FG Spreadshirt Swag
View RSS Feed

Minty23185Fresh

Let’s Use the Combat Tracker Effect Visibility Options Extension

Rate this Entry
Setting Default Visibilities Using the Character Sheet

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

Last time I used the Effect Manager Utility to set up default visibilities for conditional effects such as prone or poisoned. When the effect is applied to a character in the Combat Tracker, the effect’s visibility is set to the defined default. If there is no default visibility defined EVOE sets the visibility to GM only. Default visibilities set up using the Effect Manager Utility apply to that effect (e.g. stunned) any time it is applied to any character.

EVOE also allows the GM to set a default visibility for a specific effect when the effect is applied using the Actions tab on a character sheet, for example when a character casts a spell. I’ll cover the details here in this blog.

First I set up immunities to cold, fire and poison using Krystryd’s character sheet. I did this in Krystryd’s instance of FG, not the GM’s instance. In the following screenshot a portion of her character sheet is displayed on the left and the Spell/Ability Effect dialog detailing just one immunity, for the cold effect, is on the right.
Attachment 15894

Items of interest: Note the blank area toward the bottom of the Effect dialog. I’ll refer to it later.

Using the GM’s instance of FG, I opened the copy of Krystryd’s character sheet. Then I opened each of the immunity effects on the Actions tab. The following screenshot displays each of the Spell/Ability Effect dialogs for each of the immunity effects.
Attachment 15895

Items of interest: Note the small Default Visibility button at the bottom of each dialog. This button is only available to the GM; it is not available to the players (as can be seen by its absence in the first screenshot). I set the default visibility for each of the immunity effects as shown in the dialogs.

In the GM’s instance of FG I invoked the Effects Manager Utility. I deleted any Custom Effect definitions and added the three as shown in the following screenshot.
Attachment 15896

Items of interest: I set the default visibility for each custom effect definition as shown. Notice the IMMUNE: effect without any qualifier. I did this to prove a point, the verbiage here in the custom definitions must match exactly the verbiage set up elsewhere (e.g. in the Spell/Ability Effect dialog). A missing qualifier doesn’t act like a wildcard to match any and all IMMUNE effects.

Back to Krystryd’’s instance of FG: on the Action tab I applied each of the immunity effects by clicking the little effect button. Because all three “spells” were set up to apply to “self”, each of the effects are inflicted on Krystryd.

Back to the GM’s instance of FG to analyze the results. I opened the GM’s Combat Tracker and clicked the Effect Details icon to view the initial visibility of each immunity effect. They are depicted in the following screenshot.
Attachment 15897

Items of interest: Krystryd’s immunity to cold has an initial visibility of GM only. This is because the default visibility setting in the Spell/Ability Effect dialog was set to OFF and there was no Custom definition in the Effects Manager Utility. The initial visibility setting for the fire immunity effect is SORC. This is the result of the default visibility not being set in Krystryd’s Effect dialog but there is a Custom definition with SORC default visibility in the Utility. Finally, the initial visibility for poison immunity is TRGT. The default visibility set up in the Utility is SORC but the default TRGT set up in Krystryd’s Effect dialog overrides it. Note that none of applied effects had VSBL visibility, as defined for the iMMUNE effect (without a qualifier it never matched).

The preceding discussion also outlines the hierarchy of default visibility definitions and where they’re set up. When no default is defined, EVOE uses GM only as the initial visibility setting for effects displayed in the Combat Tracker. If a default visibility is defined for an effect in the Custom section of Effects Manager Utility then it overrides EVOE’s fallback default of GM only. A default visibility defined in the Spell/Ability Effect dialog of a player’s character sheet takes precedence over Custom definitions in the Utility.

One final note, and this is fairly slick: when using EVOE Lua patterns, also known as regular expressions, can be used in the Custom area of the Effects Manager Utility. For example, DMG:.*cold will match any cold damage effect, DMG: 2 cold, DMG: 4 cold, DMG: 1d6 cold. But not DMG: 2 nor DMG: 3 fire. (Should EVOE users express interest and want additional elaboration for this powerful little feature I’ll follow up below in a comment.)

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.

Submit "Let’s Use the Combat Tracker Effect Visibility Options Extension" to Digg Submit "Let’s Use the Combat Tracker Effect Visibility Options Extension" to del.icio.us Submit "Let’s Use the Combat Tracker Effect Visibility Options Extension" to Google Submit "Let’s Use the Combat Tracker Effect Visibility Options Extension" to Facebook Submit "Let’s Use the Combat Tracker Effect Visibility Options Extension" to Twitter

Categories
Uncategorized

Comments

  1. MarianDz's Avatar
    Thank you for hierarchy clarification :)
DICE PACKS BUNDLE

Log in

Log in