4th & Dragon : Dungeons and Dragons...and stuff

Is the set for the item cards available to download even in an unfinished state?

There is not.  I have files on my hard drive with the information on the various items, but I have not yet even thought about generating item cards from it.  All item cards you see in my Evon set have been custom created for that character.

Is there a way to edit the output order of the cards for printout?  I ask as I have noticed that when I create a PDF of a class or something it is mostly in level order but with some odd ones out of order and it would be nice to be able to have it all sorted so that it was in order.

Also, and this is just a suggestion so disregard it if you don’t like it.  I have found it would be nice to have the level first then the action type (or have them be separate fields) so that it is easy to sort them and find the ones you want by level.  This is especially helpful when doing a NPC.  I redid the ones for the warlock ones from the last set before the big update and it made things a lot faster.  If we all can find something that works for everyone I am willing to put in time helping edit the cards.

Also, and this is just a suggestion so disregard it if you don’t like it.  I have found it would be nice to have the level first then the action type (or have them be separate fields) so that it is easy to sort them and find the ones you want by level.

Yeah.  I’ve already been thinking about this.  I’m probably going to split that field so that level is separate from the power type.

Is there a way to edit the output order of the cards for printout?  I ask as I have noticed that when I create a PDF of a class or something it is mostly in level order but with some odd ones out of order and it would be nice to be able to have it all sorted so that it was in order.

Not that I know of.  Head on over to the MSE forums to ask if it’s really critical to you.

Black Plauge - 11 September 2008 09:25 AM

Not that I know of.  Head on over to the MSE forums to ask if it’s really critical to you.

I took your advice and wanted to link the thread for it in case others would like to know the answer or speak up about it.

http://magicseteditor.sourceforge.net/node/1917

The downloads that have been offered got me to thinking about working on generating a whole list of pre-entered monster sets.  I am going to start work on it myself and would like to see if anyone else is interested in working on it with me.  Basically I am thinking something like what was already done for the Red Dragon.  If anyone wants to work on this with me contact me via PIM and we can coordinate our work.

In trying to enter monsters I will need tonight at my game I noticed that I cannot manually change the value of the Init Bonus.  For instance I am trying to enter a Lizardfolk Greenscale Hunter, they have a total Init bonus of +6, after entering everything the card comes up with a +5.  Is there a way to adjust this?

Also there is no way to put in the Reptile subgroup for Race, this could be important depending on some situations.

The race field can easily be edited to add subgroups.  The drop down boxes in no way restrict you from entering text in that field, they just make the entering of the standards easier.

The Init bonus field is something of a conundrum.  I’ve noticed that several monsters in the MM have the “wrong” init bonus (i.e. init wasn’t calculated using the formulas presented in the DMG for monster design), which means that in its current uneditable state the card will disagree with the MM entry.  Personally, I think this call for an edit of the monsters (i.e. errata), not my cards, especially since many of the problems have to do with monsters having a init bonus that is below their Dex check (though obviously it’s a different problem with that particular monster).  However, if you want to allow the init modifier to be editable, you need to edit the game file (\Magic Set Editor 2\data\D&D4e;.mse-game\game).  Find the card field called “init” (in the “name” tag) and change the “editable” tag from “false” to “true.”

The init in this case was my fault due to not noticing the order of the stats, I assumed they went Str, Dex, Con on the top row and then Int, Wis and Cha on the second so once I got the right stats in the right places that was fine.

As for the racial subgroup, and I found the Role area too, the font does not size to fit which means that it goes off the card.  I tried typing in the subgroup before the first post and found that, the same happens when you enter a Controller (Leader)

I am very appreciative for your work and am glad you watch the forums so well.  Thanks a bunch.  Please don’t take anything I post as being a complaint, I don’t intend them that way.

I thought I had those fields set up to be large enough to handle the font size, but I’ll add some auto-scaling to them for those odd times when it doesn’t fit at normal size.

I sense things have stalled a bit. Any chance the FRPG rules (Dark pact warlock is my main desire) will make it into the card sets?

Thanks,

Teos

Alphastream - 24 September 2008 02:13 PM

I sense things have stalled a bit. Any chance the FRPG rules (Dark pact warlock is my main desire) will make it into the card sets?

Thanks,

Teos

I had not started on it as I had not needed it yet, but if you have downloaded MSE and the files from here you should have everything you need to enter in the few new powers that would need entering.  I can’t say when I would have time to enter the stuff as I am working on another project now.

The goal of this project is not the card sets themselves, but the templates.  The sets that have been made were made either to illustrate how to use the templates (the Evon and the Red Dragon sets) or because some one else had already done the work of entering the information into MSE and it was a relatively easy matter to write some code that could change the set file to be compatible with this style (all the powers for each class in the PHB).

That said, things have stalled for a bit here.  Cam is pretty busy at the moment and he’s the “art guy” for the project.  In order to move on to the other planned card types he has to make up the background art first and then we have to discuss the layout so that I can code it.

I am working on entering monsters and their powers and found that we need a way to represent the recharge ability.  I was thinking just above the keyword and below the name would be a great place for this.  It would be really cool if it could use the dice icons.

Any thoughts?

The most recent set already has this (in fact, it’s been there for a while now).  Select the “Recharge” card type for the background and a field should appear in the lower right, right above where the word “Recharge” appears when using the B&W backgrounds or either of the text styles.

Furthermore, if you only put numbers in this field, they should turn out as dice icons if you have the dice font installed (from the fonts.zip file).  If you put any letters, then the field font switches back to text so that you can read the recharge condition.

If this isn’t working for you, let me know and I’ll look at it to see if I can figure out what’s wrong.