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  1. #151
    Zacchaeus's Avatar
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    Shared items (of whatever nature) are just shared - no information is passed about what group the items was in. Players can't create groups so shared items are all placed in the New (default) group. Groups exist for modules that are shared and the players will see those groups because those are included in the module.
    If there is something that you would like to see in Fantasy Grounds that isn't currently part of the software or if there is something you think would improve a ruleset then add your idea here https://www.fantasygrounds.com/featu...rerequests.php

  2. #152
    Minty23185Fresh's Avatar
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    Ahh. Thank you Zacchaeus. My little experiments seemed to indicate that, but confirmation by you is indeed appreciated.

  3. #153

    DWSI: skill bonus calculation bug

    Hi, Minty. Thank you so much for working on this and sharing it with the rest of us! Your extension looks very helpful.

    I may have discovered a problem, though:
    I suspect you're incorrectly calculating the skill bonuses when in Wild Shape.

    As a reminder for anyone reading along, a character's skill bonuses (not the proficiency bonus!) are the numbers in the Total fields on the Skills tab. They are derived from four values:

    (A) ability modifier
    (B) proficiency bonus
    (M) proficiency multiplier
    (X) miscellaneous bonus

    The formula is: A + (B × M) + X

    A is the ability modifier relevant to the skill in question.
    B is 0, or the proficiency bonus if the character is proficient in the skill.
    M is 1 usually, but can be 2 (double) or .5 (half) in some cases (PHB pg.173).
    X is 0 unless you enter something in the MISC field (e.g. a magic item effect).

    Meanwhile, beasts (like all monsters) have precalculated static skill bonuses in their stat block, so there is no need to derive them from a formula.

    Regarding Wild Shape transformations, the rules say:

    "Your game statistics are replaced by the statistics of the beast, but you retain your alignment, personality, and Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma scores. You also retain all of your skill and saving throw proficien*cies, in addition to gaining those of the creature. If the creature has the same proficiency as you and the bonus in its stat block is higher than yours, use the creature's bonus instead of yours."

    With that in mind, one of your Wild Shape skill bonuses stands out:

    "Tthe total Skill bonuses (ability + proficiency), for the Skills that have proficiencies are:"
    [...]
    "Perception (Wis) +2 (+3) = +5"
    The druid's perception bonus is +3. (derived: 3 + (0 × 1) + 0)
    The weasel's perception bonus is +3. (static, from its stat block)
    Yet you assigned +5 to the wild shape, which means you used neither the druid's bonus nor the weasel's bonus.

    If I understand your explanation, you got +5 as follows:

    1. Disregard the rules' direction to compare the character's bonus to the one in the creature's stat block and use the latter if it is higher.
    2. Ignore the specific skill bonus printed in the weasel's stat block.
    3. Cherry pick the general proficiency bonus printed for CR 1/8 monsters: +2 (You actually reverse engineered it, but there was no need, since it is printed in the Monster Manual.)
    4. Cherry pick the druid's wisdom ability modifier: 3.
    5. Use those two values, picked from different creatures, to derive a completely new skill bonus that is higher than the skill of either creature: 3 + (2 × 1) + 0 = +5.

    The Wild Shape rules are worded awkwardly, but after re-reading them several times, I'm pretty sure this approach breaks them. The "specific beats general" rule seems to be broken here as well.

    Even if I didn't care about the rules as written, I think I would still feel like I was cheating if I used this approach. I don't imagine that the designers intended Wild Shape to grant a proficiency exceeding that of both man and beast.

    (I have a little trouble believing that they intended for pencil-and-paper players to manually calculate every skill bonus for every beast form, too. That seems like far too much work. Surely they must have had the simpler "pick one or the other" approach in mind.)

    I guess maybe you got the idea from that Sage Advice podcast, wherein Jeremy Crawford suggests using the character's proficientcy bonus with the creature's dexterity modifier to derive a new stealth skill bonus. However, he also made three important clarifying points:

    1. His example demonstrates a specific case where the character gains the creature's physical attributes while retaining his knowledge of the skill. This does not apply to our druid/weasel example, because the skill in question is not a physical skill.
    2. It requires both the player and the creature to be proficient in the skill. Again, this does not apply to our druid/weasel example because our druid is not proficient in perception.
    3. When comparing stats to determine who is better at the skill, the player's stats are compared to the creature's stat block. Since creature stat blocks do not list a proficiency bonus, but do list skill bonuses, we must conclude that he means to compare each party's skill bonus. (This makes sense, since any value not shown in a stat block would be unknown to players who have only the Player's Handbook as a reference.) Note that the deception skill bonus in our weasel's stat block is +3, which is the same as our druid's, not greater. If our druid was actually proficient in perception, his skill bonus would be +5, and we would obviously use that value in Wild Shape, but that simply is not the case in our example.

    By the way, that podcast addresses a similar issue around 28 minutes in, where Jeremy considers the idea of combining a multiclass Druid/Monk's Unarmored Defense feature with the AC of a Wild Shape beast. Once again, he says you choose the higher of the two, but "you don't somehow cobble them together to come up with some [...] monstrously high armor class." This reinforces my view that Wild Shape should not grant a proficiency exceeding that of both man and beast.
    Last edited by ocelost; February 8th, 2020 at 02:16. Reason: add more thoughts

  4. #154
    Player Cannot Transform into Wild Shape - GM Functionality is Fine

    I have been using the DWSI extension for many months and love it. Recently, however, the Druid player indicated that dragging a beast to their token on their character sheet no longer transformed their character. This still works fine on the GM side. Has anyone else observed this behaviour and have a fix? Thanks in advance.

  5. #155
    Minty23185Fresh's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by kerrigaj View Post
    Player Cannot Transform into Wild Shape - GM Functionality is Fine
    I have been using the DWSI extension for many months and love it. Recently, however, the Druid player indicated that dragging a beast to their token on their character sheet no longer transformed their character. This still works fine on the GM side. Has anyone else observed this behaviour and have a fix? Thanks in advance.
    kerrigaj I just tested DWSI with Fantasy Grounds version 3.3.9. It worked for me. I have highlighted a portion of your post (above), your player should not be dragging the NPC link onto the token or the portrait part of the character sheet. Drag it on to the PC's name.

    Now maybe you just misspoke. And your player is dragging the NPC link (the little brown shield) onto the proper area of the character sheet. A question then, have you started using another new extension, one that you weren't using previously? Please eliminate all other extensions, only use DWSI. If the issue is remedied then we have an inter-extension conflict we will need to troubleshoot.

    I hope this helps. Thanks for using DWSI. And thanks for the feedback.

    [EDIT] I contacted kerrigaj via PM, kerrigaj is still investigating... (as of Feb 15)
    Last edited by Minty23185Fresh; February 15th, 2020 at 17:04. Reason: Report findings.

  6. #156
    Minty23185Fresh's Avatar
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    @ocelost Welcome to the forums.

    You’ve taken a great deal of time and effort, researching my extension, and weighed in with such a lengthy argument for your first post. I am flattered. I don’t believe anyone has gone to such efforts with respect to one of my extensions before. Thank you.

    I’m sorry, but I am confused. After reading your post (multiple times in fact), have you used the extension and found it to be in error? Or are you just explaining to me that my posts are in error?

    If you have found that the extension, in use, is in error, please provide screen shots and concise details of the issue. And I’ll try to fix it.

    But if it’s the latter, that calculations in my posts are errant, it’s possible that the issue was recognized and fixed in the extension, but I neglected to go back and correct my posts.

    If my extension is functioning properly, and my documentation is in error, my documentation may, or may not ever be corrected. I’m a selfish lout, I wrote the extension for me, for my use in a campaign. I thought it might be useful to others, so I posted it. I’ve since moved on, that character has retired, that campaign is over.

    As a contributor to the Fantasy Grounds community I will try to keep the extension up to date and functional, but I can’t promise.

    Thanks again for informing me that I have an error, somewhere in my work, I don’t yet know where - if it’s in the extension itself I will try to get it remedied.

  7. #157
    Quote Originally Posted by Minty23185Fresh View Post
    have you used the extension and found it to be in error?
    I have not. I was evaluating whether to try your extension, because it looked like it could make things easier for both me and my DM. Being cautious about any code that fiddles with my data or game balance, part of my evaluation was to analyze your demo screen shots to be sure that (a) I understand what it's doing and (b) it's doing what I expect it to do.

    Since I don't believe the behavior in your screen shots is correct, I am reluctant to recommend it to my DM, or entrust my data or the balance of our campaign to it.

    Quote Originally Posted by Minty23185Fresh View Post
    it’s possible that the issue was recognized and fixed in the extension, but I neglected to go back and correct my posts.
    Fair enough. If you're suggesting that I now install and test your latest code, I'll keep the idea in mind, but I have already spent quite a few hours on this and can't really spare any more time at the moment. I believe I have given you enough detail to verify the problem at your leisure.

    Quote Originally Posted by Minty23185Fresh View Post
    I’m a selfish lout, I wrote the extension for me, for my use in a campaign.
    Haha... Yes, I can certainly relate to that point of view.

    In any case, thanks for responding gracefully to criticism, and thanks again for for sharing your work.

    Cheers!

  8. #158
    Minty23185Fresh's Avatar
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    @ocelost
    I completely understand and concur with your concern about the data being diddled. That’s why I specifically suggest, in post #1 of the thread that you back up (xml export) your character. I personally back up my character, before and after every session. (Heck, the DM’s hard disk might crash.)

    I also, concur with your concern of, “this guy has shoddy or erroneous documentation” so just how crappy is his other work (the extension). A valid point and one I must rethink - I should look at both again and correct the one that is wrong. Until I hear otherwise though, I am of the opinion that the error exists in the posts and not the code. (That’s the only one you’ve tested.)

    The extension has been in existence for about a year and a quarter now (original post Dec 8, 2018). A major rewrite of the code occurred a year ago, see post #84. Since then the guts have been stable. The code has been pretty much unchanged since then (to my recollection). Added to but the wild shaping code has not been changed.

    The current version has been downloaded 512 times as of this morning, I don’t have a clue as to how many of those downloads are actually being used. Nor do I know if some users are staying with older versions. (I wish I had those numbers.)

    If you peruse the thread (not that you’d actually want to do this), you’ll note that I have tried to respond to errors in functionality in a timely and positive manner.

    As I see it there are three options for you:
    1) go at it manually. I found this to be completely unacceptable. You have to pre-wild shape (modify the stat block of) every beast you might wish to wild shape into so that your DM can drop it into the combat tracker when you wild shape. After about two, I was ready to find another class for my character.
    2) give my extension a try, in and out of session. If you’re worried about purposeful malware in an extension, it’s my belief that the software developers of Smiteworks have gone to great pains to prevent this possibility. We, extension writers, have very limited scope of what can be mod-ed.
    3) there is a for sale version on the DMG or Drive Thru RPG web sites, I have been told. I know nothing about it, just that it exists. You might feel more comfortable with a “professional” version.

    I guess a forth option is you or someone you know could write an extension to do what you want and you’d feel more comfortable with that.

    I hope you find an acceptable solution; one you’re comfortable with and trust.

    Again, welcome to the forums and FG.

  9. #159
    Problem confirmed, using DWSI v0.0.11.

    I created a level 2 moon druid with 18 wisdom, not proficient in perception, so the perception bonus was +4. I then dropped in a dire wolf, which is proficient in perception with a bonus of +3. The resulting wild shape should have perception +4, but DWSI gives it +6.
    Last edited by ocelost; February 11th, 2020 at 01:05.

  10. #160
    Minty23185Fresh's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by ocelost View Post
    Problem confirmed, using DWSI v0.0.11.
    Thank you ocelost for your perseverance, I appreciate it. I’ll get to this and get it fixed.

    [EDIT] After reviewing my calculations, I believe them to be correct. There is nothing to be fixed.
    Last edited by Minty23185Fresh; February 15th, 2020 at 17:27. Reason: Investigated ocelost's claim
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