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Let’s Use the Combat Tracker Effect Visibility Options Extension

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Setting Default Visibilities for Conditional Effects (e.g. Prone)

This is one in a series of Combat Tracker EVOE blog posts. The series index can be found here.

As with nearly every preceding blog post I start out contrasting FG with and without EVOE. Why break tradition? A portion of the GM’s Effect Manager Utility and Combat Tracker are shown in each of the two panels in the first screenshot.. The upper panel displays information without using EVOE, the lower panel with EVOE.
Attachment 15776

Items of interest: Here are the steps I followed. I started FG without EVOE and opened the Effects Manager Utility then dragged the Petrified, Poisoned and Prone conditions into the Custom area. I opened the Combat Tracker and set it to be Krystryd’s turn. To test both button-clicks and dragging from both the Conditions and Custom areas, I clicked the Poisoned button then dragged the Prone button to the Combat Tracker from the Custom area. I clicked the Restrained button and dragged the Stable button to the Combat Tracker from the Conditions area. Note that no matter how I applied a conditional effect the visibility in the Combat Tracker was always set to VSBL when not using EVOE. I closed down FG and brought it back up but this time with EVOE. I opened the Effects Manager Utility and observed three custom definitions for Petrified, Poisoned and Prone were already there. Note the new button in the second column in the Custom area. It is the Default Visibility button. When I first brought up the Utility the default visibility values were all set to VSBL because that is the default when not using EVOE and that is when they were originally defined. I changed the default visibility for Petrified to TRGT and the default visibility for Poisoned to GM (as show in the screenshot). I then clicked and dragged the same buttons, in the same sequence as before (when not using EVOE). Note in the Combat Tracker, that Poisoned’s visibility is GM and Prone’s visibility is VSBL, both as set in the Custom area. Restrained and Stable default to GM only. This is the fall back default visibility if there is no other overriding default visibility set elsewhere.

Detour: Until I coded default visibilities into EVOE, I didn’t really know what the little visibility button that looks like an eyeball in the Effects Manager Utility did. I thought it was non-functional; it had no effect on the Combat Tracker. But now I know, it sets the visibility of a custom defined effect in the player’s instance of the Utility. If the visibility is on, the player sees the custom effect in their instance of the Utility. So I turned it off for the Petrified and Poisoned effects before starting a second instance of FG using the A Paladin character.

The following screenshot displays two panels, both using EVOE. The upper panel shows portions of the Effects Manager Utility and Combat Tracker for the player character A Paladin. The same tools are shown in the lower panel for the GM.
Attachment 15777

Items of interest: As mentioned, I turned off the visibilities for the Petrified and Poisoned conditions in the Custom portion of the GM’s Effect Manager Utility. In the player’s instance those custom conditions are not visible, but the Prone custom defined condition is visible. Now to contrast the Condition buttons and Custom buttons for the player versus the GM. I performed the same set of button clicks and drags as before except that I did them all using the Prone condition. Note that Prone appears four times in the player’s Combat Tracker (once for each button click or drag). In this case no matter which button was clicked (Condition or Custom) nor which function performed (click or drag) the default visibility for Prone as defined in the GM’s Effect Manager Utility (I.e. VSBL) was used. The Condition buttons behave differently for the player than for the GM. By perusing the lower panel, that of the GM we can verify all four instance of the Prone condition were applied with VSBL visibility as defined in the GM’s Custom area.

Why the difference? In my mind it makes no sense to provide the player with the ability to set visibilities as he/she sees fit. Effect Visibility is an option available to the GM and only to the GM. The GM can use the buttons in the Conditions area to quickly apply a condition with the basic GM only visibility or use buttons in the Custom area for alternatively defined default visibilities.

Note the hierarchy, custom defined default visibilities override the fallback GM only visibility. This is important as we’ll see next time. The GM can define yet another default visibility specific to a single effect on a player’s action tab of their character sheet. That default visibility will override any custom default visibilities defined in the Effect Manager Utility.

The Combat Tracker Effect Visibility Options Extension (EVOE) can be downloaded here.

This blog post was written using EVOE v0.2.0

Please feel free to post comments, questions and/or criticisms either here or in the forums.

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