sentry0

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I'm still working through the changes, but I'm curious why the weightings have shifted toward defenses (and EGO). It does seem like it's easier now to make a zippy glass cannon without deviating much from X, something which subjectively pleases me. I definitely agree with the reduction to BODY.

I was messing around, and I felt that that whole weighting disproportionally favored offense and had been weighted some time ago by myself before certain additions were made to the sheet, like BODY.  The main pivot points remain the most expensive, SPD and DCs are what I try to horsetrade at about a 1:2 ratio.  I'm also rethinking the statement that you should keep things between +/-5% at character creation.  I think doubling it to +/-10% adds much more flexibility for players to get those outliers (Bricks and Speedsters) squeezed into the game.

EGO is at 5% partially because I had 2 points left over 😁 Seriously though, many EGO powers like MC are directly tied to how high your ego is, so I think I think if anything perhaps it is still undervalued.  It really all depends on the campaign and the commonality of psychic powers, also: pushing... it's all very subjective at the end of the day.

I just cut a version called v0.0.1-alpha of the spreadsheet this morning...

• I reweighted the base percentages on the baseline table
  • I think they're tighter and a little better, I dunno... you tell me
• I added some general statistics to the document
• I added a chart for people who like visuals (like me)
  • The closer the character is to 0 the closer they are to the Rule of X
• The first character on the sheet is now used to run calculations on the subsequent characters
• I added the TTU and TTK columns to the character entries
  • TTU is "Time To Unconscious" and it uses your STUN calc from the table you added
  • TTK is "Time To Kill" and it uses the killing damage calc

I did a pass through the 400 and 225-point characters we have on hand while messing around.  225pt has some egregious outliers like a 94 velocity on the Cheetah and 0 stats on the egoist.  I added the "Standard Deviation" entry to the stats to try and shine a light on datasets with potential issues.  These types of characters definitely will skew the calculations and one needs to be careful.  The living brain things could be a very deadly fight for the players unless your campaign includes psychics to the point of it being common for Mental Defense, I wouldn't recommend pitting a group of egoists against a group of unprepared (low ego, no MD) players.

59 minutes ago, WhiteShark said:

@sentry0 would you prefer that we henceforth continued discussion here or in the file thread? I see that it is possible to upload files in both places, so I don't mind either way. I'm going to ponder the average attacks/hits to KO/dying question some more today before I personally make another revision.

I have just ported the spreadsheet from Excel to Google Sheets for faster collaboration.

Here is a link - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_g56HAAm67LRC8u0T5KO-NCryRnBWFyu-aVBNqgip0U/edit?usp=sharing

You will have to make a copy for now unless you (or anyone else who wants to collaborate) send me your email.  I'll add you as an editor if you do.

Let's keep the convo rolling here... I think it's a better place to collaborate for now.

Just because this has become a thing again for me, I wanted to (at the risk of rekindling a war) shine a light on some work being done on this old project.

I like 6th edition's handling of Complications being less numerous and, by extension, a little more important.  Complications/Disadvantages are a breath of fresh air compared to the traditional alignment systems and other systems that attempt to sum up an entire character's motivations in 2 words.  Not to mention the number of arguments started by people on the nature of Good and Evil as they apply to fantasy games, I wouldn't say I like these philosophical debates these systems of morality cause in some games.

What works in my Hero games is to write the character's background so that the Complications taken are reflected in the past motivations and actions.  It makes for a believable character to say, "Karl enlisted and picked up the sword to defend his family and friends from the enemies of the crown after living in fear for his life on the kingdom's border." than "Karl's Lawful Good."  One answer is boring and generic the other has something to work with motivation-wise.  A story arc revolving around keeping the characters' home safe or DNPCs out of harm's way is hopefully more engaging to this player and the other players.  Get people to bake the motivations into the character Complications and background story and you have a more cohesive picture and place to start playing from and planning games.

It's a gigantic positive feature that is sometimes misunderstood as a chore.

"The D&D monopoly ends here"

Riiiiiiiiiiiiight...  

As an avid desktop Linux user, I support those crazy kids.

Good luck with that 😂

I like the whole idea of this set of islands and think it is very well thought out. 

I can't comment on your concerns about representing something from the outside other than to say, treat it respectfully.  It sounds like you are being quite thoughtful about the whole thing, which is a good sign.

2 hours ago, Doc Democracy said:

There are apps given permission to override the sleep function aren't there?  I think at least one or two pdf readers do it.

Yes, I can do this... I just did a quick Google search and saw an excellent library that does this for me; I should be able to pull it in.  That feature branch is pretty old, but I think I could resurrect it without too much fuss.

I can't promise anything because, if I remember correctly, I had to shim in many libs to get that to work.  I will need to go back and see if my approach still works in today's modern environment and update some libs.

7 hours ago, Doc Democracy said:

If you want a "I would love" feature, then it would be allowing the GM to set up a group for players round the table to join.  Rolls could then be shared within the group - it would make the app more useful at the table.

 

Players should be able to join the group with an alias (the name of their character most obviously)

It is funny you mention this feature because I was working on just such a feature right when COVID hit.  It is sitting on a feature branch in the codebase.

The idea was the GM would start a local server on their app.  All players would join the game via a LAN connection, no remote connections.  The GM can see player rolls but ONLY if they have have been focused by the GM in app.  The GM could select the name of the player from a list and at that point on all rolls made by the player go to the GM.  Also, I built in a simple message system that allows players and GMs to communicate.

It got shelved when the world ground to a halt and the idea of playing in the same room became a little problematic.  The main technical issue that I ran into was that both Android and iOS will put your app to sleep after a short period of time.  For players, it's annoying because they have to rejoin the game.  When the GM device goes to sleep, the game needs to be restarted.  

I'm a little mixed.  I feel like because they devices go to sleep and muck up the connections it is too flakey to push into production.  The idea of running a simple server somewhere to handle the issue is appealing to me, but I have no money to pay for it.

I just popped into say there's a surpising amount of dark meat on a halfling.

On 10/21/2021 at 9:52 AM, Tywyll said:

 

Hello! I've not used the app in a long time, back when it was 1.X something. But I am trying to get it to load my 5th edition hdc files.

 

Of the three characters I have attempted to view, only one has worked and displayed (and it looks pretty great). However the other two give me the following error:

Invalid attempt to iterate non-iterable instance. In order to be iterable, non-array objects must have a [Symbol.iterator]() method.

 

I have NO idea what that means!  

 

The three characters all work normally in HD, can be exported normally, etc. Not sure why one works and the others do not? The Psi-Blade one works (mostly), but the other two do not? Any help getting them to display would be tremendously helpful!

 

Also, I noticed some errors in the Psi-Blade's Elemental Control. The Real Cost is off for every slot (one slot even costs -10 real points). Not a big deal, but figured I would flag it up. Also her Telekenitic Blade attack from the Multipower doesn't display damage from full strength (she has non-augmented strength and augmented strength, which is shown on the character as 'secondary' strength, I guess that is why it isn't picked up?). 

 

Oh, another issue I just noticed, she has Mental Defense and it only shows it as 5 points (the active points of her Mental Def, not her total including the free points from ego). 

Solarialow.hdc 261.34 kB · 2 downloads AdamantineRebuild210109.hdc 942.2 kB · 1 download Psi-Blade6.hdc 329.53 kB · 1 download

This commit should fix the costs issues with EC's.  It also exposed a general issue with how lists were not reconciling exclusive modifiers.

https://github.com/slackdaystudio/hero-system-mobile/commit/fdd73854a0179a7156b36c5703b7de13543015e6

I'm looking at the Mental Defense issue next then the HKA issue w/seconndary stats.

Thanks for the characters... super helpful.

I'm still determining where I'm going with this post, but I've been diving into the HSM code again, fixing some bugs, and it has me reflecting on the app itself.

The app is coming up on its 5th anniversary, which is cool.  Five years is a long time in development years, though, and a lot has changed in the React Native (React Native is a mobile app development framework, which HSM is built on) world in that time.  Things continue to change in that world rapidly.  When I built the app, I followed the suggested best practices at the time, which were then replaced by different best practices. 

Time has gone by, and I have built a few apps in that time using React Native.  I follow the current suggested practices and work with up-to-date libraries whenever possible on my new apps.  HSM is a bit long in the tooth and looks cluttered and janky to my eye now.  It was the first app I ever developed, and it is showing its age.

I want to table the idea of a ground-up rewrite of the app's user interface.   

Nothing changes in terms of how the app generally functions.  You will still be able to load your Hero Designer characters up and use the app as you would today.  I want to upgrade the app's main component library, for example.  Upgrading this library is a breaking change in the HSM codebase (HSM uses v2 of the lib, and v3 is current) and would require a significant re-work.  Upgrading the main component library will also change how the app looks and feels.  Everything from input fields, sliders, dropdowns, and tabs would be affected.  

I also think there’s too much clutter in general in the UI.  I want to re-think how some of the UI is presented to the user now.  There’s too much information in the app, and maybe streamlining is in order.

Anyways, let me know if you have any thoughts on the subject!  

The app is open source, and anyone who wants to help is welcome.

19 minutes ago, Ninja-Bear said:

@sentry0, someone I think Zagmar did a spread sheet on exploding dice for Savage worlds. The thing is if I need say even a 9 to hit and I’m rolling a d4 the chance to get two exploding dice diminishes greatly. Naturally people have stories where they had incredible luck and still killed a foe in one lucky shot. But what game system doesn’t have those stories?

My first session I GM'ed was basically ruined because one of our super soldier types rolled a 5d KA and rolled a ridiculous stun multiplier against the BBEG.  Yes, this was when you rolled 1d6-1 to determine the stun multiplier so it was like over 130 stun or something IIRC.

I faked it and said he was OK, I needed a few more rounds from him  

I don't know if I should be weighing in here of not but here goes.

The effect of exploding dice is generally more noticeable if you have a smaller die pool.  Why?  Because less dice means less faces, less faces mean you have a greater chance at seeing the critical success or failure state come up.  Finally, if you have a small dice pool to begin with, adding in an extra die (or more!) can make a big difference.  If you roll a single die you have a 16.67% chance to score a 1 or a 6... that's a 33.33% crit chance.  As you add in more dice, the probability of you seeing the critical state reduces.

Here is a spreadsheet that I worked up to illustrate what I'm talking about - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AWGAPns9fgBKNxEo8fZz4gC76Yx92Ag8HuKJfYo5-1s/edit?usp=sharing

You can see that on the low end it's quite swingy and unpredictible while the high end is much more predictible.  D&D has a 10% crit state, 5% of the time your roll a natural 20 and 5% of the time you roll that nat 1.  That's roughly about a 3D on the exploding dice crit percentage.

Anywho, I hope my math is correct!

I am currently updating the HSM app and have picked off a few bugs which have been reported here and on the Discord server.

I am going to look into why Elemental Control costs are off as my last bug before I publish a new build.

If you have a bug or feature request please leave it here and I'll see what I can do.

On 3/25/2022 at 6:47 PM, pdyson said:

Hey. Just trying out the app.  It looks great by the way.  

Couple of comments/questions.

 

Settings toggles don't change color or shade when you turn an option on or off.

Also, I may be missing it, but I don't see that the app shows the Endurance cost for a power. I see the D6 roll (when applicable) Base, Active and Real costs.  But no Endurance cost.

 

Thanks for your great work.

This commit adds a more noticable tint color to active switches... https://github.com/slackdaystudio/hero-system-mobile/commit/48ce09d79b4926aba8c82fe3f73b88c91d27ca2a

END isn't currently in the app, I could probably include it if people want it.

A new build of HSM is available which addresses the VPP bug reported here by @Tywyll and on the Discord server.  This particular bug only affected 5th edition characters and all the samples I have now load properly in the app.

I did miss the note on the EC costs unfortunately, I'll look at that one too.

The new build is numbered 2.0.1 and should already be available to you on the supported app stores.

What Is Chimera?
Chimera is a hybridization between the OpenD6 ruleset and the HERO System ruleset.

What Chimera Is Not
Chimera is not and has never been intended to be a replacement for the HERO System.

Why?
The answer is complex and stretches back many decades of laughter, nerdy games, bad movie fests, and terrible puns.  As succinctly as possible; I love the fast-playing, cinematic feel of OpenD6 and the amazing detail and granularity of HERO System games.  I bounce between the two games a lot, so much so that I started to crave a system that had the high cards of both.

I decided this was a good idea to try and play around with for me in my spare time.  So I started a passion project with which I have been tormenting my family, buddies, co-workers, basically anyone unfortunate enough to ask for years now.  In all seriousness, I started picking away at it some 5 years ago now.  Just a little here and there and soon I had something cobbled together that resembled a Frankenstein monster.  It worked but there were issues so I started revising and refactoring the system.

COVID hit and the world changed and suddenly I had a lot of time on my hands.  I started what would become the Chimera project in its current form at this point.

Who Am I?
I am the ‘author’ of what has become known as The Chimera System.  I am a software developer who loves language, gaming, movies, music, anything nerdy really and I’m probably game.  I have been gaming for the majority of my life at this point and love the hobby dearly.

I also maintain an app that some people use around here.

Thanks for the bug report and including your characters, I'll have a look and see what I can do.

The 2.0.0 build of HERO System Mobile has been pushed to the app stores.  This milestone build fully removes the ability to load old characters who were exported from Hero Designer using the XML export template in favor of loading characters directly from Hero Designer files.

What you can expect:

• Removed support for loading characters using the old export template
• The app will now be backed up if you use the Android backup feature
• Fixed a spacing issue on the side panel with certain iPhone models
• Updated the side panel menu item "Free Form" to be "Effect"

As always, report any bugs to me directly or in this thread.

I'm going push a new build to stores to turn a feature on for Android users.  Since I moved where characters are stored into the protected app space I can leverage the backup features of that platform.  This feature is disabled by default in the framework I use to develop in so it would require a small update.

HERO System Mobile 2.0

At the same time I am debating on finally taking the plunge and removing support for the old way of loading characters which required you to export your character from HD using an export template.  There's been a warning informing users that this method is depreciated for a long time now, like over a year.  This would be a true 2.0 version of the app as it would no longer support the old file format.

The only question I have is does anyone still use the old export format and why?

Let me know if you use the old export template and why so I can fix any lingering bugs with the new way of reading in characters.

I am rolling out the 1.8.0 build to Apple, Android, and Amazon app stores as I write this.  This is more a foundational build which fixes some display bugs and makes a major change to how characters are saved for Android.

It took 24 days and multiple beta builds but it is time to push this to production.  I want to extend my personal thanks to everyone who tried the beta builds!  I especially wanted to thank those of you who offered bug reports and feedback, it's really important that I recieve this in order to make the app better.

What you can expect in the 1.8.0 builld:

• MAJOR CHANGE (Android ONLY) The app will no longer require file system access however you will need to re-import your characters (https://bit.ly/3waTWZD)
• Replaced the autocomplete on the status dialog with a new UI
• Fixed a display issue with section headings
• Fixed a bug with header spacing on some iPhone models
• Fixed a bug which caused extra whitespace to show at the bottom of some iPhone models
• Fixed a white screen flicker which could happen during screen transition

Assuming things progress through the approval process without issue you should see the new build early this week.

On 6/3/2021 at 4:52 PM, Amorkca said:

Yes, I’m on an iPad. The iPhone is too small for my old eyes...

 

interesting note, is I get that message after I’ve opened the app, been using the character sheet, but switch to another character in the list...

I can't seem to get this bug to happen.  This probably means there an issue with your app cache, try cleaning it by going into settings.

38 minutes ago, Amorkca said:

Yes, I’m on an iPad. The iPhone is too small for my old eyes...

 

interesting note, is I get that message after I’ve opened the app, been using the character sheet, but switch to another character in the list...

Good to know as I tried reproducing it by loading a character with brackets in the name but it seemed to work fine.

I will see if I can cause the bug by using the steps you outlined.

4 hours ago, Amorkca said:

Got this error message today. Not sure if it’s relevant 

Thanks for the bug report and including the screenshot of the issue, always a good a good idea 

It looks like you're running on an iPad which is good to know as well because iPad is treated slightly differently in code when loading characters than iPhone.

I suspect the brackets in the character name is the issue... I'll see if I can reproduce it on my end.