I think all damage is typed in the sense that “weapon” is a type of damage (usually associated with a basic attack or the simplest powers).
Of course, that’s further broken down into bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing, so it might be more useful to have three types of damage for “weapon” rather than one.
Here’s my XCF file for anyone who wants to play with it. In the zip is also included a PSD file, but the text shifts from a text layer to a vector layer when switching between PS and GIMP.
EDIT: And here’s a sample card (the first is using the GIMP and the second is using Magic Set Editor. Obviously there are a few differences (text size being the most notable, but I can shrink the GIMP text size pretty easily.) All told, I think I like the MSE version better.
I like the XCF file and especially like the use of layers to make selecting elements possible. A few suggestions:
The damage icons: while I like the shaded silver look, are hard to see against the daily power black background in some cases. You may need to brighten the icons or change their color to fix this.
Extra layers: You don’t really need a separate layer for the word “Damage” and then layers for each type of damage. Simply incorporate the word “Damage” into the layer for each icon so that it’s just one layer that needs to be revealed/hidden. You can also do this for “Action,” “Source,” and “Attack.” I realize that this means combining what is currently a text layer with an image layer (and thus losing the ability to edit the text) but I don’t think these text tiles will ever need to be edited. If you take my suggestion of using the extra box for defense, then that too should be built into the layers for the defense type.
Acid icon: Might I suggest something more like this: . I’d take just the hand half of the image and would probably remove the test tube too in order to simplify it.
Flavor text: I’m not sure I like it under the boxes. It just seems crowded to me like that.
Targeting icons: They don’t appear to fill their background completely. The background is showing through for a single line of pixels on the bottom and the right.
As for the side by side comparison, I think the only reason the MSE one looks better is because of the time that some one put into to choosing appropriate fonts and getting the size and alignment just right. With some time spent on that I think the two could be rendered just as good looking.
The damage icons: while I like the shaded silver look, are hard to see against the daily power black background in some cases. You may need to brighten the icons or change their color to fix this.
I’ll look at maybe adding some color, like instead of of a silver metallic, use a bronze,
Extra layers: You don’t really need a separate layer for the word “Damage” and then layers for each type of damage. Simply incorporate the word “Damage” into the layer for each icon so that it’s just one layer that needs to be revealed/hidden. You can also do this for “Action,” “Source,” and “Attack.” I realize that this means combining what is currently a text layer with an image layer (and thus losing the ability to edit the text) but I don’t think these text tiles will ever need to be edited. If you take my suggestion of using the extra box for defense, then that too should be built into the layers for the defense type.
Good suggestion. I wanted to make sure I was 100% on the icons and where they’re going before I committed to them. That said, this idea is better than what I was going to do, which was set them on the background.
Acid icon: Might I suggest something more like this: . I’d take just the hand half of the image and would probably remove the test tube too in order to simplify it.
That one was just a filler. I still need to tweak that one and make icons for Force and Thunder, both of which are almost impossible to conceptualize as concrete items,
Flavor text: I’m not sure I like it under the boxes. It just seems crowded to me like that.
Where would you suggest?
Targeting icons: They don’t appear to fill their background completely. The background is showing through for a single line of pixels on the bottom and the right.
That was intentional to show just a little around the edges, but i see it doesn’t work uniformly. Easy fix.
I chose the fonts for both MSE and GIMP, but changed the MSE ones and forgot to change GIMP. I’m sure most people don’t have Pterra or Caslon Antique fonts. Alignment with the text boxes is tricky in GIMP because I haven’t figured out a way to set a text box to a static size with text wrapping. Do you know if there is a way?
I don’t like that acid symbol. Any help from the community? I’d like input. Be critical (of the cards, not me) and tell what you like and don’t like. ENWorld seems to have chosen their three stars and I’m not one of them. I don’t particularly like any of the three as a whole. Two just copy and paste the text from the powers AND have icons and stuff too. It’s redundancy. The other one strikes me as too plain.
I’ve given both an XCF and PSD file, and I’ll make my Magic Set Editor files available if anyone is interested. I just think I’d like some more feedback on this. I intend to eventually make all the power cards available here for download (probably PDFs and JPGs) shortly after I get the PHB.
And here’s one that I printed next to a D&D minis card.
Top icon is Ranged Attack
The gear is Standard Action
The Magic Missile looking thing indicates that the power source is Arcane.
The bottom icon indicates that the damage is Psychic.
Force is nice. Thunder, not so much. Maybe add a thunderbolt to it. I know, a thunderbolt is already used for electrical damage, so maybe it won’t work, but that’s the only suggestion I’ve got at the moment.
On the cards, the titles “Action”, “Source”, “Attack”, “Defense”, and “Damage” should only show up when there is some thing under them.
I like the acid symbol like that, but then, I’m a bit biased.
Force is nice. Thunder, not so much. Maybe add a thunderbolt to it. I know, a thunderbolt is already used for electrical damage, so maybe it won’t work, but that’s the only suggestion I’ve got at the moment.
I thought about that and it looked too much like a lightning. Not sure how else to do thunder. Thing is--it isn’t thunder in the traditional sense. It’s a replacement for Sonic.
On the cards, the titles “Action”, “Source”, “Attack”, “Defense”, and “Damage” should only show up when there is some thing under them.
Still working out a way to do that in Magic Set Editor. When I make these in GIMP, it’s easier to set the transparencies, but the text boxes are a headache. There’s no way to anchor a text box to a specific size. They always adapt to the text inside and doesn’t have a wrap text function. Plus, you can’t bold some text and not others in the same box. So I have the Hit and Target bolded and the rest of the text in plain face, but with GIMP it would either be all bolder or all plain text. It’s a pain in the (Gibbering Mouther Ate Your Word!).
I like the acid symbol like that, but then, I’m a bit biased.
Okay. Thanks. My problem with the acid symbol is not how it looks, but that it’s not necessarily intuitive to people who don’t work with chemicals. It doesn’t scream “ACID” to me.
I’ll keep working on the Thunder, but I think I’m pretty close to done as far as symbols are concerned (unless you had some other comments that I missed).
On the cards, the titles “Action”, “Source”, “Attack”, “Defense”, and “Damage” should only show up when there is some thing under them.
Still working out a way to do that in Magic Set Editor. When I make these in GIMP, it’s easier to set the transparencies, but the text boxes are a headache. There’s no way to anchor a text box to a specific size. They always adapt to the text inside and doesn’t have a wrap text function. Plus, you can’t bold some text and not others in the same box. So I have the Hit and Target bolded and the rest of the text in plain face, but with GIMP it would either be all bolder or all plain text. It’s a pain in the (Gibbering Mouther Ate Your Word!).
Cool. Figured it out in MSE. Easier than I thought it would be.
Hmm… Given that “thunder” is simply a new name for “sonic” perhaps something based on sound would work.
How about a modification of
Instead of a speaker your cloud or thunderbolt might make for a workable symbol.
When I make these in GIMP, it’s easier to set the transparencies, but the text boxes are a headache. There’s no way to anchor a text box to a specific size. They always adapt to the text inside and doesn’t have a wrap text function. Plus, you can’t bold some text and not others in the same box. So I have the Hit and Target bolded and the rest of the text in plain face, but with GIMP it would either be all bolder or all plain text. It’s a pain in the (Gibbering Mouther Ate Your Word!).
The only thing that I can think of that might help here is a work around. Instead of having all the power text in a single box, break it up into several boxes. This way you can have some boxes which are bold and others which aren’t. You’re still going to run into wrapping problems, but it’s an idea that might be workable.
Hmm… After looking at the GIMP documentation I think the best way to get the kind of control over text that you’re looking for would be with a script. In principle, a properly designed script could parse the text passed to it into something that looks like the MSE results. Of course, that would require learning how to script in GIMP first and so may not be worth the effort.
Yeah, learning GIMP scripting ain’t in my future. Setting up multiple boxes would be alright. Especially since certain ones (Target, Hit, Effect) would always been the same. I can do for that what I did for the others.
Oh, btw, I took your suggestion with regards to setting the phrases Action, Source, etc into the image layers. I’ll reupload the XCF in a bit.
. I’d take just the hand half of the image and would probably remove the test tube too in order to simplify it.
