Silverjdt's page

Unfortunately, there no specific ruling that states that you would be able to use it equal to how a Monk could. Keep in mind, you're NOT gaining the ability from the Monk's point of view, you're gaining it from the Feat point of view. Just like if anyone else in the game took the Feat. You just get it super duper early and without worrying about Pre-requisites. Specific trumps general. Now if the description for it in Tranquil Guardian said otherwise, that'd be different.

I would imagine you have 1 use of it per day until you hit 4, then you would have 2. 3 at 8. 4 at 12, etc. I believe this is the intention. It'd be silly to gain it at level 1 and not be able to use it until level 4.

Since it specifically states that you can attempt it once per day every four levels, that's exactly what you gain. It specifically calls out the Monk in the Special section to allow it once per day per monk level.

Suggestion: I'm sure you could houserule anything.

I disagree. If you look at the wording of the monk archetype it parallels the wording of the paladin archetype.

Paladin:
Touch of Serenity (Su)

This ability replaces smite evil.

Monk:
Touch of Serenity (Su)

This ability replaces stunning fist.

The only place that it mentions the bonus uses per day equal to level for the monk is in the feat itself:

Special: A monk of the lotus receives Touch of Serenity as a bonus feat at 1st level, even if he does not meet the Prerequisites. A monk may attempt a touch of serenity a number of times per day equal to his monk level, plus one more time per day for every four levels he has in classes other than monk.

Considering that the same wording is used for the abilities, and it replaces the Stunning Fist ability of the monk, which has the same progression of uses mentioned in feat Special section:

At 1st level, the monk gains Stunning Fist as a bonus feat, even if he does not meet the prerequisites. The monk may attempt a stunning attack a number of times per day equal to his monk level, plus one more time per day for every four levels he has in classes other than monk.

Then I think that the intention is to take the progression of the Smite Evil uses per day, substituting the Touch of Serenity attack instead.

At 4th level, and at every three levels thereafter, the paladin may smite evil one additional time per day, as indicated on Table: Paladin, to a maximum of seven times per day at 19th level.

So the Tranquil Guardian should be able to use Touch of Serenity:

1st level: 1/day
4th level: 2/day
7th level: 3/day
10th level: 4/day
13th level: 5/day
16th level: 6/day
19th level: 7/day

The duration of which lasts for:

1st level: 1 round
6th level: 2 rounds
12th level: 3 rounds
18th level: 4 rounds

And does not stack, allowing a new save each round to end the effect.

My question on the boiling issue is this:

Quote:

Boiling water deals 1d6 points of scalding damage, unless the character is fully immersed, in which case it deals 10d6 points of damage per round of exposure.

But with the obvious size and weight limit of 15 pounds of metal typically held in the hand, this still leaves the possibility of someone grabbing something like

Quote:

Bell Net: Copper bells hang at each the corners of this 5-foot-by-5-foot wire net.

and suspending it in the water to push unsuspecting creatures in to make a giant fish fry. Seems a lil OP for a 1st level spell, don't you think? This last line needs more detail and/or limitations, because as stated earlier, prestidigitation has the tea thing covered already.

More to the point, it's very odd that an instantaneous duration spell would have any lasting effects.

My question on the boiling issue is this:

Boiling water deals 1d6 points of scalding damage, unless the character is fully immersed, in which case it deals 10d6 points of damage per round of exposure.

Bell Net: Copper bells hang at each the corners of this 5-foot-by-5-foot wire net.

and suspending it in the water to push unsuspecting creatures in to make a giant fish fry. Seems a lil OP for a 1st level spell, don't you think? This last line needs more detail and/or limitations, because as stated earlier, prestidigitation has the tea thing covered already.

I'm actually not sure on the last part, as my interpretation of "Burning Magic (Su): Whenever a creature fails a saving throw and takes fire damage from one of your spells, it catches on fire" is that it must first fail the save to trigger the chance to light on fire. It's only getting one save, so it should only get one save to light on fire as well. Otherwise, yes, it ends up kinda OP.

If anyone has any interest in doing some work, here's a completely empty Wiki:

http://combatmanager.wikispaces.com/

I'm not doing to do anything but make corrections on this right now, I've got too many demands on time. If we can get some decent help info it would be good.

I dont know the first thing about posting on those but I have replied on this forum with many tips and tricks, if anyone else wants to use those for the official help guide I would be flattered.

I would greatly appreciate a sort by name function in the party and monster tabs. I find myself using 20 monsters at a time and getting all the orders mixed up when I add a new one and have to play around with shifting them which never seems to work right when drag and dropping... Also some kind of color coding on the text or the pane would help me to visualize things and find my monsters in the list faster.

hi !

Amazing software you did here. I really enjoy using it during our session!

one question about its use: Is this a way to duplicate the monsters pane in order to split the different encounters of one scenario ?

one bug repport: the software does not like when I'm displaying it on the second screen of my laptop. Sometimes it shows me whatever it is shown on the 1st sreen insead of the proper display

anyway, thanks again for the work !

What you can do is save different encounters as a file to upload at any time after clearing the current list. This allows prebuilding of the encounter and even custom changes made to individual monsters. If you want you can even save the combat state to preserve the initiative order and everything. If you are asking to split the party and run two encounters at once then you may simply open the program twice and set the half of the party you are not using to idle and hidden or delete them all-together, then after wrapping up, save and upload them back in to one pane and resave the complete and updated party.

To save/load encounters: Use the floppy disk/file folder buttons respectively at the top-right corner of the Party or Monster tab. This will save all information of the creatures except their intitiative order, but only saves that tab's contents, Party or Monsters, at one time.
To save/load combat state: Both options are found in the menu system upon clicking on the Combat Manager button in the top left of the main window.

Found another bug, the plague zombie entry is really messed up. Lists DR 10/cold iron and a crap ton of SLAs, for one.

Many are like this, i believe itts from the half celestial template being stuck on.

I can't believe I haven't thought of this before, nor, on a cursory look through the thread, has anyone else asked for it.

I'd love for there to be a box/window - detachable or not doesn't matter to me - where I could keep small campaign notes right with the saved combat state. Nothing spectacular is needed, obviously. I don't need a spell check or hyperlink ability or anything. Just a simple text window where the contents save when the combat state is saved. Would that be useful to anyone else?

Make a new monster, name him Campaign Notes and set him to idle. Now right click on it and u will find a notes option. Nothing fancy like u requested.

My monster advancer seems to be stuck on half-fiend/half-celestial even when I click none...

There's definatly a lot of little bugs in things but I think it's kinda a problem with Kyle adding so many features and not having the time to troubleshoot extensively and only retroactively being able to play catch-up after enough of us whine about it. Im glad that he is asking for help but I'm also afraid that too many hands in the pot can cause bad things... I once broke GIMP to the point I couldn't fix it no matter how much I reinstalled .dll's because I added one rogue addon patch... That said, I cant wait for my C# courses at JJC so I can take a crack at it! It's truly a fantastic tool and we appreciate all the work you've put into it Kyle!

I have found a forum discussing the problem I encountered with the tooltip windows displaying under the main window, unfrotunatly they dont seem to have an answer unless u have set the window to topmost...

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/478295/tooltip-appearing-behind-the-form -window-c-vs-2008

However, in the meantime I have also found a fix for it, since it's apparently an issue with XP itself.

http://neosmart.net/ToolTipFixer/

I have found a forum discussing the problem I encountered with the tooltip windows displaying under the main window, unfrotunatly they dont seem to have an answer unless u have set the window to topmost...

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/478295/tooltip-appearing-behind-the-form -window-c-vs-2008

Hey Kyle, haven't seen you post in awhile. You aren't under the weather again, are you?

No offense but I havent really seen anyhting post-worthy lately for him to reply to, and I'm gonna assume he is working on the updates he promised in his last post...

One thing I find myself doing a lot, which could be made a little more user friendly, is when I right click on a character to add a condition or spell from the list of recently used ones, it doesn't give me a pop-up of any kind to add a specific number of rounds for it's duration. It just adds the basic icon for the spell or condition with an non-numbered duration (unlimited). If you could add this feature, or add an option so that when I right click on the character's unlimited spell/condition, it shows an additional option to add a specific number of rounds, instead of just adding/subtracting one or 5 rounds at a time, which can take a lot of clicks. The only other alternative is for me to go through the menu till I find the spell/condition and add it with the number of rounds needed, but this takes a lot of time, especially if adding to multiple characters.

When the symbol appears on the character under the Party or Monster section you click the V button on its right and it will display the full text of all conditions modifying it with a section for notes and the actual count duration in a text field you can directly edit. Hope this helps.

Glad your feeling better Kyle, had no idea it was that bad. Like everyone says, we just appreciate that you are putting this much effort into it for free and we can wait for updates. Most of it is just anticipation for what awesome thing you're going do next that we get antsy. As for my own suggestions for new features Im just tossing them out there, not demanding anything.

Jeebas can u imagine 70 seugathi firing crossbows at u at once?

Im sorry that probly made no sense, I meant sahuagin. 70 seugathi is "game over bro."

Silverjdt wrote:

And if possible change the add monster button into "add x ___ monsters" with a text input so entire goblin tribes can be spawned at once rather than 70 clicks later... (yeah thats the most extreme case but the feature is still handy at smaller numbers.) Have it reset to 1 after u push "add" so that u dont accidentally blow up the computer either.

To extend on this: Their initiatives should automatically be linked (at least as an option) :)

Jeebas can u imagine 70 seugathi firing crossbows at u at once?

And if possible change the add monster button into "add x ___ monsters" with a text input so entire goblin tribes can be spawned at once rather than 70 clicks later... (yeah thats the most extreme case but the feature is still handy at smaller numbers.) Have it reset to 1 after u push "add" so that u dont accidentally blow up the computer either.

Jason Stormblade wrote:

Thanks Silver, that is a good suggestion. Too bad the software creator has not added it though, I would expect that as a core functionality.

Personally I'm just glad Kyle went to all the effort of creating the Manager full stop. For FREEware it's impressive indeed and I'm more than happy to work round any of it's limitations.

Kyle, there is a donation on it's way to you now, with thanks!
The Count

I quite agree. I wish I knew more programming myself so I could help because I tried for the longest time making something this good on excel but the limitations were too great. We'll see though because I was seriously considering taking game design as a major in college.

I have created an NPC spell caster. Is there someway to add their spells to the attack list? I just started using the program and its great, but I'm hoping I can click spell attack or special attack and have it roll fireball damage for example.

Is this built in and I'm missing it?

And dont forget to save it as a custom monster or encounter.

I have created an NPC spell caster. Is there someway to add their spells to the attack list? I just started using the program and its great, but I'm hoping I can click spell attack or special attack and have it roll fireball damage for example.

Is this built in and I'm missing it?

As of now there isn't a way to roll spell damage automatically like weapon or natural attacks, I have asked about this feature being added as well, the same with skills and saves, to just click on the listing of it in the description pane and have it auto roll. What you can do is use the dice roller in the program and click the TEXT tab on it which allows u to roll complicated combinations such as 3d6 + 5d4 + 24 by clicking the dice buttons and manually typing it in. It will show each individual dice result so its still possible to separate types of damage as well as total it up for you. To include the spells on your npc all you need do is create the entry for him by clicking "add blank" in the monster or party section and entering in all the info in monster editor, for which there are special attacks, spells known, spells prepared, and special ability locations. Use premade examples to help you format this correctly and it will still give you the floating alt text for the spells when u hover over them. Hope this helps for now.

This may already be a feature, and I'm just an idiot (which is starting to become a daily realization on my part), but when I search monsters it seems to only search the name of the monster, not within the text of their actual file. I'm not sure how hard it would be to add that feature, or if I can search the original database file somehow... The reason I ask is sometimes I'm just looking for a baseline creature that I can advance for the purposes of my group. Say for instance a gnome. When I search gnome in the monsters tab the only thing that shows up is the monster with the name "gnome" in the title. Is that a feature that's already there somewhere else, or that could be implemented pretty easily? And, or, as aforementioned, am I just an idiot?

Im pretty sure that is not a feature yet, but d20pfsrd would allow u to do what ur looking to do.

Silverjdt wrote:

I just started having an issue on one of my computers whereany drop down menus or alt text doesnt appear on top of the window but underneath... i figured this out by not maximizing it and seeing it stick out hte side when i hovered over a spell and the description pupped up underneath sticking out the side of the main window. How can i fix this? i assume it has more to do with some setting for windows than anything else...

Apparently i just had to update my .Net 4.0 Framework. Problem Solved.

Except i keep having to periodically do it, i think some new update to .net 4 keeps getting installed that isnt compatible with the curent 1.37 build. Could u take a look?

Silverjdt wrote:

1. Click on the "Combat Manager" Menu button in top left, click "Restore Combat Manager Tab Layout."

Etc.

I'm going to admit a great deal of shame here. I've been using Combat Manager pretty much since inception and I had ZERO idea that you could do any of that. After playing around with your instructions I realized that Kyle has built in a really nice click and drag functionality. You click on a tab or header and drag and a box shows up with four arrows, essentially north, south, east, and west, and if you drag the shadowed window to correspond with one of the arrows, that's where it's going to place that information (above, below, right, or left of the window/tab where the magical arrows appeared). Resizing is a snap, and then you have the layout exactly as you need it.

Wow thanks, i didnt even notice that, i figured it was an attempt at a cursor. Now i feel silly cuz htats like soooooo much easier than my tutorial...

I was wondering if there was a way to streamline the rolling process, it sems if I want to do anyhting i have to go through 3 dropdown menus first... In my previous post I showed how to display current and selected monsters entries at the same time, and i wondered if its possible to link the skills, attack rolls, saves, and anyhting else that CM can compute to automatically roll by clicking on it in the entry, much like the spells will link you to the entry for the spell. I think this would make a seemless environment to work within and is really my most wanted feature (out of a list of many I wish I had the skills to help you with) to add.

The only thing I think I would like to see is some way of marking who is attacking who. This is a great tool, but I still use pen & paper to make sure I keep track of the who vs who.

There is a simple way of doing that which is nothing more than rearranging your window tabs. I like a one window model which allows for me to have the current monster and selected monster tabs right next to eachother so that I can view both at the same time, this way I have whose turn it is and I can click on whoever he's attacking for all my relevant information. I autohide the monster database cuz its unnecesary for it to always be visible, and my party and monsters are tabbed together in the same pane to allow for large groups, and because you really only need to perform actions in one of these tabs at a time.) I then size everything proportionatly. Step by step follows:

1. Click on the "Combat Manager" Menu button in top left, click "Restore Combat Manager Tab Layout."
2. On the Monster Database tab, or "Monster DB" in the top right corner is a button shaped like a pushpin. Click it to autohide the tab.
3. Click and drag the "Party" tab. This will create a new popout window for it.
4. On you new "Party" popout, right click on the windows title bar, (the part that holds the X to close it and such,) and there should be an option to "Dock as Tabbed Document." Click it to layer it in the same window section as the "Monsters" tab. (Note: I prefer to list party first but these could be reversed by simply substituting which tab you select in steps 3 and 4, or afterwards by click and dragging to the left and right within the boundaries of the tabs, as you would rearrange tabs in IE, Firefox, and the like.)
5. Right click on the "Current Monster" tab at the bottom of the panel and select "Dock as Tabbed Document" again.
6. Right click on the new "Current Monster" tab and select "New Vertical Group" This will ungroup it from the "Party" and "Monsters" tabs to its own section. And again, this can be done alternatively with selected monster depending on what arrangement you want to have.
7. Resize appropriately. I like to keep my "Current Monster" and "Selected Monster" tabs rather wide to display as much material as I can while still leaving the "Party/Monsters" and "Combat Sequence/Dice Roller" tabs thin enough to still read names and number notations without scrolling horizontally, but depending on how large a group or screen you use, you may still require to scroll vertically in some panes. I also generally stretch the "Combat Sequence" large and leave the "Dice Roller" just large enough to see the last roll.

So that's it, pretty simple to do, and you can play around with other settings or layouts like the "New Horizontal Tab Group" which will place two tabs in the same vertical tab group into splitscreen, as with the "Combat Sequence" and "Dice Roller" tabs. I find with most screens being widescreen now its best to avoid this with anyhting you will do a lot of vertical scrolling on, (which most of it is,) due to the nature of lists and monster entries.

I just started having an issue on one of my computers whereany drop down menus or alt text doesnt appear on top of the window but underneath... i figured this out by not maximizing it and seeing it stick out hte side when i hovered over a spell and the description pupped up underneath sticking out the side of the main window. How can i fix this? i assume it has more to do with some setting for windows than anything else...

Apparently i just had to update my .Net 4.0 Framework. Problem Solved.

I just started having an issue on one of my computers whereany drop down menus or alt text doesnt appear on top of the window but underneath... i figured this out by not maximizing it and seeing it stick out hte side when i hovered over a spell and the description pupped up underneath sticking out the side of the main window. How can i fix this? i assume it has more to do with some setting for windows than anything else...

Customizing weapon entries would help too, and writing in classes and variants builds to automatically apply abilities gained at levels, (and also thus a level tracker) would help. I dont know how much this would conflict with the monster builder format, but there are slight differneces in building monsters versus pcs and making a system buch like ur monster advancer that could just add class levels to something would streamline character creation. And if you cant tell i love having hte option to customize everything...

As it is its a wonderful tool for lots of things, but u definatly have the potential to make it a standalone all inclusive utility that i would pay good money for.

Also im confused how to incorporate the spells onto a pc so that i can highlight and read the spell as in some of the pregenerated examples. I would also like to see a system to keep track of spells per day, perhaps an extension of the actions and attacks.

Love the program so far, tried to do similar thing in excel but it wasnt working out. This is really a life-saver.

Do you have any plans to include a Character Traits function?

Is there a way to add variants such as a Yellow Musk Zombie Template to the Monster Advancer?