New update - v3.98 (beta)

[Duggan]

the pet feat also seems to haxe vanished....its not even on the form for a brand new character to take...not to mention my existing chacter who had a dog is now supossedly in violation.

Ah, that one's my fault in a manner of speaking. Pet is part of Mecha and Manga. When I inputted the data for that supplement, I forgot to check Mecha and Manga as the source. And, more recently, I told Colen that it was misclassified. Just buy your dog as a Minion and it's effectively the same. Or add Mecha and Manga among the supplements that he uses.

 

[atlarman]

Thanks Duggan! : My Dog is ALIVE, ALLLLLLIIIIVE! muhaha(Dr frankenstein voice LOL) Seems kinda silly to have to add an entire supplement for one feat....but i doubt he'll display right on sheet as a minion. (SIGHS) you know DUGGAN this is one mis classifacation i could've lived with haha. aw well im glad ur vigilant and on top of things though. keep it up id tip ya if i could! lol well best i can do is buy HL for all my friends who RP (Counts them on one hand with a few fingers left over lol)

Hey Dug i gotta a request is there any way ya can take the pet feat and offer that under houserules section? thus eliminating the need to take the mecha and manga supplemet? if thatd be too hard or mess things up dont worry bout it but itd be nice.

 

[Duggan]

^_^ I'm not a Wolf Lair employee... I'm just a volunteer. But there might be virtue in splitting out the Mecha, the Pet, and the Martial Arts sections since the book more or less assumes that specific campaigns will only be using one or the other of those. As it is, checking No Mecha should probably disable some of the feats/drawbacks/etc for Mecha.

As for Pet, it really is just the Minion feat under a different name. Ideally, a Pet would have special qualities like which Tricks, Purposes, and Orders they've learned and restricting the pet-specific feats and drawbacks to the pets themselves, but that was beyond my understanding of the editor (and might actually require designing a new tabs like was done with Mecha).

@Colen:
^_^ If it is possible to do things like differentiating out pets just using the Editor and/or manipulating XML, I'd be glad to take a stab at it. Could you tell me whether it's feasible?

 

[Woodclaw]

Just minor suggestion, since Mecha & Manga stuff was already divided into sections and some feats/drawbacks/etc. only works in conjuction with certain elements, maybe it will be a good idea to divide them into various sections like with Mastermind Manual.

A possible division, based on the chapters:

• General: includes Skills, General purpose feats and the new powers
• Mecha: includes all the mecha skill/feats and enhables the mecha sheet
• Pets: feats and possibly a new sheet to handle the pet rules
• Martial Arts: Chi power and Martial arts feats

 

[Colen]

Also i noticed that as hero lab works now no warning is displayed when save DCs from powers etc exceed the pl limit (I.E. save DC max = 20 for PL 10) i was wondering if this was by design

This behavior is not by design. I just checked one of the stock heroes and he's reporting a problem if I take his attack bonus / save DC over the PL limit, just like he should.

If you have a saved hero that exhibits this problem, can you please email it to me at colen@wolflair.com ? That way I can try and track down the issue that's causing it.

ONE MINOR thing ID LOVE TO SEE= some images of the mayjor animal types for heroes who may have "pets"

Are there images in any of the M&M rulebooks for these? If so, let me know where and I'll bug GR about getting them. If not, I'm afraid you're on the hook for finding your own images.

 

[Colen]

Well Shadowchaser, you're echoing my ealier comment on that. So that makes two of us voting for "off" by default. Hmm, I wonder how close that makes us to being the majority opinion?

Nigel Fogg, aka The Wayfarer.

Seems like the majority opinion is "off by default" so far. Assuming that I can fix the bug where it doesn't seem to be counting certain things in your attack bonus / saving throws, do you guys think it's useful for newbies to have on? Or just more annoying than useful?

 

[Colen]

Hey Dug i gotta a request is there any way ya can take the pet feat and offer that under houserules section? thus eliminating the need to take the mecha and manga supplemet? if thatd be too hard or mess things up dont worry bout it but itd be nice.

(plus various comments about splitting mecha & manga up into sections)

I'm not crazy about splitting the books up further than they already are. If all you want is the Mecha stuff from Mecha & Manga, you can just ignore the other feats / powers / and so on; I'd rather keep it simple for the newbies, so they can turn mecha & manga on and off with a single click, than requiring multiple clicks for each book. "What do you mean, I have to click 5 times to turn on all the Mecha & Manga stuff?"

For consistency, we'd also have to split each other book into a bunch of settings, too. Maybe you want the vehicles from Agents of Freedom, but not the new feats? It's a slippery slope that just ends up with the settings list looking bad, instead of nice and clean.


BTW, thanks for the files, Duggan - I'll take a look at these and try and figure out the problem.

 

[Duggan]

I'm not crazy about splitting the books up further than they already are. If all you want is the Mecha stuff from Mecha & Manga, you can just ignore the other feats / powers / and so on; I'd rather keep it simple for the newbies, so they can turn mecha & manga on and off with a single click, than requiring multiple clicks for each book. "What do you mean, I have to click 5 times to turn on all the Mecha & Manga stuff?"

BTW, thanks for the files, Duggan - I'll take a look at these and try and figure out the problem.

Well, you can always set it up with an upper-level checkbox that turns them all on or all off, but whatever works for you. I still wish I'd figured out a better way to handle Pet/Menagerie/etc. As it is now, there's no real purpose in having those feats since you can do the exact same thing with Minion, more easily so in some cases.

And no problem on the sending files. I'm kind of with the "by default off" myself, simply because there are enough exceptions, and the check is really something you'd be doing on a finished hero. If I might make a suggestion, you already have the attack and damage bonuses on Special tab. If you parse those (and add in ranks of Sneak Attack and Favored Opponent), you've got a simple way of checking that at least one attack meets caps (Don't forget to discount the accidental attack bonus on non-targetted areas). Oh, and I found that your current check doesn't discount temporary conditions. Being flat-footed made one of my characters flag as being under caps on defense/toughness.

Some things that haven't been fixed yet:
* Aura adding to Unarmed damage on the Special tab
* Sneak Attack and Favored Opponent counting toward caps (or at least I don't think this is applying at the moment)
* Area progression feats don't change the text on the Areas (as noted in a prior post, Nullifying Field does do this, so it seems a bit odd that the other Areas extras don't)
* I need to do more tests on this at home, but the Reset button on In-Play listed "2 conditions" for one of my characters, I think because he had Bruised and Injured. Clicking the Reset button did not reset those.

 

[atlarman]

@ duggan: In regaurds to doing a pet as a minion....IDK if theres any affect as far as hero lab is concerned but mechanacally arent their restrictions placed on minions that would not be true of the pet option? as for the items such as tricks and purposes and such i was able to type out the needed info in the pets "background block" yes its slighty more typing than a tab. but it works well in the mean time and intergrates nicely on the sheet.
My only real issue w/ "pet"was that prior to being properly tagged as mecha and manga.... it was an option and of course correcting the problem(as it should be) took my pet back and i didnt much care for needing to take the entire manga book to gain the one feat back. I can certaianly see Colen's point as far as a "slipperry slope".- especialy if a person was wanting to piece out every suplement that way- HOWEVER i was niether proposing that nor removing the pet feat from the manga section as a whole BUT essentially duplicating pet under the house rules or feat option section...w/o having that tied to manga. Id even be open to duggans suggested tiered selection of manga simlial to masterminds manual. I wouldnt advise this for every supplement of course. just the ones who seem to offer more "modular" options as manga does and Masterminds Manual before it.
ANYHOO its only a thought. i certainly dont want to make more work for the good folks @ LWD. theyve got their hands full and an already great product! As Always... thanks 4 the help!

 

[atlarman]

To colen-
As for having a saved hero that exhibits the power DC higher than 20...I no longer have them. i was so annoyed at finding what the rule actually was that i went back and basically lowered my power ranks(somtimes ridiculously low) until DC in the powers description read no higher than 20...(PL 10 character). I say ridiculusly low cause the one example that comes right to mind is ending up w/ a character having his adamintine claws power(strike w/ penetrating,mighty - along w/appropreate ranks of str to stike bonus to count his str bonus on dmg- as well as the leathal drawback(or flaw?) at 2 ranks just to get dc 20(down from rank 7 before w/ all the same modifiers which displayed a DC OF 27..... WHILE hl did not flag this as a violation clearly on pg 16 or 17 of the pocket players guide 27 was clearly above the dc 20 a +10(max) dc modifer wouldve given.

 

[Duggan]

@atlarman:
And are you certain that your attack bonus was not lower than 10? You can have a Strike at +12 with an attack bonus of +8 with that attack. Again, according to the page on Tradeoffs that I gave you. And the maximum damage modifier for a character with no tradeoffs (which is what Strike is) is 15 (toughness saves are worked differently for historical reasons) + 10=25. And yes, Strength bonus is counted for Mighty Strike, so Strike is seldom at PL without tradeoffs.

Just to be sure we're not arguing at cross-purposes, can you confirm that you understand how tradeoffs work and that Damage save DCs are 15+damage bonus?

 

[atlarman]

@ Duggan:

Man lol I had no clue ya didnt already work 4 LWD! haha well u have been so helpful they SHOULD be paying ya bro! ROFL

 

[Woodclaw]

I just stumbled upon another little bug (or rather) a old bug which I forgot to report earlier. I include an arry as part of a linked set when I activate the linked set all the array powers are automaticly activated at the same time generating an error.

 

[Nigel Fogg The Wayfarer]

Uh-oh. Thanks for adding the abilty to put a picture with our vehicles. However, it's not very useful if you can't save the vehicle as a separate PDF to print out later nor to have the picture fail to show up when you try to print just the vehicle via 'print preview'.

Nigel Fogg, aka The Wayfarer

 

[Shadowchaser]

Seems like the majority opinion is "off by default" so far. Assuming that I can fix the bug where it doesn't seem to be counting certain things in your attack bonus / saving throws, do you guys think it's useful for newbies to have on? Or just more annoying than useful?

It's something I'd actually rather not have. I mean, it really encourages people to focus on a 'Mini-maxing' kind of design, which isn't how all GMs want their players to build characters. I think it's productive only if you're building totally combat-optimized characters, and for people who are just trying to build a superhero by concept, can be distracting at best... counterproductive at worst. They're going to be throwing points at the 'system' instead of building their characters.

Just my opinion on it, it's obviously a very subjective thing.

 

[atlarman]

I think I finally understand

@ duggan-

My first mistake was forgetting that damage powers save DC are figured at 15+ damage not 10+ rank as w/ other powers- this alone accounts for the program not "flagging me" (quite correctly so) however when I printed out my character w/adreanal surge engaged- to show the difference he WAS FLAGGED...which is what made me go back to research save DCs for powers in general i supose some how in my mind i must have seperated damage from equipment as being fig w/ 15 +"y" and ALL POWERS as being fig w/ save dcs 10 + "y". ooops i guess DAMAGE is damage even if from pwrs. lol
BTW yes i think i get trade offs if you are under level limit in attk bonus you can increase save dc by same amout. likewise if ya decrease toughness save bonus ya can increase attk bonus by an equal amout right?

AS FOR THE CHARACTER IN QUESTION: No,his attk bonus is not at the PL limit. All bonuses are at +8 except grapple + 13 (as far as combat bonuses go) the bonus of the specific pwr (strike is also +8. for a time i took strike all the way down to 2 ranks (to get dc down to twenty. now since you've pointed out damage dcs are calculated differently. i have since returned the strike to +8.(7 ranks)

(yeiding a save DC OF 25) NO TRADE OFF NEEDED. however once adreanal surge is engaged the save dc jumps to 27 still no trade off i dont think....as far as strike goes but there is one noted to toughness save it goes to 12 because of the boost in con byadreanal surge. (of course as per that power the jump is only temperary) so i guess HL IS right and im not volating anything. srry for the confusion. Im fairly novice in playing xp and so far this is only my 2nd character build in M&M. thanks in advance for the help and understanding all.

 

[atlarman]

It's something I'd actually rather not have. I mean, it really encourages people to focus on a 'Mini-maxing' kind of design, which isn't how all GMs want their players to build characters. I think it's productive only if you're building totally combat-optimized characters, and for people who are just trying to build a superhero by concept, can be distracting at best... counterproductive at worst. They're going to be throwing points at the 'system' instead of building their characters.

Just my opinion on it, it's obviously a very subjective thing.

Thank you very much shdowchaser for putting into words what i could not....(i already have had mayjor problems w/ at least one player "maxing out " alll his combat bonuses to pl limit in leiu of trying to keep those moderate and then taking appropreate feats for his chacter to ssimulate his concept. the particular player seems more interested in getting the best possible roll then simulating his chacter reasonably.( and then conplaining to me when the chacter is done about having na pro pp left 4 equippment and scarce resourses or feat (not to mention only an unarmed attk and 0 pwrs) arragh! the last thing i need is a program that encourages capping.

 

[atlarman]

Duggan- can ya kindly give me a page reference that has the formula ya mentioned for save dcs of damage powers? thanks.

 

[Woodclaw]

It's something I'd actually rather not have. I mean, it really encourages people to focus on a 'Mini-maxing' kind of design, which isn't how all GMs want their players to build characters. I think it's productive only if you're building totally combat-optimized characters, and for people who are just trying to build a superhero by concept, can be distracting at best... counterproductive at worst. They're going to be throwing points at the 'system' instead of building their characters.

Just my opinion on it, it's obviously a very subjective thing.

I agree with Shadowcahaser here, some concepts are meant not to be capped. I think that this option isn't very useful unless someone only wants super-optimized character, which can grow boring very fast.
I think that having such a trick is more of a hindrance than a benefit.
I vote for setting it off by default(if not removing it entirely).

 

[Woodclaw]

I don't know if I'm doing something wrong, but I've tested the Stack With extra with movement powers and Regeneration and it doesn't seem to do anything, the ranks aren't added and the effects are still listed as separated elements on the output sheet.

Plus, since sometimes one might only want to add a PF to an existing power (especially Super strength PF), giving the option to have Rank 0 stacking powers might be a good idea.

e.g.: allowing a character to have Super-strength 3 naturally and a device giving him a stacking rank 0 Super-strength with the Groundstrike PF