Question for everyone about dynamic powers

[Colen]

Hi guys,

Currently, Hero Lab only lets you activate one array power at a time, even if some of the powers in the array are dynamic. I'm looking at changing that, since being able to activate multiple powers has been requested quite a bit over the last few months.

I'm envisioning that each dynamic power will have an incrementer beside it, so you can choose how many (or how few) ranks of that power are active right now. So you'll be able to activate 5 ranks of Protection and 5 ranks of some other power, if they're both dynamic powers in the same array, and Hero Lab will (theoretically) make sure that you don't activate too many points worth of stuff.

My question to you guys is this:

If you allocated ranks to different dynamic powers like this, would you want this information displayed in printed output? Or should printed output ignore any "dynamic ranks" and always show the power details at full power?

I'm thinking that any dynamic ranks should be ignored on the printout, since when you print a character out you don't want to see him modified with stuff like that. Does anyone feel that it would be useful to see that stuff on the printout? If so, please let me know before I make a terrible mistake.

[Elfy]

printout should always show everything at full strength. dynamic allocation happens during play =)

[Kesendeja]

I think it would be useful to display the partial powers. In my experience a character with a dynamic array rarely make use of any one power at full strength. The ability to print several "sets" of of their most common power arrangements would be a great help and certainly speed up the game.

[fillerbunny_x1]

Full strength for printout. You'd have to print a ridiculous number of permutations, otherwise...

[Nigel Fogg The Wayfarer]

While I truly sympathize with Kesendeja, I must agree with Elfy and fillerbunny_x1. One can always set up a particular permutation, save that as PDF version 01, switch it around & save that as PDF version 02, switch it around & save that as PDF version 03, etc. and print out all the PDFs if you want to have them handy.

Sounds like a lot of paper? I empathize. Right now Nigel is 5 pages when printed out. If I were to follow the above advice I'd be bringing 20+ pages even if the only additional pages were the Array page. ;-)

Only the GM has a laptop running during the game, I and my fellow players only have our pen & paper in front of us and sometimes things do slow down when we have to recalculate something on the fly but we accept that.

Now, slightly off topic: the rules allow a Power outside of an Array to be linked to a particular Slot Power of an Array. I can get Hero Lab to link two Powers outside of an Array. I can get Hero Lab to make a Combined Slot of two Powers within an Array. I can't seem to build the legal concept of a Array Slot # 4 (Swim) only works when Non-Slot (Breathe Underwater) is active. Any suggestions?

Keep up the good work Colen & friends. :-)
Nigel

[Colen]

Nigel: I'll add that to the bug list.

Thanks for your opinions on this, guys.