weapon block outputs

When a weapon block is output by the program would it be possible to have the program check for feats that affect that weapon like power attack, cleave great cleave lunge etc and class abitlites that affect attack and damge like judgements and display them under tExhe base weapon stats?

Example
Great AX +15/+10/+5 damage 1d12+6
w/ Power Attack +12/+7/+2 damage 1d12+12

Consider a dwarf character with power attack and lunge. The following scenarios need to be calculated and displayed in that case:

Regular attack
vs. an Orc
Power Attack
Lunge
Power Attack vs. an Orc
Lunge vs. an Orc
Power Attack & Lunge
Power Attack & Lunge vs. an Orc

That's 8 different scenarios to display for just three options - consider how many options this character will have at 20th level. Those examples each stack with the others, but there are going to be some combinations where you can't just look up each individual scenario and add them together to get the results of using all of them at the same time.

We've thought about this before, and just can't figure out a way to display things that doesn't require massive amounts of space - at which point, it becomes very difficult to find the specific scenario you're looking for among all that text. Letting the user choose which ones to display only saves a little space, and for your 20th level character, you're still probably going to want to display a dozen or two different combinations.

As a user, I'd rather see at least some of those modifiers calculated for me, rather than none. Can't a middle ground be found?

Couldn't options exist to show various possible combinations on a separate "Attacks" page. It'd probably be nice to have this Attacks page also be able to aggregate other adjustments added to the portrait, such as Bull's Strength, Enlarge, etc.

If I'm playing a non-caster, 90% of the time the data I need is limited to Attacks, Defenses, and Hitpoints. A separate page which lists every variation under these headings would be awesome. It's possible to organize the options in such a way that finding a particular combination is relatively easy.

AOO: +X
AOO (Lunge):
AOO (Power Attack): +Y
AOO (Power Attack Lunge):

AOO (Orc): +X
AOO (Lunge Orc):
AOO (Power Attack Orc): +Y
AOO (Power Attack Lunge Orc):

Full: +X/+X-5/+X-10
Full (Lunge):
Full (Power Attack): +Y/+Y-5...
Full (Power Attack Lunge):

Full (Orc):
Full (Lunge Orc):
Full (Power Attack Orc):
Full (Power Attack Lunge Orc):

I believe most could find the combination they were interested in rather quickly. It could be color-coded, as well. Also, align the attack modifiers in a column. Probably would've looked better if I had swapped my attack mods and descriptions.

Yes, it can get unwieldly -- allow the user to pick and choose what gets printed, and that problem is solved. If the custom character sheets we can create will have this capability, that will be awesome.

Hmm, Mathias is right. You have to think of this as what modifies an attack and how they stack. If they stack and can be mutually exclusive, you get an exponential amount of output, which is a programming nightmare. So, using only the lunge and power attack as an example, and including the regular attack as Mathias stated, you get 2 to the power 3 output lines, which is 8. If you add AOO as you stated above, and correctly surmised, it is 2 to the power 4, which is 16 output lines. So, the output lines will become ridiculously large if you continue to add additional output attack possibilities (from 8, and 16, to 32 [5 attack abilities], 64 [6 attack abilities], 128 [7 attack abilities], etc.) Just not feasible.

A better way to approach this is to create the output for specific small set of common attack abilities. Trying to cover every possibility is just too program intensive (and some users will want to!). Let's just say there are 10 possible ways to produce attack abilities, that comes to 1024 lines of output (assuming all are chosen). Ouch.

What i do for this sort of thing is create an Adjustment and just select it when I perform the action. there are already a bunch built into HL like the bard songs. If you really would like too you could create a bunch of Conditions or Adjustments and put them out for the user community.

For HL to provide them all would be nearly impossible. there are just too many combination available to make it feasible. But the user community could start to create them and evenually we would have a sizeable list that could be used.

But i wouldnt try to combine them i would have each as a seperate adjustment. I know Lunge already is an adjustment, as well as power attack, so you can click both and get the result, instead of creating a new adjustment that incorporated both of them.

Mathias said:

Consider a dwarf character with power attack and lunge. The following scenarios need to be calculated and displayed in that case:

Regular attack
vs. an Orc
Power Attack
Lunge
Power Attack vs. an Orc
Lunge vs. an Orc
Power Attack & Lunge
Power Attack & Lunge vs. an Orc

That's 8 different scenarios to display for just three options - consider how many options this character will have at 20th level. Those examples each stack with the others, but there are going to be some combinations where you can't just look up each individual scenario and add them together to get the results of using all of them at the same time.

We've thought about this before, and just can't figure out a way to display things that doesn't require massive amounts of space - at which point, it becomes very difficult to find the specific scenario you're looking for among all that text. Letting the user choose which ones to display only saves a little space, and for your 20th level character, you're still probably going to want to display a dozen or two different combinations.

Click to expand...

Put in options for all of it with check boxes to hide or show.