Tested quick bug in 1.2.1

If you select just core and APG in sources then stop and restart the program, the Core option is always unticked. You have to manually change this each time you start the program.

I've tracked down this bug and I'll have the fix in the next release.

Another bug:

Most of the afflictions are shown twice.

Do you mean the poisons/diseases in the Add Condition dialog? The ones that are shown twice are different, but I don't have a good way to differentiate between them without clicking on them.

Additional Feature Needed:
No bard song or witch hex conditions can be applied, other than custom use.

I'll see if I can find a way to add this.

Is there any way to apply one affliction/spell to multiple party or monster members?

Ctrl-click some guys and then click Add Condition.

I can see feat modifiers will take some time. Any chance of adding a special modifier to the weapons entry to cover this as a workaround? I have a character using a whip.

The problem with weapons, as implemented right now, is that they get translated back to strings whenever edited so that bonus would get lost whenever you reedit the weapons. I certainly would like to have a good way to make this work, though.

I'm just wondering about the possibility of a new option being added in soon. This will let everyone know just how lazy I am. I'm wondering if you can add in a dice roller right onto the combat manager. Ideally, I'd love to have the dice roller attached somehow (not sure exactly how that would even work, or look, but I'm just imagining now) to the monster attacks dialogue box. Any random dice roller would be awesome, if you could fit one into the attacks box so it rolls a d20 and automatically includes the "to hit" bonus of monsters, all the better. Just thought I'd throw it out there. :)

I never understood why people use dice roller software... isn't dice rolling half the fun of RPGs? ;-) And I find the main screen quite full already (especially on a small netbook screen). So adding more stuff to this view would be a bad idea I guess. I would rather see the opposite happening!

Just a few ideas of how you might be able to tidy up the main screen a bit:

• Remove the monster search list. Instead add small button somewhere that opens an appropriate dialogue. That dialogue would have this list, the searchbox for the list, and maybe a "add [x] monsters" feature. It shouldn't be closed automatically after adding a monster. Mayber you could add a distinct button to "add monster and close dialogue" ;)
  
• Have a way of reducing the Monster/Player-List to one line per entry. Maybe you could save some space by putting some stuff (max HP, Name-Inputbox, INI-Mod, Comment, Saves and stuff) into a dialogue instead of putting thos right into the list. It wouldn't really need mor clicks to find the stuff. You might actually display some of the things either using the statblock (maybe some generic statblock if it is a "blank" monster) or with some mouseover tooltip (like you doo with the conditions) since I don't think those are things you neew to change very often during a battle. But it might reduce scrolling for larger encounters on smaller screens.
  
• Maybe you could put the tabs right on the top, next to the "Combatmanager" title... a bit like Firefox 4 does it. You could make "CombatManager" a dropdown menu like FF4 does, so you could add the buttons on the bottom (config and the like) to this menu, freeing up a few more pixels on the bottom.
  

Those are just a few quick ideas. Maybe I'm the only one who uses this on a small screen and thinks it's a bit "too much" sometimes. Maybe others have other ideas regarding this matter? I'd be curious of how others see this!

I never understood why people use dice roller software... isn't dice rolling half the fun of RPGs? ;-) And I find the main screen quite full already (especially on a small netbook screen). So adding more stuff to this view would be a bad idea I guess. I would rather see the opposite happening!

For players I totally agree that rolling dice is part of the fun, and maybe even for a new GM. As a GM who's been doing it for a while, I've realized the proliferation of dice rolls I have to make in any given encounter can really slow things down. So, I use dice rolling software to expedite that process. Right now I'm using this trove tokens tool which is nice for a number of reasons, but one of them is the fact that you can roll up to 6 of any kind dice at once. I use this for rolling sets of monster attacks, sets of monster saves, sets of monster damage, etc.

While I understand the screen gets packed at times, I'd have to disagree that it's too crowded, but obviously that's nothing more than personal preference. What I think might be very cool would be a drag out window option. Where you could click on the monsters tab, rules tab, etc. and drag it out of the combat manager onto another surface of the desktop. Or, perhaps a way to re-size the monster/player boxes. As is, you can re-size the whole window, and that is definitely handy, but it would be nice to be able to drag the sides of the monster and player boxes to stretch those out. As I've said before, I have zero programming knowledge so I don't know how hard that would be.

As always! These are not complaints. This piece of software is so freaking handy that I don't think I could GM without it anymore. I've gotten accustomed to it, and it saves a ton of time and energy on my part. However Kyle sees fit to adjust it, is fine with me.

Remove the monster search list. Instead add small button somewhere that opens an appropriate dialogue. That dialogue would have this list, the searchbox for the list, and maybe a "add [x] monsters" feature. It shouldn't be closed automatically after adding a monster. Mayber you could add a distinct button to "add monster and close dialogue" ;)

Actually I'd prefer not to have to open additional boxes to access this functionality so that would be a change I wouldn't care for myself.

One thing I'd like to see though is an override option to apply a template to a creature that otherwise couldn't qualify for it. Like say adding the Half-Celestial template to a magical beast for whatever reason.

Of course those ideas were just based on my personal preferences. My thought was, that most data, aswell as the monster list, are primarily used while preparing the game and I was just assuming, that most people create their encounters in advance and save them as files so that they just need to load them up, thus reducing the importance of having the monster list right on the main screen. It would still just be 1 more click away incase you had to improvise an encounter... and it could have some additional features too! Like I said, it would be great to be able to add 10 Goblins at once ;-) The main idea here, was to have the complete statblock of most monsters one the screen without having to scroll.

And I've only been a GM for about 2-3 years now and I don't really care if rolling dice for attacks, damage, stealth and stuff take a few seconds longer... since that still is half of the fun for me, even as a GM ;) But maybe there would be some nice way of implementing a dice roller without takiung up too much space. Like I said, I already have to scroll quite a lot in the statblocks and monster-/playerlists on my netbook.

Oh yeah, I had another idea I forgot to mention: It would be great if I could hide players in the ini list without having to delete them from combatmanager! Players (and monsters) are cluttering up the list, even if they're not even taking part in this particular fight.

Hey Kyle,

Was sitting here working through a few things and discovered the following data/display related issues.

Feat:
Urban Forager
It is missing part of the content. It says to reference the below table, but the table content is missing.

Spells:
Liberating Command is now not duplicated, but it is missing the descriptive text.

With regard to future functionality, when you get around to adding the capability for users to add their own material, for source the ability to either specify just User or allow the user to enter a custom selection and have it appear in the Sources list. Ensure the custom data is stored away from the content you deliver.

I haven't checked the import functionality from Herolab yet as I haven't gamed in two weeks, but will be double checking the animal companion piece this weekend.

Thanks for a continued great program.

Hey Kyle,

Was sitting here working through a few things and discovered the following data/display related issues.

Feat:
Urban Forager
It is missing part of the content. It says to reference the below table, but the table content is missing.

Spells:
Liberating Command is now not duplicated, but it is missing the descriptive text.

The spell I'll have fixed up in the next version. The feat I have to think about because I don't currently use any of the HTML formatting when displaying feats. I can, but I don't want to break anything else in the process.

With regard to future functionality, when you get around to adding the capability for users to add their own material, for source the ability to either specify just User or allow the user to enter a custom selection and have it appear in the Sources list. Ensure the custom data is stored away from the content you deliver.

I'm looking at how to do this now. Storing the data is easy, figuring out how to get it in the program cleanly and allow users to edit it is the complicated part.

The spell I'll have fixed up in the next version. The feat I have to think about because I don't currently use any of the HTML formatting when displaying feats. I can, but I don't want to break anything else in the process.

I'm looking at how to do this now. Storing the data is easy, figuring out how to get it in the program cleanly and allow users to edit it is the complicated part.

That is always a problem! LOL. How you make it all appear on the screen is a complete mystery to me. Yes, please don't break anything else :) Just wanted to be sure you knew where stuff wasn't displaying all the content.

Thanks as always.

Combat Manager update to 1.2.2

Save custom conditions added by user
Allow bonuses on custom conditions
Add list of "favorite" conditions to context menu, allow user editing of list
Cause blank characters to function the same as DB/Imported characters
Fix crash when adjusting dexterity on some characters
Fix minor settings bug

CombatManager.com

Kyle,

Downloaded the new version and really liking the custom conditions field! And the add to favorites menu. Awesome work man.

I just noticed in the spells list they link to the school descriptions. Maybe you can do that sort of interlinking in the rules too. Refrence to Acrobatics leads to the acrobatics rules.

One last thing:

Here's a list of all the bonuses for your add condition feature:

Alchemical
Armor
Circumstance
Competence
Deflection
Dodge
Enhancement
Insight
Morale
Natural Armor
Profane
Racial
Resistance
Sacred
Size
Untyped

Kyle,
I love your application but would love it even more on a tablet. Will it bother you if I use it as a model for making a tablet app? Obviously, there are only a few ways something like this could be displayed, but you've already thought through a lot of the layout issues in ways I really like. Just wooted a Viewsonic G-Tablet, and This app + pdfs + die rolling software would make DMing without bags a reality.

Thanks and thanks for the great tool,
James

Hey Kyle,

Just looked at the new version that you have put out. Love the favorites for adding conditions and saving custom ones. Also like that you have added the effects of spells and they apply to the character/creature. I don't remember noticing the last time, but the apply affliction, you can apply the affliction from a creature to a character or characters. That is fantastic as well.

The versatility of this program just keeps growing by leaps and bounds. Here is one more thought for you and I can't remember if I'd mentioned it before or not, but the ability to link campaign related documents to the application, like PDF's or Text or image files that are relevant to the campaign. Like a campaign tab where you can select different campaigns and it stores all the links to the files that you are using for that campaign or even just a way to link documents and/or display them, in the app would be awesome.

A way to build a world calendar with custom days, months years and including phases of the moon(s), etc, if I hadn't mentioned that before.

Again, just dreaming about stuff, so take anything I say with a grain of salt.

BTW, with all this content and functionality in here, I have just about built out my next round of DM'ing work and it took me less than an hour to build out all the necessary encounters and have everything ready so I can just pull them up as needed.

I just discovered CombatManager, and it looks very useful. However, I am not sure whether it has a capability I'd be very interested in: Can it use the assigned weapon/character/monster data to automatically roll attacks, apply damage etc., after the user has indicated who attacks whom? In my experience, this would speed-up combats enormously.

I just discovered CombatManager, and it looks very useful. However, I am not sure whether it has a capability I'd be very interested in: Can it use the assigned weapon/character/monster data to automatically roll attacks, apply damage etc., after the user has indicated who attacks whom? In my experience, this would speed-up combats enormously.

There's no die rolling for attacks/damage, but there seems to be a lot of demand for this so I'll probably get to it sooner rather than later.

Gnorr wrote:

I just discovered CombatManager, and it looks very useful. However, I am not sure whether it has a capability I'd be very interested in: Can it use the assigned weapon/character/monster data to automatically roll attacks, apply damage etc., after the user has indicated who attacks whom? In my experience, this would speed-up combats enormously.

There's no die rolling for attacks/damage, but there seems to be a lot of demand for this so I'll probably get to it sooner rather than later.

basic weapons attacks and damage are fairly easy to do

Combat Manager update to 1.2.2

Save custom conditions added by user
Allow bonuses on custom conditions
Add list of "favorite" conditions to context menu, allow user editing of list
Cause blank characters to function the same as DB/Imported characters
Fix crash when adjusting dexterity on some characters
Fix minor settings bug

CombatManager.com

Custom conditions is the best thing that has ever happened to me.

Now... for some reason I'm trying to edit the CMB and CMD of characters in the "Party" section, and it's setting them to 0 no matter what I type in there.

Also, the "HP" in the right summary side when I'm clicked on any character shows 0 unless the character was an import from PCGen. The HP shows fine in the "Party" Column on each character. (Edit: I've been playing around, and it gives some weird results in that right screen... I have someone with 97 hp max showing as 1d1+2 as their HP on that right column).

Edit again: Enlarge Spell doesn't seem to subtract 1 from AC and attack rolls due to size (it correctly deducts the Dex and Adds the Str though).

basic weapons attacks and damage are fairly easy to do
through in spells and magic items, uggh
this is what bogged my combat tacker down

Yes, that is of course correct. However, to be honest, I my experience I have more often needed to roll Morningstar attacks by eight bugbears than complex spells by eight casters.

The more complex effects (possibly also for certain feats and items) I would adjudicate manually anyway. But even rudimentary automation could be a real time-saver in battles with more than a handful of (rather simple) opponents (goblin mooks, bandits, etc.).

FYI, I don't need a dice roller or any automation. You keep travelling down that road and it ends with WoW.

Now... for some reason I'm trying to edit the CMB and CMD of characters in the "Party" section, and it's setting them to 0 no matter what I type in there.

Also, the "HP" in the right summary side when I'm clicked on any character shows 0 unless the character was an import from PCGen. The HP shows fine in the "Party" Column on each character. (Edit: I've been playing around, and it gives some weird results in that right screen... I have someone with 97 hp max showing as 1d1+2 as their HP on that right column).

Edit again: Enlarge Spell doesn't seem to subtract 1 from AC and attack rolls due to size (it correctly deducts the Dex and Adds the Str though).

I'll have the CMD,CMB, and enlarge spell mod fixed up for the next release. The HP is a little weirder because blank characters don't have HD and I don't have a way to add that. I hadn't thought about the issue before, but clearly CON bonuses won't work without HD so I'll need to look into it.

I'll have the CMD,CMB, and enlarge spell mod fixed up for the next release. The HP is a little weirder because blank characters don't have HD and I don't have a way to add that. I hadn't thought about the issue before, but clearly CON bonuses won't work without HD so I'll need to look into it.

The HP thing really isn't important as far as I can tell. It's much easier to see on the character itself anyway.

But again thanks for this!

This is a stupid question but how do I import from Hero Lab to Combat Manager?

This is a stupid question but how do I import from Hero Lab to Combat Manager?

I don't have Herolab so I'm not quite sure. I do know you'll need to either export or save the Herolab file as a ".por" file. That's the type of file that Kyle has Combat Manager set up to read. Once you've done that you can just click the "load" button, and pick that exported/saved file, and it should load right up.

Hope this helps. :)

The 8th Dwarf wrote:

This is a stupid question but how do I import from Hero Lab to Combat Manager?

I don't have Herolab so I'm not quite sure. I do know you'll need to either export or save the Herolab file as a ".por" file. That's the type of file that Kyle has Combat Manager set up to read. Once you've done that you can just click the "load" button, and pick that exported/saved file, and it should load right up.

Hope this helps. :)

Thanks loaded them in....

This is so very cool thanks Kyle and Chopswil.

Just a note: I can't set the CMB and CMD on blank monsters, it keeps resetting to 0...

Just a note: I can't set the CMB and CMD on blank monsters, it keeps resetting to 0...

I'll have this fix out reasonably soon.

Combat Manager update to 1.2.3

Save combat state on application exit
Show last 5 conditions used in conditions menu (other than favorites)
Fix AC and CMD bugs for blank characters
Add CL filter for Magic Items
Minor HeroLab import fixes

CombatManager.com

Hey Kyle,

just one more thing...

would you PLEASE marry me? :D

This is awsome, especially the "Save combat state on application exit" part! Though I'm not sure how you do this. Do you really save on exit or do you save other events too? Becaus if you'd save the state regulary (like on clicking the "next" button or after changing HP or something) this would reduce Problems when the application crashes for any reason.

And while I love this feature, now it would help to have a "clear" button for the party too (in case you load up the programme but are running a different group/party this time).

[Edit]
Just checked out the hero lab import again. And here a quick list of small mistakes:
- Spell-Like ABilities should still be displayed like Spells (with CL and stuff)
- The word "Immune" should be bold
- "SR" should be bold
- "Elven Immunities" should be found within "Immune", not within "Resist"

The rest seems alright, though I'd still love to see a "roll monster hp" option for creatures after they were added (so that I cann auomatically roll HP for creatures that I imported from HL).

Hey Kyle,

just one more thing...

would you PLEASE marry me? :D

Uhh...thanks for the offer, I'm OK :P

Though I'm not sure how you do this. Do you really save on exit or do you save other events too? Because if you'd save the state regularly (like on clicking the "next" button or after changing HP or something) this would reduce Problems when the application crashes for any reason.

At this moment I'm only saving on exit. I'm thinking about how to save more frequently, but I haven't made a decision on how to do it yet. I'm concerned that saving too often would slow the app down.

I should also be able to use this to save the entire state for future use in a separate file, once I make a couple of minor tweaks.

Hi Kyle! I'm really liking all the improvements you've been making.

One thing to note about your conditions creation tool (and it sort of relates to the bonus types I put up previously) some bonuses/penalties affect a creature's CMD directly.

For example, I made the Barbarian Rage class feature with your custom condition tool. When applied to a blank character the character's CMD raises from 10 to 12 from the strength bonus of rage. However, the CMD should also be affected like the AC by the -2 AC penalty. The resulting CMD should be 10 (or unchanged).

Likewise, a condition that gives +1 Deflection Bonus to AC should also add +1 to CMD.

From the prd:

Combat Maneuver Defense

CMD = 10 + Base attack bonus + Strength modifier + Dexterity modifier + special size modifier + miscellaneous modifier

Miscellaneous Modifiers
A creature can also add any circumstance, deflection, dodge, insight, luck, morale, profane, and sacred bonuses to AC to its CMD. Any penalties to a creature's AC also apply to its CMD. A flat-footed creature does not add its Dexterity bonus to its CMD.

Hi Kyle! I'm really liking all the improvements you've been making.

One thing to note about your conditions creation tool (and it sort of relates to the bonus types I put up previously) some bonuses/penalties affect a creature's CMD directly.

For example, I made the Barbarian Rage class feature with your custom condition tool. When applied to a blank character the character's CMD raises from 10 to 12 from the strength bonus of rage. However, the CMD should also be affected like the AC by the -2 AC penalty. The resulting CMD should be 10 (or unchanged).

Likewise, a condition that gives +1 Deflection Bonus to AC should also add +1 to CMD.

From the prd:

PRD - Combat - Combat Maneuvers wrote:

Combat Maneuver Defense

CMD = 10 + Base attack bonus + Strength modifier + Dexterity modifier + special size modifier + miscellaneous modifier

Miscellaneous Modifiers
A creature can also add any circumstance, deflection, dodge, insight, luck, morale, profane, and sacred bonuses to AC to its CMD. Any penalties to a creature's AC also apply to its CMD. A flat-footed creature does not add its Dexterity bonus to its CMD.

Thanks for catching this. Quite a bit of this stuff is hard for me to notice.

No problem, there's really no way for you to notice everything, it really just appears as more people test and try to use the program for their case-by-case scenarios.

Really, we should be thanking you since you're doing the hard stuff.

Really, we should be thanking you since you're doing the hard stuff.

Have I mentioned the buy Kyle a pizza campaign lately? ;)

Hey Kyle,

surly performance is a huge drawback when saving often... mayb you could just add "Ctrl+s" for saving, so it would be up to us when to save :-)

My godness, lately Combat Manager has added so many useful features!

Thanks Kyle, your work really improved my games :D

Any chance for a "select/deselect all" button in the damage/heal window?

Any chance for a "select/deselect all" button in the damage/heal window?

Sure, good idea.

Just wanted to say I tried this the last session I ran and it made things tremendously easier. An amazing program.

I did notice when I applied the fatigued condition no stats seemed to change (but I could adjust manually) but even so--great program. Once things were finalized and tweaked, this is something I would be willing to pay for/donate to (in pizza or other currency ;) ).

I did notice when I applied the fatigued condition no stats seemed to change (but I could adjust manually)

Fatigued should decrease Str and Dex by 2. I'm seeing it working for me right now. When you remove it you probably won't see the display on left update immediately - that's something I need to fix. Is it not working for you at all?

DeathQuaker wrote:

I did notice when I applied the fatigued condition no stats seemed to change (but I could adjust manually)

Fatigued should decrease Str and Dex by 2. I'm seeing it working for me right now. When you remove it you probably won't see the display on left update immediately - that's something I need to fix. Is it not working for you at all?

I just noticed you put up a brand new build like two days after I used it, so it may be working now. I will check the new version when I get home.

Kyle

Something I just discovered as I was digging in the rules.. when you apply the Celestial or Fiendish Templates (like from your monster advancer) the creature should also be getting:

Smite Evil 1/day (if Celestial)
Smite Good 1/day (if Fiendish)

This grants the creature + CHA to attack and + HD to damage rolls.

Kyle

Something I just discovered as I was digging in the rules.. when you apply the Celestial or Fiendish Templates (like from your monster advancer) the creature should also be getting:

Smite Evil 1/day (if Celestial)
Smite Good 1/day (if Fiendish)

This grants the creature + CHA to attack and + HD to damage rolls.

You should see this under "Special Attacks". It's not under the Special Abilities section, which is an oversight on my part.

You should see this under "Special Attacks". It's not under the Special Abilities section, which is an oversight on my part.

Whoops! Hehe! I see it now. I'm just blind. I don't mind it in the Offense section, it's better than searching around for it.

Kyle

first of all THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!! this has made our game so much smoother. we project combat manager on the wall for all players to see. sure is nice to have a 5ft by 3ft initiative tracker, but the quick rule and spell look up is even better. I can't give this program enough praise.

Please tell me that by now someone has approached you about employment (pizo or lone wolf development, I'm looking at you) your dedication to the game, others enjoyment, and your program is amazing and appreciated! Again I would like to say thanks and keep up the great work.

Well - I have been using this for a few sessions now, and must say it is pretty wonderful.

One minor feature request. Could you a button to zero out everyones initiative? Maybe with an "are you sure?" type prompt. When switching to a new combat, it can be hard to tell if I have already gotten someones initiative.

Thanks - Matt Harris

I've found this program to be helpful in organizing my game and saving time, especially with the various npc statblocks (and pcgen imports). The initiative tracker and treasure generator are nice touches too. My only feedback is that some of the npcs have errors in some of their traits, for example, extra class abilities or class levels that shouldn't be there. Some of them are also attributed to the wrong sources (example: several of the serpentfolk npc statblocks give the source as the first Carrion Crown module when none appear in there). Other than that, keep up the good work.

I've found this program to be helpful in organizing my game and saving time, especially with the various npc statblocks (and pcgen imports). The initiative tracker and treasure generator are nice touches too. My only feedback is that some of the npcs have errors in some of their traits, for example, extra class abilities or class levels that shouldn't be there. Some of them are also attributed to the wrong sources (example: several of the serpentfolk npc statblocks give the source as the first Carrion Crown module when none appear in there). Other than that, keep up the good work.

There was an issue on my part when I put out a new version of my NPC database which shifted data in some columns down one cell on the import to excel. I had switched to LibreOffice from OpenOffice and I believe I've rectified the issue and put out a new copy of the DB on my google docs site, which is linked to d20pfsrd.

I've been a little lazy when it comes to reimporting this data. I'll get to it soon.

Seems like a nice program for sure!
Since I don´t have a laptop or can´t use a stationary computer when we game, I wonder if there´s an option just to generate a monster - lets say a human skeleton - and save it and print it as a monster card for easy reference when playing?
I really like the format for monsters, and it would speed up combat greatly.
Perhaps this already exist, or been mentioned earlier in this huge thread. If so, please point me in the right direction!

Asmo