sentry0

I've actually wondered about this myself, I wanted to model an ability in HERO that worked similarly to how you described.  My scenario was a Blast that normally did a baseline 10 dice damage but did an extra 2 dice vs undead.  This damage would always be present vs undead regardless of any vulnerabilities the target undead may or may not have.

There seems to be no direct way to do this for ranged attacks short of comparatively heavy handed techniques like Aid.

Maybe model the extra dice after Extra Ranged Damage Classes from martial arts?  4 points per DC...

Alternatively, you could make a MP for each ability, one slot for the baseline attack, 1 for the powered up attack.  It would be stupidly expensive and not elegant at all but it's one approach I guess.

Perhaps in each scenario it should be approached in the opposite direction.  Instead of boosting an ability, buy the power level you want outright and put a limitation on it so that AP is restricted unless certain conditions are present.  The powers are essentially always nerfed except under certain circumstances.

It could be a follower with Resurrection Regen to simulate being temporarily disabled. 

17 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

Personally, I say do what you like best: that's what the game touts as it's strongest point anyway: you can do anything. 

 

My only comment about this relates to your mentioning that the players are all new to HERO. 

 

HERO has, no matter how much we fans enjoy it, hands-down the slowest combat system for any tabletop RPG (with the _possible_ exception of the original Aftermath from way back when, and even then only if you were using every possible option). 

 

Given that this is a hard enough sell to new players, I'd be a bit hesitant before I added the amount of crunch you're considering. 

This is well said.  I actually will gloss over the use of END for a couple of games unless things get really out of hand (powers with Increased END basically).

You may want to consider a soft entry into the system and add more crunch as you go until you've hit the "realism" level you want. 

They say that hitting water with enough velocity is about the same as hitting concrete.  Assuming that's not just an urban legend you would probably be done either way.

Maybe if you're feeling generous a die or 2 may get knocked off.

I did some research today and it looks like I have much more sophisticated tools available to me via the Play and App stores for testing.  Both stores offer mechanisms to invite users to participate in the testing process which means the test app will be distributed via the regular channels.  So I won't be distributing an APK from my Google Drive account after all 😂

Same rules apply: DM me on these boards or at phil.guinchard@gmail.com to get into the tests.

I'm looking for people interested in helping me test out that app.  I can provide periodic builds via Google Drive for Android users and instructions on how to install the app.  It should be pretty straightforward for Android users.

I'm not sure how to do this for iOS but will look into it.

If you're interested in helping out please DM me through this site or shoot me a message at phil.guinchard@gmail.com and we'll work something out.

Cheap out and buy extra PRE with a limitation "Only to incite rage towards self".

I will be releasing the app with support for both types of characters.  Just reading in a HD character still leaves a lot of work on my plate to do things like calculate costs, totaling modifiers, calculating STR damage, etc.  The end result is that there are a lot of things that I have to code for.  Which means more bugs.

What I'll end up doing is provide people with messages to inform them that they're either using a deprecated character format (the XML export) or the experimental HD format when they load a character.  This will keep people  informed about upcoming changes to the app in regards to loading characters and provide a fallback if you come across a bad bug in the new format.

Not that it means much to people but I will be bumping the version number to 1.3.0 when I release this feature.  This will include a deprecation message for users of the export template.  At some point in the future (once the bugs are worked out) I will remove support for the export format entirely and do a 2.0.0 release.

Here's the skill screen...I assigned a skill some miscellaneous Advantages/Limitations just for testing.  The Martial Arts, Perks, Talents, and Powers screens will likely be quite similar... a lot of the work at this point is foundational as I build out classes and components to process and display the character.

Points to whoever spots the easter egg Simon put in

Note that the math doesn't work right now so ignore the Cost.

9 minutes ago, dmjalund said:

I don;t think we need that much precision for height and weight - you could theoretically put them on the same line

Thanks, that reminds me that I need to convert that to feet/lbs.  I should probably add a setting to let people use metric measurements too.

1 hour ago, Greywind said:

 

...needs more salt.

It's been my experience that there's plenty of salt available on these boards.  😜

Hmmm, looking at the UI what I could do to save some space is hide the Base and Cost fields until the plus button is pressed.  I don't think people generally need to know that info at a glance so there's really no need to clutter the main display with it.

23 minutes ago, ScottishFox said:

Loving the new look and feel.

 

Can you condense the stats a bit to get the big six (str,dex,con,int,ego,pre) on a single page though?

I'll see what I can do.  The challenge there is that devices have different dimensions.  I primarily test on a Pixel 3XL which has more real estate than the regular Pixel 3, for example.  I also try to support all the way down to an iPhone 5 which is quite small and is unlikely to support the big six being displayed without it becoming difficult to read.

2 new screens for folks to digest... apologies for the terrible background I wrote

5 minutes ago, Scott Ruggels said:

Flag switch turning it green or blue as a visual cue as to what edition is being used. 

 

Ive had to do interface design for video games. Not my favorite task but had to be done so I am aware of the concerns. 

I like that idea, I'll use green for 5th and blue for 6th... do you think it would be a bit much to change all the buttons/inputs colors depending on the edition?

I kind of like having a visual distinction like that... it's obvious which ruleset you're using.

9 minutes ago, Scott Ruggels said:

However the new interface is much smoother. Very clean. Suggestion. Have any function associated strictly with 5th ed. displayed with 5th ed. ‘s green color, while the rest remains 6th ed. blue. 

What about this: hide 5th edition actions unless you turn on the "Use 5th edition rules?" flag in Settings? 

I kinda like that, it's consistent with how other parts of the app work when that flag is on.

1 minute ago, Scott Ruggels said:

Please don’t get rid of 5th ed support. I have a number of old characters, and have not made the jump to 6th ed. 

I plan on always supporting whatever HD supports so there is no worries there.

Here's a preview of the apps new look and feel... the screenshot quality is OK, it's a little sharper and has a bit more contrast in person.

11 minutes ago, Simon said:

Why in the world would you think something like that was a bug?

I don't know, I thought maybe it was something that krept in unintentionally, that's why I asked

It's not a big deal either way, I'll read both formats.

1 minute ago, Simon said:

If you're interested in the latest and greatest, you can always copy them out of the current HD6.jar file (it will open with any zip/compression software) -- just make sure that you don't have the uncompressed contents sitting in the same directory as HD6.jar when you try to run HD (classpaths can be fun)

That's actually how I grabbed them

I just wanted to make sure I wasn't doing something that would get me in hot water down the road with the app.

Has there been a change recently in HD to start encoding files as UTF-16?

It looks like some of my old files are being encoded as such when I save them.

Bug or working as intended?

I have need to get my hands on the built in templates that HD uses to build characters in order to use them in my app.

Would the official way to do that be to purchase the source code?

6 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

Does the current / will the new version offer a way to read sheets without HD?

That's a good question, one that comes up indirectly often. 

Theoretically, you could write the XML document that HD creates by hand (or some other means) and the app would read it in just fine.  The app will only care about a subset of the data that's available through a HD file, which means you could write a trimmed down version of the full file.  That's still a daunting task... one fraught with error and frustration, I suspect.

Given that Hero Designer...

1. Exists
2. Does what it's supposed to do
3. Is actively maintained and supported
4. Is the defacto, officially sanctioned tool to make a character 

... it doesn't make a lot of sense to not use it as a basis for the app.

People ask from time to time for the app to allow you to build and modify characters directly... to be clear, I have NO intention of going down that road given all the previously mentioned points regarding the state of Hero Designer.

I've been mulling over a major change to the app; I want to do away with the export template and read directly from the .hdc files HERODesigner uses.  Far and away, the most common support question I get is from people trying to read from their .hdc file directly.  My rationale for using a custom XML export template was originally to provide the app insulation from upstream XML changes Dan Simon may introduce... after having seen it in action for the last year and a bit, I don't think it's worth the trouble.  This would be a breaking change once it goes live, so a major point increase makes sense

Below is a collection of random thoughts going through my head right now.  Please feel free to chime in with any comments and suggestions.

Features I want to implement:

• Character portraits
• Opening multiple characters at once
• tablet support
  • This doesn't mean writing separate UI for iPads/Tablets, this is only to scale the app properly

Things possibly on the chopping block:

• The H.E.R.O. tool (remove or upgrade to 6th edition)
  • People get confused and think the app is only for 5th edition because of this tool
• The "Library" docs
  • They bloat the app size
• The overall look and feel of the app
  • Anyone interested in helping is welcome

Stuff for nerds:

• I'm contemplating open sourcing the code, any interest?
  • The app is written using the React-Native framework (JavaScript based, non-negotiable)
  • There's some messy corners that could need some love
• I am in bad need of unit tests, note to self...stop slacking
• Need to switch the storage system to use a proper DB in order to house all the data for images/characters
• Should probably look for a good image scaling lib for portraits
• Switching to reading a .hdc file directly would be a huge impact
  • We would gain better granularity than we have now in terms of powers, skills, etc
  • Would open up more possibilities for the app in the long run 

At any rate, I'm soliciting feedback, so have it.

1 minute ago, Gauntlet said:

No security. But is the app only available for a phone device and not a computer? 

It's built for phones and will run on tablets in compatibility mode.

I have no plans of bringing it to desktops at this time.