General D&D Next (5e) Framework

Framework(s) for D&D 5e.

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Protesilaus
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General D&D Next (5e) Framework

Post by Protesilaus »

Hi all, I created a general D&D 5e Framework for a game I will be running. Only the basic play rules were tied in, hopefully keeping it general enough to use as the playtest continues. The only "rule" that it really gets tied to D&D Next is Advantages / Disadvantages, as everything else is generic enough to run a 3.5 or 4e with minimal changes. I don't think I broke any of the NDA by including this, and I haven't copied any text from the Playtest nor have I copied any Skills / Spells / Equipment / Classes, although it is easy to add them to it manually.

Most of the functionality has been tied to Library functions. I probably will remove most of the macros on the individual tokens. The user should be able to run most of the functionality from the "Character Sheet" which is generated after entering the character's information.

I'll be adding a target selection menu for the attack, so I can remove the Hit Points from monster's automatically. This should be fine to play with for now. Let me know if you have any requests. I'll be updating this topic as I add more to this.

Tutorial
The "Hero" token is setup as an example. You will want to export the "Hero" token's Macro Set to import it on new tokens.
The first thing you'll want to do is export the Hero's Macro Set. When you want to create a new token, import the Macro Set onto the token (or copy and paste and edit as needed). Use the "Edit Stats" button to set the Token Properties. There are a few more important macro buttons to setup the character "Edit Skills", "Edit Attacks", "Add / Remove Language". I will be updating the Character Sheet to remove the need for macro buttons.

There is an Equipment Manager, which is operated entirely from the Character Sheet.
Attachments
DnD Next Campaign.cmpgn
Updated Campaign File - 3/6/2013
(4.3 MiB) Downloaded 977 times
Last edited by Protesilaus on Wed Mar 06, 2013 4:15 pm, edited 9 times in total.

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mfrizzell
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Re: General D&D Next (5e) Framework

Post by mfrizzell »

Cool deal will check it out.
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Protesilaus
Kobold
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Re: General D&D Next (5e) Framework

Post by Protesilaus »

I am planning on implementing Class specific features, probably a Spell Book first and then Expertise Dice and so on.

yorick
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Re: General D&D Next (5e) Framework

Post by yorick »

Excellent. I will use this on Sunday. For the playtest, this is more than adequate.

Is there a specific reason you didn't give the PC check macros, btw? I'm thinking of basing all tokens off your monster token, just so the players have a way of running checks without needing the character sheet to be open.

yorick
Cave Troll
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Re: General D&D Next (5e) Framework

Post by yorick »

Overall, the framework got the job done. A few things that were difficult:

- The monster's attack macro results in a Java error. I copied in the Hero's attack macro instead, which worked
- Replaced the monster's character sheet macro with the hero's character sheet macro
- Initiative macro gave the players an error about "only DM can sort". Rather than figure out how to give players sort rights, we removed the sort line from Initiative
- Monsters were missing an initiative macro. Copied in the one from the hero.
- Character sheets prompt for a CSS value when not on the "Library" map. Solved for now by copying lib:Styles to every single map
- I think two of my players hit "Initialize Character", or that function got executed through other means. Their characters were suddenly blank. In future frameworks, might be an idea to handle that differently, maybe the way Rumble does.
- When editing stats, the hit dice don't get updated. As a workaround, we set them manually in the token properties.

Things my players loved:
- The character sheet, particularly the inventory with encumbrance calculation. They were all over that, and opined that this character sheet was much more useful than the one Rumble uses in his 4e framework.

yorick
Cave Troll
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Re: General D&D Next (5e) Framework

Post by yorick »

Here's the fix for the hit die bug in the edit stats macro. Replace the existing switch statement towards the end of the macro (NOT the one at the beginning of the macro) with this:

[h,switch(InputHitDice):
case 0: HitDice = "1d4";
case 1: HitDice = "1d6";
case 2: HitDice = "1d8";
case 3: HitDice = "1d10";
case 4: HitDice = "1d12";
case 5: HitDice = "2d6";]

Protesilaus
Kobold
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Re: General D&D Next (5e) Framework

Post by Protesilaus »

I'm back after a few months of downtime (had to disband my D&D Next game and sort of lost interest in updating the Framework). I'll get back to work on it to fix issues people have had. Sorry for not keeping up with it.

Also, I have been working on a 4e framework, since all of the existing ones haven't felt right when I run games. So I'll be making a post with that soon.

Protesilaus
Kobold
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Re: General D&D Next (5e) Framework

Post by Protesilaus »

yorick wrote:- The monster's attack macro results in a Java error. I copied in the Hero's attack macro instead, which worked
- Replaced the monster's character sheet macro with the hero's character sheet macro
- Initiative macro gave the players an error about "only DM can sort". Rather than figure out how to give players sort rights, we removed the sort line from Initiative
- Monsters were missing an initiative macro. Copied in the one from the hero.
- Character sheets prompt for a CSS value when not on the "Library" map. Solved for now by copying lib:Styles to every single map
- I think two of my players hit "Initialize Character", or that function got executed through other means. Their characters were suddenly blank. In future frameworks, might be an idea to handle that differently, maybe the way Rumble does.
I took your fix and integrated it.
Initialize Character is gone, just made the values from it the default values.
I removed the CSS token and just incorporated the styles into the macros.
The Troll token didn't have the most recent import, they should be using the same token as the Hero.
Initiative has been fixed. The macro wasn't set to disallow players to edit, this allows the players to use "protected macros". Unfortunately there is no global option (that I know of) that just prevents the players from editing every macro.
Also, the Hero macroset has Save / Check rolling enabled (since they are the same thing on a base ability score).

Let me know what you think the next thing I should implement is.

yorick
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Re: General D&D Next (5e) Framework

Post by yorick »

Oh, that is excellent! I have a running campaign, that we're getting back to (hopefully) on the 23rd and 30th, with the recent changes to the playtest packet.

I'll see what your macros look like now. We had also fiddled with the formatting on attack and such, because things were formatted so wide that they displayed off-screen for most players.

The main things I notice that are completely different now in the play packet:

Crit adds 1W. That means the crit value needs to accept something like "12+1d8" as valid.
Skills now add the skill die, otherwise it's a straight ability check. I'm thinking that means there should be an ability check macro outside of the character sheet, that allows players to choose the ability to roll against, any random bonuses, and whether to apply their skill die. Skill die itself would need to be set in the character stats. And if that ability check also lists the available skills, just as a reference, so players know whether they might be able to apply a skill die, that's awesome.

The real question becomes: How much effort should be expended while things are still this much in flux? I think "just the minimum so it's playable" is right. That means for now, maybe the ability check just allows a bonus value of "1d4" etc rather than just "1", so that players can add their skill die in manually. I think until the rules have settled a bit, it makes no sense to really dig deep and add skill dies, weapon damage dies, maneuver support et al into the framework. Because by next packet, it may all look different.

So, with that thinking out loud done, here's what I think I'd like to see:

- Ability to add dice to the crit value, so if my 1MHW damage is 1d8 and say my attack damage is 1d8+4, crit damage can be stated as "12+1d8"
- Ability to roll ability (stat) checks from a common macro, and specify a modifier (bonus) that allows for a die to be added, so it could be "0" (default value) or "1" or "1d4" or "1+1d4". You get the idea

With that, the framework allows for easy application of the rules in the packet, without getting so specific about the mechanics that things have to be rewritten with the next N packets.

I think it'd make a lot of sense to look at the D&D Next macro that was floating around these boards for output formatting ideas. It had a very neat layout with great mouseover details.

If you feel motivated to rules-nerd about the playtest packet and your framework, I'll be happy to shoot you a PM with our TS server, and we can talk things over and try things out on my maptool server.

Protesilaus
Kobold
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Re: General D&D Next (5e) Framework

Post by Protesilaus »

yorick wrote:I'll see what your macros look like now. We had also fiddled with the formatting on attack and such, because things were formatted so wide that they displayed off-screen for most players.
I'll make the resolution a variable on one of the library tokens, so that you can edit it. I had problems using percentages in the past, but I could retry that since that would be optimal.
yorick wrote:The real question becomes: How much effort should be expended while things are still this much in flux? I think "just the minimum so it's playable" is right. That means for now, maybe the ability check just allows a bonus value of "1d4" etc rather than just "1", so that players can add their skill die in manually. I think until the rules have settled a bit, it makes no sense to really dig deep and add skill dies, weapon damage dies, maneuver support et al into the framework. Because by next packet, it may all look different.
The functionally difficult things were setting up the editable structures, adding individual bonuses, altering how rolls are made and that sort of stuff should be rather easy to alter. So far each change in the packet has been pretty easy to incorporate. Unless there is a drastic change to the overall systems, it shouldn't be hard altering things for each play packet.
yorick wrote:The main things I notice that are completely different now in the play packet:

Crit adds 1W. That means the crit value needs to accept something like "12+1d8" as valid.
Skills now add the skill die, otherwise it's a straight ability check. I'm thinking that means there should be an ability check macro outside of the character sheet, that allows players to choose the ability to roll against, any random bonuses, and whether to apply their skill die. Skill die itself would need to be set in the character stats. And if that ability check also lists the available skills, just as a reference, so players know whether they might be able to apply a skill die, that's awesome.

So, with that thinking out loud done, here's what I think I'd like to see:

- Ability to add dice to the crit value, so if my 1MHW damage is 1d8 and say my attack damage is 1d8+4, crit damage can be stated as "12+1d8"
- Ability to roll ability (stat) checks from a common macro, and specify a modifier (bonus) that allows for a die to be added, so it could be "0" (default value) or "1" or "1d4" or "1+1d4". You get the idea

With that, the framework allows for easy application of the rules in the packet, without getting so specific about the mechanics that things have to be rewritten with the next N packets.

I think it'd make a lot of sense to look at the D&D Next macro that was floating around these boards for output formatting ideas. It had a very neat layout with great mouseover details.

If you feel motivated to rules-nerd about the playtest packet and your framework, I'll be happy to shoot you a PM with our TS server, and we can talk things over and try things out on my maptool server.
I should be able to implement a crit dice mechanic easily now. I will see what I come up with. As for the change to skill dice, I'll read the playtest packet and see what I come up with.

FYI: The _GenericD20Roll & _GenericRollAttack have the table width hard-coded into it.

Protesilaus
Kobold
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Re: General D&D Next (5e) Framework

Post by Protesilaus »

Campaign updated. Both the Skill Dice and the Critical Damage dice will work if you input a die type in the roll. I am not 100% sold on this implementation since if you are rolling 3d4, right now it will roll them all together and you won't be able to tell what each dice rolled. I am unsure of a workaround for this, but this lets the campaign be usable without any major alterations.

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aliasmask
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Re: General D&D Next (5e) Framework

Post by aliasmask »

I heard someone say that rolls with XdY format use the Wiki: roll() function which means you can create your own custom roll macro. With that you can do the rolls manually storing each result in another variable like roll.details or whatever. For example:

Code: Select all

@@ @roll
[H: roll.details = ""]
[H, c(arg(0)): roll.details = listAppend(roll.details,oldFunction(1,arg(1)))]
[H: macro.return = eval("sum("+roll.details+")")]

!! 
Making this a UDF with Wiki: defineFunction() and setting the shared scope to 1 will give the calling function access to roll.details for use in your output while returning the result to the function normally. One problem is, if you want to save multiple calls in one statement, you'll have to make each call separately. For example, you couldn't evaluate 3d6 + 1d6 on the same line without losing the roll.details value of one.

Protesilaus
Kobold
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Re: General D&D Next (5e) Framework

Post by Protesilaus »

I'll have to look at overriding this and seeing how it works. I had another problem for a DnD4e custom framework I was making for one of my games, if I wanted to both have a die thrown that was Brutal (re-rolling low dice) and Vorpal (exploding dice). There was no way to implement that inside of a dice roll, so I had to do a work around in order to make it happen. I figured I mention this in case my superiors had an idea on how to tackle this.

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aliasmask
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Re: General D&D Next (5e) Framework

Post by aliasmask »

You would have to create functions for those kind of rolls and replace the raw rolls with the functions. You could pass the whole string as a parameter or split it up in to it's components. A more complicated way to do it is create your own dice parser but that would still require you to replace the raw rolls with the function, but you would use the same function for all the rolls.

yorick
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Re: General D&D Next (5e) Framework

Post by yorick »

Thanks! I took a look at it, and compared it to the tweaked macros we've been using so far based on your older framework.

Here's what's different in the tweaked macros I've been using. I can use what you have there and make the modifications, I think:

- Attack has fields for misc bonus to attack and misc bonus to damage. We were using this extensively for martial damage dice.
- Output formatting of the attack. Ours is shorter and has mouseover. What's in our customized version of your macro is nowhere near as nice as what aliasmask had done, and that was ultimately the goal: To have mouseovers that rivaled his.
- We've moved initiative and hp adjust to combat, since that's where it's needed.

Skills need to change completely, as they've changed in the playtest packet. Instead of rolling skills, you'd roll a stat check, and if you're skilled, you get to add your skill die to that stat check. Right now, there's no macro for stat checks outside of the character sheet.

I am wondering whether it'd be easier to take aliasmask's attack macro and drop it into your framework. That way, there's no need to fiddle a lot with the attack macro you have.

The offer to talk this through via TS and maptool stands. It's easier to show you how we use your framework than to type it out.

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