make in 5 minutes in excel to help justify charging sooner does not inspire confidence.
It looks like they are braking up DDI into sections of subsriptions, what evey one has been whining about them to do since the beginning,
No they made one option, so they could start billing sooner.
The do it throw in a few bonus tools and people *****. Nice to know that when they listen and give people what they wantthey still get ridiculed.
They are charging for these bonus tools, people are going to critique them if they don't feel they are worthwhile.
Selecting critters is a pain right now. Clicking on the arrows only scrolls one monster at a time, you can't hold down the mouse button so it will continue scrolling, you can't use the mouse wheel to scroll, and dragging-and-dropping the scroll cursor seems to scroll too fast so I'm skipping monsters without having the time to read them.
I saw at least one monster without an XP value (Skeleton Trooper).
Please, please, please! integrate this into the Dungeon Builder at some point after it is released. I'd love to be able to generate an encounter area with tiles, create an encounter with this tool, set up where the monsters start on the encounter map, then get to print out the encounter under the encounter format we saw in KotS.
At last people can see a little of what I've been doing while on "secret assignment."
The Encounter creator is nice, but... it has limited use. Is it possible to add the ability to modify the base creatures with lvl mods, and templates. I am working on an adventure currently where I am using some buffed up kobolds, If the Encounter creator could do all the math (yeah i know adding +1 to attack and def isn't a big deal) and spit out the new stat blocks I would use it religiously. Otherwise a spreadsheet will practically give me the same effect.
Oh, and I just noticed that Abilities that are showing up in various Dungeon, or Dragon articles aren't showing up in the compendium. I had thought that the compendium was intended to compile all that data too. ( I noticed this with the new article on Mithrendain ).
I also agree if this ability generator had been out with 4E it would have been much more useful.
Oh well...
Love the encounter builder, keep up the good work.
I'm glad you folks like the encounter builder. I know I'm going to use it for my own campaign. And it sure would have been nice to have had the ability calculator out on Day One.
At last people can see a little of what I've been doing while on "secret assignment."
What would IMO make it even better - random encounter generators based on type, origin, and terrain, with modifiers for difficulty and role mixture. I do like it as is, but honestly it's about as basic as it can be right now.
I'm glad you folks like the encounter builder. I know I'm going to use it for my own campaign. And it sure would have been nice to have had the ability calculator out on Day One.
At last people can see a little of what I've been doing while on "secret assignment."
I'm digging the encounter generator. There is one mistake I found though: a 4th level trap is listed at 700xp.
A few questions:
-Will it include the new monsters from Dragon, and ongoing books?
-If so, will it reference the book/location it's from?
-Will it ever include the ability to print out stat blocks?
The third would make my life as a DM VASTLY easier... and would pretty much ensure my subscription! :D
It would be nice if (maybe when D&Di is actually 'running' with a pay account required) the description prints with a quick statline for the critters in the encounter.
It works for me, and I'm using FF3, too. I think the bonus tools use flash -- do you have the latest version of that?
I thought I did, as it wasn't asking me to update my flash player.
However, I apparently wasn't. I am now, and they are actually working.
Perhaps a red indication that
[indent]You need Flash Player 9 to properly use the tools.
You currently have Flash Player version x.xx.
Please go here to update your player.[/indent]
Thanks for the feedback.
MJ
OK, I think I may have exaggerated a little bit there, because everything's alphabetized, but still, you get my point.
(Oh, and by the way, WotC_Mark, thanks for posting that that happened...I would've never known that you had done that [I have the most recent flash], and seeing that [even if it is a relatively small thing] shows evidence that these forums are being read, and are not just a way to circumvent angry people)
Thanks,
Hdier
I would like to see a parcel generator, dice roller (even though the wotc 3.5 works), collection of pregen characters (maybe take those shadowfell pregens and go to 15th level or more), and npc generator.
Maybe add some functionality to the encounter generator that when you select a creature it makes suggestions for other monsters to include in the encounter for each level (easy, medium, hard).
For what they are, and in flash, these tools are trash. I would expect better from a high school students project/homework for a flash-based application.
If someone got paid to do this "work", then they ripped off their employer bigger than WotC is trying to rip people off for the whole of DDI.
I, as a hobby programmer, could make these tools in about an hour or two each WITH flash, and an older version yet that you don't have to update your flash software to use because it predates Adobe obtaining Macromedia.
IF there was anything in the tools that required or allowed dragging and dropping, then and only then would these even appear to need flash. Point and click interfaces are easily done with simple old JavaScript.
I would like to see a parcel generator, dice roller (even though the wotc 3.5 works), collection of pregen characters (maybe take those shadowfell pregens and go to 15th level or more), and npc generator.
Those are all awesome ideas for bonus tools, and aren't hard to make. I actually offered to give WotC a working parcel gen based on JavaScript, but they never replied, because that would be a great DDi tool. Same with the NPC generator. I'm not so sure about the pregen characters, it's a possibility, but not one I'm too excited with.
If you want a parcel generator, just browse around my sig, I have one somewhere on that site.
I'm digging the encounter generator. There is one mistake I found though: a 4th level trap is listed at 700xp.
A few questions:
-Will it include the new monsters from Dragon, and ongoing books?
-If so, will it reference the book/location it's from?
-Will it ever include the ability to print out stat blocks?
The third would make my life as a DM VASTLY easier... and would pretty much ensure my subscription! :D
- the data will continue to include new monsters
- adding the reference or a link is under consideration
- adding the stat block is also under consideration
I haven't read the whole thread but and hopefully this isn't duplicated.
I would like to see a parcel generator, dice roller (even though the wotc 3.5 works), collection of pregen characters (maybe take those shadowfell pregens and go to 15th level or more), and npc generator.
Maybe add some functionality to the encounter generator that when you select a creature it makes suggestions for other monsters to include in the encounter for each level (easy, medium, hard).
Great suggestions!