# Critique my D&D tool



## doublewumpus (Feb 18, 2011)

Hi guys,

I've been lurking for a long time now, but this is my first real post.

Anyway, I made a tool for 4e D&D:

http://power2ool.com

Demo video: Power2ool prototype on Vimeo

Would love some feedback. Is it useful? What's missing? Would you *actually* use it for a campaign? etc. Please be harsh.

Also, if you find any bugs or have trouble logging in, please let me know as well (either here or e-mail feedback@ power2ool.com)


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## Dungeoneer (Feb 18, 2011)

I was just watching your demo and about to link to it.  Cool tool!  Great job!

Yet another great tool for D&D that the community has developed for free while WotC futzes around with redoing tools they've already developed.


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## SparqMan (Feb 18, 2011)

Well done! 

Some notes:
- There seems to be a max width set that is forcing a horizontal scroll bar. Either max the size and scroll vertically, or let the user opt to go wider than their resolution or browser window supports.

- It would be nice if items snapped to the grid.

- It would be nice if you could automatically arrange the cards in the area.


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## Abstruse (Feb 18, 2011)

I fiddled with it a little after Mike Krahulik tweeted about it.  Looks really promising since I like printing out little cards for items and monster stat blocks in my adventures.  I haven't tried making a custom element yet, but if that's easy, I'll fall in love with it.

Also, if I could make a request, please please please get the traps integrated soon?  They're a pain in the ass to do myself and there aren't a lot of them released in published materials.


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## Dannager (Feb 18, 2011)

Saw Mike Krahulik's tweet as well and watched the video. Excellent stuff. I typically run games with a laptop at the table and often resort to keeping word processor windows open with each individual custom stat block in them. This is far more elegant.


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## 666Sinner666 (Feb 18, 2011)

I like it a lot! Especially how the program automatically parses the info from the compendium into you power cards so you can enter your own info.

Couple questions:

1.) Does this somehow violate the EULA or is that bypassed by requiring the user to input their DDI log in info?I assume its doing something similar to the DDIDownloader used by Lone Wolf.

2.) Will your tool be updated as the compendium is updated?


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## doublewumpus (Feb 18, 2011)

Thanks guys! I'll add them to my to-do list:

 - Card snapping/auto arrangement
 - Traps
From e-mails:
 - Multiple surfaces per account
 - Sharing surfaces between accounts
 - Disease cards (?) need to look that one up
 - Initiative tracker w/ HP and status tracking


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## doublewumpus (Feb 18, 2011)

666Sinner666 said:


> I like it a lot! Especially how the program automatically parses the info from the compendium into you power cards so you can enter your own info.
> 
> Couple questions:
> 
> ...




The power2ool site provides a proxy for requests to the Compendium. It doesn't store any Compendium information itself. So, for example, when you look at all "Level 3 Bard powers" in power2ool you're just doing a proxied search for "Powers > Level: 3 to 3 > Class: Bard" on the Compendium website. As such, it will always be up to date.

As far as EULA issues goes, I don't believe there's anything illegal in the way p2 functions, but Wizards can easily shut my down with just the threat of legal action, warranted or not. It's up to them whether they think it's a cool idea or not.


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## Abstruse (Feb 18, 2011)

doublewumpus said:


> The power2ool site provides a proxy for requests to the Compendium. It doesn't store any Compendium information itself. So, for example, when you look at all "Level 3 Bard powers" in power2ool you're just doing a proxied search for "Powers > Level: 3 to 3 > Class: Bard" on the Compendium website. As such, it will always be up to date.
> 
> As far as EULA issues goes, I don't believe there's anything illegal in the way p2 functions, but Wizards can easily shut my down with just the threat of legal action, warranted or not. It's up to them whether they think it's a cool idea or not.



There's several tools that do the exact same thing that have been out there for years.  I don't have the link anymore due to a dead hard drive, but there was a random encounter generator that did the same thing with monster stat blocks.  Plug in an encounter level and whether you want it easy/medium/hard and you have an encounter with a room and a set of monsters.  With both of them, you still have to pay for your DDI account and it still has to be active.  The program's just acting as a front-end for searching.  Possibly a violation, but I seriously doubt WotC will care since it encourages people to subscribe.


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## moxcamel (Feb 18, 2011)

This is a fantastic beginning!  As you say, it's a little raw, but I see a lot of promise in it.  Keep developing it, please!


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## Tazawa (Feb 18, 2011)

This is a really great tool!

Some suggestions/comments:


The interface to the compendium is already way, way better than WotC's. I love the browse view and the level slider for items. Great work!

Could we get a browse view for monsters too?

I like how the program automatically calculates ability modifiers based on role when building monsters. Any chance that could be extended to auto calculate hp, defenses and abilities based on level and role?

The fonts used for the area and close powers are a little wonky. I know there's better fonts for this floating around the net.

Would it be possible to have more than 9 dice in the die roller?  Could we get percentile dice? The die roll results are hard to read against the yellow button.

Any chance of a skill challenge builder?

When I print, there's little curlicue graphics at the top of the page. How do I remove them?

I hope you take all of this as constructive criticism. I am really impressed!


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## Dannager (Feb 18, 2011)

Tazawa said:


> The fonts used for the area and close powers are a little wonky. I know there's better fonts for this floating around the net.



 Noticed this as well. The Game Icons Regular font is a pretty exact duplicate of the icons used in WotC products, and I'd be happy to pass that font along (it also contains recharge die icons). It was created prior to the monster stat block revision, however, so it doesn't include a character for the aura icon - you'll have to figure that one out separately. Let me know if you'd like it.

Also, your monster stat block doesn't seem to properly handle powers with multiple attack icons; for instance, the Dwarf Clan Guard has a power (Double Hammer Strike) that has both the melee and ranged attack icons. Only the first icon is rendered properly as the melee icon. The second is displayed simply as an 'R'.


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## doublewumpus (Feb 18, 2011)

Thanks a lot guys, this has been really helpful so far.

[MENTION=73683]Dannager[/MENTION] Regarding a better font, I've privately tried out the one made by Daelkyr (link), which works great. The only issue is permission to use it, which I don't have. Do you think he would be willing to give me a license?



Dannager said:


> Also, your monster stat block doesn't seem to properly handle powers with multiple attack icons;



Man...I didn't even know that was possible. Time to fix the parser...



Tazawa said:


> Could we get a browse view for monsters too?



Sure. What stats should they be browsable by? I assume level and role...possibly origin?



Tazawa said:


> When I print, there's little curlicue graphics at the top of the page. How do I remove them?



No way to remove them at the moment. I'll add an option to do so.



Tazawa said:


> Would it be possible to have more than 9 dice in the die roller? Could we get percentile dice? The die roll results are hard to read against the yellow button.



The dice roller is really old and left over from a much earlier version of the site, so...yeah, it has issues. When I refurbish it I'll try to add these features. Just curious though...when do you need to roll >10 dice? Or percentile dice?

All your other points have been noted and added to my todo list


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## Dannager (Feb 18, 2011)

doublewumpus said:


> Thanks a lot guys, this has been really helpful so far.
> 
> @Dannager Regarding a better font, I've privately tried out the one made by Daelkyr (link), which works great. The only issue is permission to use it, which I don't have. Do you think he would be willing to give me a license?



If you get ahold of him, I'd frankly be surprised if he didn't just say "Go for it!" This is a project you can easily expect a fair amount of community support on, especially if you remain dedicated to improving it.

The font I was speaking of can be found here. It doesn't contain the poison/disease progression arrows, but is otherwise complete (though, as mentioned previously, it was put together before an aura icon existed). Notably, the author (Patrick Murphy) says that he provides the font freely to the gaming community. I don't think you'd have any issue including it in your app, especially if you don't plan on charging for it.

It would be pretty rad if one of the font authors took it upon themselves to update the font set with the new aura icon, just so the community could be working with a complete toolbox.


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## DNH (Feb 18, 2011)

Like this a lot, although I don't know how much I would get out of it as a) I do not currently have an active DDI sub and b) we play our 4e games using FG2.  That said though, I have just been playing with it a bit and noticed a couple of things when entering a monster (copy-and-paste from a pdf).

Firstly, the Bloodied value is calculated for you from the hit points but it does not round down and shows half a hit point (55.5 in this cyclops' case).

Secondly, the stat bonuses are also worked out for you but they do not add in half of the monster's level.

Other than that, this is brilliant work and I shall be watching with interest.  Well done.


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## doublewumpus (Feb 18, 2011)

[MENTION=63615]DNH[/MENTION] Yeah, I just learned about FG recently. I'm surprised more people don't use it, it seems like a really awesome program.

(goes off to fix the Bloodied calculation)

Stats *should* be taking into account monster level (unless you specify a level that isn't a number). The calculation I'm doing is:

floor(level/2) + floor( (stat-10)/2 )

...unless you're talking about defenses, in which case it doesn't do any calculations =\


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## Tazawa (Feb 18, 2011)

doublewumpus said:


> Sure. What stats should they be browsable by? I assume level and role...possibly origin?




Level (with the cool slider), role (artillery, brute, etc.), secondary role (minion, standard, elite, solo), origin, source. You might not be able to present them the same way as the items due to the stat blocks being different sizes - a list could work.



doublewumpus said:


> The dice roller is really old and left over from a much earlier version of the site, so...yeah, it has issues. When I refurbish it I'll try to add these features. Just curious though...when do you need to roll >10 dice? Or percentile dice?




These requests might be a hold over from earlier editions when large numbers of dice and percentile rolls were more prevalent. However, falling damage can involve larger numbers of dice and I swear I was rolling percentile dice a few times in the last 4e session I DMed.


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## samursus (Feb 19, 2011)

I just have to say, this is awesome!!

Just for the fact it provides me an easy way to print out monster stats for my games!

One thing to suggest is having the site remember your login info for compendium.  (At least as long as you are logged in) Once I close it, I have to type it in again.

Edit: Never mind, I can see that if you click on the table the window hides without having to close it.


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## doublewumpus (Feb 19, 2011)

[MENTION=11334]Tazawa[/MENTION] Thanks!



samursus said:


> IOne thing to suggest is having the site remember your login info for compendium.  (At least as long as you are logged in) Once I close it, I have to type it in again.



That feature has actually been implemented, but I wasn't sure if I wanted to take on the responsibility of storing people's DDI creds. As it is, once you log in you'll stay logged in until you close the browser window. I'm still deciding how to proceed on this one. Sadly, it's tricky due to legal reasons rather than technical ones.


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## DNH (Feb 19, 2011)

doublewumpus said:


> Stats *should* be taking into account monster level (unless you specify a level that isn't a number).




My apologies.  I went back and took a look and it turned out that I hadn't cleaned up the pdf copy-and-paste import sufficiently.  The raw text for Level was "Level" and the raw text for Role was "14 Artillery".  Once I fixed that, the ability score calculations worked just fine.  Thought it was a bit odd for you to have missed that.


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## moxcamel (Feb 19, 2011)

Something this tool has already been useful for is having my players put together wish lists for magic items.  Out of my group of 7, only myself and one other players even have books (and the other guy just has a PHB), so while I'm helping someone level their character on one computer with the CB, another player can be using another laptop with your tool up to peruse items in a much nicer view than the Compendium allows.  Way to go, thanks again for this!

BTW, just had to add that I was a little worried about clicking on this post.  Having played way too many games with my rowdy and sometimes "colorful" crew, I wasn't quite sure I wanted to critique anyone's D&D "tool."  (yes, I am mentally 11 years old. )


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## ScorpiusRisk (Feb 20, 2011)

I went to play with this tool during a live session the other day, but unfortunately my players never entered combat! This could really be a boon in a sandbox campaign.

My main gripe was there weren't more ways to search monsters, which seems to have already been corrected.

It would be nice if players could upload their cb files, to try swapping out powers/feats/items, or as a way to just view their powers without searching for each one.

EDIT: In the same vein, but possibly more useful, I'd be nice to have a way to import monsters already created with the Monster Builder, without having to retype all the stats.


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## Ablefish (Feb 20, 2011)

Wow, very impressive.  I can't imagine I'll ever use the official compendium interface ever again.  

Here are my comments (more like a wishlist, lol).

I'd like to echo Tazawa's request for a monster browser.  In fact, I'd love it if most of the search filtering options were exposed or expanded on in the browser interface for items as well (making use of as many wicked widgets like your level range slider). 

When I'm building encounters, or looking for treasure for my party, I usually find that the WOTC interface for filtering doesn't coincide with how I'm looking for elements.  Ie - maybe I know I want some Large, Fey and Shadow Humanoids. Or I want some Consumables of some kind.

 That would be hard to pull off with a single Search.  But if there was more flexibility - ie - I could narrow down a broad search rather than have to zero in off the bat.

Another request - one sweet aspect of the new Monster Builder is the handy slider that you can use to quickly level a monster up or down.  It would be fantastic if you could add the same functionality to editing a monster added to the workspace.  (Ie it adjust damage, defenses, hp automagically)

Speaking of the workspace - what do you have planned for organizing this space?  I'm not sure what the answer is visually, but if there was some way to group elements that could translate into how they were printed, that would be awesome.  I'm imagining an option for a simple 2 column layout that you could drag and sort the stat blocks and notes and whatnot.  Actually, I haven't tried printing yet, - I'm not seeing how to limit what gets printed?

Anyways - kudos for a freaking awesome piece of work.  It's amazing to see products like Masterplan, FG and this which feel like they're made by gamers for gamers.  I hope life lets you keep developing this for a long time, I can't wait to see where you can take it.


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## Lalato (Feb 20, 2011)

Bravo!  Very well done.  I have nothing to add right now, just wanted to note that the site works pretty well and I encountered no problems.  Nice job.

--sam


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## Nullzone (Feb 20, 2011)

First off, great work. A very impressive start, can't wait to see more! 

Two things that would be useful, as sort of the same thing: email address (username) and password change options. If my email address changes, right now my only option is to re-register, which would cause me to lose my old workspace. Similarly, while less of an issue, it would be nice if I could change my password from the interface and not have to go through the "forgot password" reset function.


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## doublewumpus (Feb 20, 2011)

Wow, great feedback guys, thanks so much.

[MENTION=41601]ScorpiusRisk[/MENTION] Import from the MonsterBuilder is coming 

[MENTION=55116]Ablefish[/MENTION] Interesting ideas for iterative search filtering...I'll play around with it. Also, the printing interface is very simple right now (all or nothing, and only cards). It'll get upgraded in the future 

[MENTION=97538]Nullzone[/MENTION] Duly noted. 

Organization is definitely a bit of a problem now. Hopefully being able to have multiple canvases (when I get that working) will make it bearable until I come up with a more advanced solution...


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## doublewumpus (Feb 22, 2011)

Update: Added an "Automatic stats" button to the monster editor that will apply generic stats to a monster based on level and role.

A lot of people were asking for a system like this, but I'm not entirely positive that this version is the right approach. Let me know what you guys think.


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## ScorpiusRisk (Feb 26, 2011)

When creating a monster, your keywords don't appear in parenthesis unless you add them yourself. Very minor.


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## abyssaldeath (Feb 26, 2011)

I have an idea for a new feature that I think could be helpful. It would be cool if when you were placing monsters on the mat if the program could add up all the xp values and tell you what the encounter value would be for an average sized party(5 PCs).

So say you had 5 4th lvl standars monsters(175xp each, total 875xp) on the mat, it would tell you in a corner that it was a 4th level encounter.


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## Momeeche (Feb 26, 2011)

Am I the only one who thinks the title of this thread sounds kinds of dirty?


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## Dannager (Feb 26, 2011)

abyssaldeath said:


> I have an idea for a new feature that I think could be helpful. It would be cool if when you were placing monsters on the mat if the program could add up all the xp values and tell you what the encounter value would be for an average sized party(5 PCs).
> 
> So say you had 5 4th lvl standars monsters(175xp each, total 875xp) on the mat, it would tell you in a corner that it was a 4th level encounter.



Oooh, interesting. Maybe an object you can add to the field from the toolbar that would display this information?


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## zoggynog (Feb 28, 2011)

Wow.  Words fail the awesomeness of this app.

I can feel this replacing several of the tools I currently use as a DM.

As a DM I wanted to make the following suggestions/feature requests.

In the future, you might consider an option on "how" you would like to sign in to Power2ool.  Perhaps a DM view and a Player view.  If these workspaces were able to sync to each other, a DM view could have tabs for each players workspace, in addition to their own.  When in a tab for a player, you could let the DM be able to add notes/items/whatever that can be toggled as invisible to the player.  This way the DM can organize notes about a character, or relay exactly what it was they were able to steal from their fellow player at the right moment. 

Implementing a "Character Sheet" widget/gadget would really help a poor DM keep up with the abilities/items/stats of others on the fly.  It would be nice to have a collapsible (minimize/maximize) widget with stats for a player.  Nice and easy way to check things like passive perception/insight, base stats, those sort of things.  Again, letting that info propagate across from a Player to a DM would be awesome.

Imagine something like "stacks" in osx, but they would be a stack of "cards" with only the top titles peeking out until you click them.  Then they expand to show all the cards.  A DM could use this to have stacks of power cards for each player.  Then when they needed to quick reference a player's ability (I don't know many GM's with all of these power memorized...) they can click on the stack.  When they click off the stack, the cards all flop back into a nice little space.

One last idea.  A print option to create an export file that can be printed to 4X3 blank note cards.  One "virtual" card at a time.  A quick way to make consistent official and home-brew item cards would be slick.  Or imagine a nice little set of monster stat cards...printed right from power2ool.

My obsession with printed note cards can best be understood by viewing this blog entry (not mine).

The Creak of Boots: ILLUSTRATED WILDLIFE TREASURY

Anyways, please keep up the amazing work.  Haven't seen something this promising for 4e since before Wotc shut down Masterplan compendium integration.


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## Nullzone (Feb 28, 2011)

I'm not sure if the monster math is being applied properly in the "automatic stats" feature; it suggested 2d8+7 for average damage at L15.


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## Ferdil (Feb 28, 2011)

The tool is really great, this seems to be the thing I've been wanting for a long time.

Features needed:

The ability to make blocks also for class features or other things. The notes are quite ugly and some nicely formatted stuff would be nice.
The ability to have multiple sheets to organize things
The color on the "standard action"/"minor action" cell in the monster block is too dark
Ability to make tables
A character sheet widget would be very nice


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## doublewumpus (Mar 22, 2011)

Hey guys, sorry this last update took so long. It was...er, more complex than I expected.

Now you can have multiple workspaces: Power2ool: The Space Browser on Vimeo

[MENTION=97538]Nullzone[/MENTION] There was a small bug in the monster damage tables, but now that I look at it, that probably wasn't what you were talking about. I'm using the damage table in the back of the DMG, is there an updated version?

The encounter counter is interesting! I'll add it to the todo list.

[MENTION=71730]Ferdil[/MENTION] Not sure what you're talking about re: standard action/minor action

[MENTION=65861]zoggynog[/MENTION] Thanks for the ideas! As far as 4x3 note card printing, do you just want them to change to be the same size as 4x3 cards? I'm not sure how that would work, do you print them out on large paper and then cut out the pieces you want, or do you print them directly onto 4x3 cardstock?


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## Dannager (Mar 22, 2011)

doublewumpus said:


> @Nullzone There was a small bug in the monster damage tables, but now that I look at it, that probably wasn't what you were talking about. I'm using the damage table in the back of the DMG, is there an updated version?




Yep. Use the table provided on page 7 of this PDF.


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## Nikosandros (Mar 22, 2011)

After reading about this tool back when you wrote the OP, I finally used it while running last week session. It proved really useful and it's much faster and convenient to have all the monster "cards" for an encounter in this fashion than trying to copy and paste from the Compendium. Truly a well done tool! 

Having multiple work spaces was the first thing that I though about, so I'm quite naturally very pleased to find that is has already been implemented... as I play with it some more, hopefully I'll have some useful feedback to provide. In the meantime, I would like to thank you for this tool.

P.S.
Actually, I noticed something that might be a bug. When using the character tab and then selecting a bard, cutting words is not listed among first level powers.


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## doublewumpus (Mar 22, 2011)

Dannager said:


> Yep. Use the table provided on page 7 of this PDF.




Sweet! Thanks.



Nikosandros said:


> Actually, I noticed something that might be a bug. When using the character tab and then selecting a bard, cutting words is not listed among first level powers.




At the moment, the classes browser only shows powers from rule books, not all sources (the reasons for this decision are lost to time). I keep meaning to add a "sources" option there...

For now, if you really want the card you can search for it in the Search interface =\


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## Nikosandros (Mar 22, 2011)

doublewumpus said:


> At the moment, the classes browser only shows powers from rule books, not all sources (the reasons for this decision are lost to time). I keep meaning to add a "sources" option there...
> 
> For now, if you really want the card you can search for it in the Search interface =



Fair enough and I had noticed that you could find the power through the search interface. Since I still have limited experience with the tool, I hadn't noticed that only books are included as sources in the class browser.


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## Nemesis Destiny (Mar 22, 2011)

Wow. This looks amazing. I'm recommending this to every other DM in my group (4 out of the 7 of us).

I will try to get you some feedback on it from them after they've had a chance to try it.

As for suggestions, I would also like to see a character widget, but I fear trying to compete with the WotC version might get you the kind of attention you _don't _want. That said, the ability to customize powers (including all the fluff) is something many of us have been asking WotC for, for quite some time now. They have yet to deliver.


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## doublewumpus (Mar 22, 2011)

Hmmm the new rules sometimes involve increasing damage by 25-50%. The math doesn't always end up pretty for this. For example, how do you cleanly increase 3d6+8 by 25%? 4d6+10? Not terribly accurate...


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## Kelvor Ravenstar (Mar 22, 2011)

doublewumpus said:


> Hmmm the new rules sometimes involve increasing damage by 25-50%. The math doesn't always end up pretty for this. For example, how do you cleanly increase 3d6+8 by 25%? 4d6+10? Not terribly accurate...



That's pretty close in that case, only off by one point. You have to multiply the average damage by 25 to 50%, and then figure out how that converts to multiple dice.
What I do is ((number of dice x die average) + modifier) x 1.25), in this case 1.25((3x3.5)+8) or 23.125, then subtract the original number to get how much you increase the damage roll by. (23.125 - 18.5) = 4.625, or +5 to damage. In cases where this is greater than the average die roll (3.5), you can subtract this number and add another die instead. So add 1d6+1 to the original damage.


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## ScorpiusRisk (Mar 23, 2011)

Now that I have multiple spaces the first thing I want to do is take something I customized in one space and bring it to another space. Is there an easy way to do that?


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## the-golem (Mar 23, 2011)

Hmmm, I just tested this out, albeit breifly.

So far it looks quite awesome, but a more robust monster search would be nice. For instance, there isn't any easy way to look for "Swarms" or just simply "humans"

Outside of that, I really can't say anything, because so far that's the only thing I tried.

EDIT: Okay, that's odd. The first couple times I tried a direct search, I got zilch. I tried just now, and seemed to search quite fine. Perhaps I spoke too soon


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## doublewumpus (Mar 23, 2011)

ScorpiusRisk said:


> Now that I have multiple spaces the first thing I want to do is take something I customized in one space and bring it to another space. Is there an easy way to do that?




Not possible at the moment, sadly.  That and duplicating cards are the focus of the next major update.



the-golem said:


> Hmmm, I just tested this out, albeit breifly.
> 
> So far it looks quite awesome, but a more robust monster search would be nice. For instance, there isn't any easy way to look for "Swarms" or just simply "humans"




The search is a bit...finicky. Keep in mind that it's essentially just a prettier interface for searching the Compendium website, so it's limited by what is possible there. However, if you find a way to search for something on the Compendium that P2 doesn't currently support, let me know.


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## ScorpiusRisk (Mar 23, 2011)

Another thought occurred to me this morning. I know you're working on an import/export tool. That sounds hard.

I'm curious how hard it would be to add the ability to add images, either uploaded or copied onto the notepad. That way, not only could I use images, but if someone made a cool monster with power2ool, and shared it as an image (which is what I've been doing), we could just copy and paste to use it in our own game.


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## eriktheguy (Mar 23, 2011)

This is really great. You've given me a reason not to end my subscription. That said, I'm interested on how the monster stat calculations work. Will they generally match monsters of the same level/role from the compendium? Is there any chance you could release the nature of the calculations for us to look at (and maybe critique?).

Anyways, this is an awesome tool. How many people are you and how long did this take? Are you comfortable with being my new hetero nerd mancrush? (Previous holder of title was Day[9]). The voice in the video is so sweet and chocolaty.


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## doublewumpus (Mar 23, 2011)

ScorpiusRisk said:


> I'm curious how hard it would be to add the ability to add images, either uploaded or copied onto the notepad. That way, not only could I use images, but if someone made a cool monster with power2ool, and shared it as an image (which is what I've been doing), we could just copy and paste to use it in our own game.




Image import *is* coming, but card import/export is probably coming before that (in the form of just raw lines of text). The original plan was to also support importing monsters copied from the old monster build (Copy > As Raw Text) but uhh...that feature appears to have been removed in the current version of the MB.



eriktheguy said:


> That said, I'm interested on how the monster stat calculations work. Will they generally match monsters of the same level/role from the compendium? Is there any chance you could release the nature of the calculations for us to look at (and maybe critique?).



P2 currently uses the rules from the back of the DMG, which are unfortunately out of date [edit: that was a weird typo...]. It'll be upgraded to use the MM3 rules in a few days.



eriktheguy said:


> Are you comfortable with being my new hetero nerd mancrush? (Previous holder of title was Day[9]).



Daww. Let's be Day[9] fans together. He's so man-snuggly.


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## eriktheguy (Mar 24, 2011)

doublewumpus said:


> P2 currently uses the rules from the back of the DMG, which are unfortunately out of date [edit: that was a weird typo...]. It'll be upgraded to use the MM3 rules in a few days.
> 
> Daww. Let's be Day[9] fans together. He's so man-snuggly.



Agreed. Also glad to hear you will be setting it up with MM3 stats.
This is what the monster builder from Wizards would look like if they had commissioned Google to build it. You can tell it was built by a DM. You work in software by any chance?


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## Nemesis Destiny (Mar 24, 2011)

I posted in another thread (the one about how much the new "Monster Builder" sucks) that THIS is the example that WotC should be following.


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## nnms (Mar 24, 2011)

I know this is contrary to the whole web app approach, but something like this that can be run locally on my computer without internet access would be awesome.  Having it as a web app makes sense considering how prevalent internet access is becoming, but I do still like the idea of something that is local and will work whether or not I have net access.


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## ender_wiggin (Mar 24, 2011)

eriktheguy said:


> (Previous holder of title was Day[9]).




Cheers for Day[9]. And for doublewumpus. I wrote a post recently on these forums about the sleekness of what WOTC needs to achieve with their software. This is that bar, folks.

Oh, and the only thing wrong with this program is that we pay WOTC to use it, instead of yourself.


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## doublewumpus (Mar 24, 2011)

Updated monster creation rules have been uploaded. Special thanks to Nullzone, Dannager, and Kelvor Ravenstar for their help!

Let me know if it's not behaving the way it should.


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## Bagpuss (Mar 25, 2011)

You have a monster builder that actually builds monsters, that's a good idea. 

I like (in a way that it protects you somewhat from a C&D letter) that if you drag something from the compendium (even if you update it later) the card is blank if you are not currently logged into the D&DI.

If Wizards do send you a C&D letter (because like Masterplan you are embarrassing them with how good your free offering is compared to their paid one) I hope they send you an application form at the same time.


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## Dalamar (Mar 25, 2011)

Excellent piece of software, glad I gave it a second glance instead of being turned away the first time due to the requirement of registering.

Now, a couple of small nitpicks on the custom monster card side:
1) You're missing creature type (humanoid, animate), and keywords should propably appear automatically in parenthesis
2) If a creature has Darkvision or other special senses, its Speed and Features get pushed down with the line break. Also, Darkvision shouldn't be auto-bolded
2) Lines like Attack:, Hit:, etc. should be in italics in monster statblocks, not in bold as they are in power statblocks for characters
3) When writing the monster powers, if you don't use a suggested word, it keeps suggesting that word until you accept it, it suggests a new one, or you hit Esc. It should propably disappear when you hit space like it does in most places

Aside from those, looking pretty darn good.


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## Dalamar (Mar 26, 2011)

Another couple of things I noticed when I put in the powers for one of my players, playing a mage, to see how they'd look printed out:

I like that it automatically orders things for printing. 
What I don't like is that utility powers get mixed in with attack powers at their levels. I prefer having all attack powers, followed by all utility powers. 
Ordering the powers Left-right, up-down means that someone like the aforementioned mage can have huge white spaces when one of the left-right pair powers is significantly longer than the other one. Maybe have the powers print up-down and then left-right? I.e. a two column list, like they are in the hardcover books?


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## eriktheguy (Mar 26, 2011)

Been using it more and it's great.
Can you make it automatically add the bonus to saves, and list action points for, solos and elites. (I realize I could do this manually, but you asked for criticism and there isn't a whole lot to criticize).
The guide for monster building is great. You could possibly add a bit more detail to it, for example listing how many attacks you should give to a minion, standard, elite, solo.


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## Bagpuss (Mar 26, 2011)

I can't get it to print either in Firefox 3 or IE?

Just says Loading Render....


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## eriktheguy (Mar 26, 2011)

It keeps getting better...
Is there a way to move cards between spaces?


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## Otterscrubber (Mar 26, 2011)

This tool looks very interesting, although I'm not sure how i woudl use it.  Is it intended as a tool for players, DMs or both?


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## Nikosandros (Mar 26, 2011)

Otterscrubber said:


> This tool looks very interesting, although I'm not sure how i woudl use it.  Is it intended as a tool for players, DMs or both?



Both. As a player, you can have in front of you cards for all your powers and your items; you can customize them and mark the powers that you've used.

As a DM, it's very handy to have all the cards for the monsters in an encounter. Much easier and faster than having to cut and paste from the Compendium.


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## Dannager (Mar 26, 2011)

Nikosandros said:


> Both. As a player, you can have in front of you cards for all your powers and your items; you can customize them and mark the powers that you've used.
> 
> As a DM, it's very handy to have all the cards for the monsters in an encounter. Much easier and faster than having to cut and paste from the Compendium.




Exactly. In the same way that a player might have his character sheet and power cards laid out before him to make it easier to size up his options during an encounter, Power2ool gives the DM that same level of supervision of his own game elements.


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## Nemesis Destiny (Mar 26, 2011)

I plan to make heavy use of it as a DM; using a netbook as a DM screen, I will load up and edit all necessary monsters, etc, into power2ool, and have them all right there, instead of having to flip through tabs with monsters from the compendium one at a time. This way, I can see an entire encounter at a glance.

As a player, I plan to use it to print customized power cards. It's a lot like using MSE, but much more user-friendly and updated (via compendium).

I wonder how long before WotC shuts this down because it makes their apps look like junk?


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## Nikosandros (Mar 26, 2011)

Nemesis Destiny said:


> I wonder how long before WotC shuts this down because it makes their apps look like junk?



Actually, I think it would be very foolish of WotC to shut down sites like Power2ools and iPlay4e. They provide an enormous added value to a DDI subscription. Consider that Power2ools is useless without logging into the Compendium.


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## doublewumpus (Mar 26, 2011)

[MENTION=358]Dalamar[/MENTION] Thanks, lots of good stuff there. I'll try to work those into a release soon.



Bagpuss said:


> I can't get it to print either in Firefox 3 or IE?
> 
> Just says Loading Render....




Yeah..uhh...oops. Just fixed that, sorry 



eriktheguy said:


> It keeps getting better...
> Is there a way to move cards between spaces?




Not yet  Working on that now.



eriktheguy said:


> Been using it more and it's great.
> Can you make it automatically add the bonus to saves, and list action points for, solos and elites. (I realize I could do this manually, but you asked for criticism and there isn't a whole lot to criticize).
> The guide for monster building is great. You could possibly add a bit more detail to it, for example listing how many attacks you should give to a minion, standard, elite, solo.




Noted 



Otterscrubber said:


> This tool looks very interesting, although I'm not sure how i woudl use it.  Is it intended as a tool for players, DMs or both?




*shrug* I originally designed it for players, but them my DM friends started using it. At this point it's too far beyond what I had originally planned for there to be much intent left. Most people tend to use it for either planning out encounters (perhaps with custom or modified monsters), or browsing through powers while building a character (and then perhaps printing out their powers in a pretty way).


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## Nemesis Destiny (Mar 26, 2011)

Nikosandros said:


> Actually, I think it would be very foolish of WotC to shut down sites like Power2ools and iPlay4e. They provide an enormous added value to a DDI subscription. Consider that Power2ools is useless without logging into the Compendium.



Oh I agree fully, but this is WotC we're talking about here - it's not like we haven't seen them pull some pretty foolish moves before.


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## eriktheguy (Mar 27, 2011)

Nemesis Destiny said:


> Oh I agree fully, but this is WotC we're talking about here - it's not like we haven't seen them pull some pretty foolish moves before.




Exactly, I thought about sending them an email to show them this awesome tool and encourage them to do similar.

Then I remembered that I'm not the sort of guy to send emails to companies, attend protests, or get involved in grassroots movements. And also realized that I might indirectly result in WotC sending this guy a C and D.

By the way awesome programmer guy, are you a programmer for a living?


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## WuM1nG (Mar 27, 2011)

I have to say that this is very very awesome. Are there plans to release an offline version of this? The place I game at has wonky Internets.


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## ScorpiusRisk (Mar 27, 2011)

eriktheguy said:


> Been using it more and it's great.
> Can you make it automatically add the bonus to saves, and list action points for, solos and elites. (I realize I could do this manually, but you asked for criticism and there isn't a whole lot to criticize).
> The guide for monster building is great. You could possibly add a bit more detail to it, for example listing how many attacks you should give to a minion, standard, elite, solo.




I think what you're asking for now is advice. There's no real standard number of attacks for powers by secondary role, especially not with the way The Monster Vault changed things.


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## Ferdil (Mar 27, 2011)

[MENTION=6670472]doublewumpus[/MENTION] I mean that the "X action" rows need to be of a lighter color. Now, it is of the same color of the header, instead it should be lighter.


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## eriktheguy (Mar 27, 2011)

ScorpiusRisk said:


> I think what you're asking for now is advice. There's no real standard number of attacks for powers by secondary role, especially not with the way The Monster Vault changed things.




Well when you design a monster the tool adds some standard guidelines to the card for reference (ex. attack bonuses and damage values). It would be interesting to see things like 'minions deal x damage', 'solos should be able to attack X players a turn' etc.


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## mneme (Mar 27, 2011)

Finally got a chance to try this tool (as it doesn't work under Mono, more's the pity).

Pretty neat!

One thing: Any chance the die roller can handle hetrogenous dice?  As a player, probably the most game stopping moment for me (at paragon levels) is a crit, as I go from "I hit for X" to "I crit, gimme a minuite".  Also, being able to handle brutal would be a plus.


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## twisted.fate (Mar 27, 2011)

I'm not sure if this has been requested, but it would be nice if we could stretch the sticky notes. I like to type up walls of text for my NPCs, and it'd be more readable if I could have the information in wider boxes, rather than really tall skinny boxes.

Possibly also, could you allow for basic formatting in the notes? Like bold, underline, italic? Again, it's just helpful when writing out NPC notes.

Otherwise, may I simply add to the crowd of voices saying THANK YOU. This tool is so elegant it makes me want to weep.


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## brehobit (Mar 27, 2011)

Very nice!  I really like it.

I'll provide some feature requests if you get a chance:
* Changes in monster levels aren't reflected in attacks or damage.  Attack rolls at least should be fairly easy.  Scaling damage sounds tricky but doable.
* Monster skills also don't scale with level.
* Kobold Dragonshield won't display correctly ("invalid markup") no idea why.  All the "warcasters" have the same problem.

It's really neat!  Thanks!


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## Nemesis Destiny (Mar 28, 2011)

twisted.fate said:


> I'm not sure if this has been requested, but it would be nice if we could stretch the sticky notes. I like to type up walls of text for my NPCs, and it'd be more readable if I could have the information in wider boxes, rather than really tall skinny boxes.
> 
> Possibly also, could you allow for basic formatting in the notes? Like bold, underline, italic? Again, it's just helpful when writing out NPC notes.
> 
> Otherwise, may I simply add to the crowd of voices saying THANK YOU. This tool is so elegant it makes me want to weep.



I will second this. Good idea!


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## nnms (Mar 28, 2011)

I needed to make some Companion characters out of monsters for today's session.  It worked brilliantly.  I used the compendium's search to filter by level and role, then brought it up in power2ool and edited it to make a lizardman into a human, a goblin into a halfling and a bugbear into a human swordmage.

I grabbed screen shots and cropped them to print on recipe cards.

Faster and easier than copying right out of the compenidum or using the old monster builder.

I think power2ool is now my first choice for monster building.

Is there a way to copy a monster stat block in a format that it could be pasted into a document?


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## eriktheguy (Mar 28, 2011)

[MENTION=83293]nnms[/MENTION]
There is a print function. I print the power cards to a pdf using a program such as cutepdf CutePDF - Create PDF for free, Free PDF Utilities, Edit PDF easily;.

If you aren't familiar with cutepdf or similar programs, it just adds an extra 'printer' to your computer. Select this printer when you want to print, and the output will be a pdf file instead of a physical document.

Then just use the snapshot tool in any pdf viewer.


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## the-golem (Mar 28, 2011)

nnms said:


> I know this is contrary to the whole web app approach, but something like this that can be run locally on my computer without internet access would be awesome.  Having it as a web app makes sense considering how prevalent internet access is becoming, but I do still like the idea of something that is local and will work whether or not I have net access.




I think the issue with this is storing data meant for online (like the compendium) as offline.

Also, someone needs to make something like this for a character builder. Wait, can this thing create characters? I mean, full characters, not just grab a specific power?

It'd be cool to go from something like this, to exporting the data to a customized character sheet for printing.


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## Nullzone (Mar 28, 2011)

Just wanted to keep echoing that this tool is _awesome_. I've already done up some 40-odd monster statblocks and 2 custom items with it for my campaign, and I'm sure will continue using a ton of it going forward. Keep up the good work! (And it was nice to meet you at PAX East!)


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## Nullzone (Mar 28, 2011)

eriktheguy said:


> @nnms
> There is a print function. I print the power cards to a pdf using a program such as cutepdf CutePDF - Create PDF for free, Free PDF Utilities, Edit PDF easily;.
> 
> If you aren't familiar with cutepdf or similar programs, it just adds an extra 'printer' to your computer. Select this printer when you want to print, and the output will be a pdf file instead of a physical document.
> ...




You don't even have to print to PDF. When the printable sheet is rendered, every card is a separate png image. Just right click on the card(s) you want in your browser and copy or save the image, then place it in your document.


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## eriktheguy (Mar 28, 2011)

Nullzone said:


> You don't even have to print to PDF. When the printable sheet is rendered, every card is a separate png image. Just right click on the card(s) you want in your browser and copy or save the image, then place it in your document.



Thanks!


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## Mechanimal (Mar 31, 2011)

It's definitely a great tool just from messing around with it for a bit. I haven't yet had the chance to use it in a game, but I will a week from this Saturday. 

As for criticisms, or better yet, just suggestions:


Resizable Sticky notes for labels above items, and just for convenience
Way to select multiple items
Maybe a way to snap things together for orders' sake

I resisted adding something like, "Add a combat manager/tracker," because I wasn't sure the direction you're taking the program, and that could be completely irrelevant. But, just for suggestions' sake, I wouldn't mind having all my eggs in one basket in this case. 

Aside from suggestions, I want to thank you for the great application, and look forward to see where this is headed!


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## Dr_Ruminahui (Apr 1, 2011)

Just trying it out, and it looks awesome - just for encounter design alone, its far superior to monsterbuilder (even the old one, given how easy it is to print of sheets with the monsters you need - well, in theory - see below ).

One thing, though... is it possible to program it to have more than one dice roller open? For example, it would be nice to be able to have a d20+ whatever open for one's attack, and a d8 + whatever open for one's damage.

Oh, and I guess another thing... is there some kind of guide as to what to type to get which icon? For example, if you type an "m" before a power, you get a melee icon... I was trying to get a close blast power, and couldn't figure out how to get it to work. Sure, I could pull up a monster with such a power and shift click it to find out... but a list of such things under the toolbox would be handy. Different icons for close burst and close blast would also be nice...

Oh, and one final thing, you might make "skill power" one of the autoprompts for "Class and level" when creating powers.

Oh, and I'm not sure why, but the numbers I got when changing the levels of monsters don't always jive from what I get when doing it in monster builder - for example, I bumped an Earthquake Dragon from 9 to 10, and got 212 HP (vs. 224 in MB), Reflex 22 (vs. 23) and Will 20 (vs. 22). Not sure why or whether you or MB is "more correct". It also doesn't remember if you've already clicked on the "high defence" button for elites and solos.

Likewise taking an Earth Elemental from 11 to 10 gave me 106 HP (vs. 11), AC 26 (vs. 25) and F/R/W of 23/22/22 vs. 24/19/21.... so something screwy is happening systematically somewhere.

I think I figured it out - it seems to be recalculating the monsters stats, which in turn affect their defences. Be nice if in the advanced options where was a "do not change" option in addition to the "pick high stat" one... indeed for all the options in the "advanced option" bar - I want to change the level of the monster without needing to double check I'm not changing its role, and stats, which seem to default to soldier and str, respectively.

Actually, leveling also doesn't seem to be affecting the plus to attack... not sure what you can do abotu that, though... though oddly the damage seems fine.

And... the rendering to print wouldn't work properly - I'm using IE, and all I get is those little boxes with red "x"s where the cards should be.

Oh, and one final thing - just discovered zoom out, which is awesome... but is/would it be possible to name the various screens in that view and/or have the background of the main screen match that in the zoom out?


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## doublewumpus (Apr 2, 2011)

Hey guys, sorry for not answering, the latest update is taking a while...

I'll try to push out a hotfix for stickies that allows them to be resized soon. Later on they'll get cooler things like formatting, etc.

[MENTION=97538]Nullzone[/MENTION] Nice to meet you too! Hope you had a good PAX 

[MENTION=81104]Dr_Ruminahui[/MENTION] 
 - The automatic stats button is most useful for creating new monsters. The rules for adjusting an EXISTING monster's level are different, and will hopefully be implemented soon.
 - I need to add some help text to the monster editor, but you can look up all of the power codes here: Monster powers
 - Not sure what you mean by having multiple dice rollers open? You can certainly add multiple dice rollers to the canvas...


A number of people have e-mailed me about this, so I should probably mention that you can rename/recolor spaces in the same way you edit cards (hold SHIFT + click). You can also drag them around to change their location.


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## eriktheguy (Apr 2, 2011)

Keep up the awesome work! I just used this thing for the first full session, and it kicked ass. Combat is faster when I don't have so many papers. Thanks again man.


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## Dr_Ruminahui (Apr 2, 2011)

Thanks muchly for the answers.  Some comments back:

- that makes sense why the monster math is off.  Looking forward to working with it when you have it all fixed.

- thanks for the link

- I couldn't seem to have multiple dice rollers open at once... I'll try again when I have a moment, then get back to you.

- Thanks for the heads up on renaming/recoloring spaces... but yeah, a little note at the top would be great.

- Any idea why printing preview screen was screwed up for me?

Anyway, thanks again for the hard work... its got a really nice interface.


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## doublewumpus (Apr 2, 2011)

@Mechanimal  (and everyone else who has requested resizable stickies):

Just uploaded a new version that enables resizable stickies. It doesn't support formatting or anything, but hopefully that will hold you over until I have time to rework the stickies more completely....

 @Dr_Ruminahui  The printing system uses a feature that IE8 only kinda supports (which is why most of the pictures look like red Xs). The good news is that IE9 fully supports dataURIs (Internet Explorer - Microsoft Windows), as do Firefox and Chrome.


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## Nemesis Destiny (Apr 2, 2011)

I've actually had trouble trying to print; it opens the new tab with the print status, but it hangs at 0%. Tried on two separate machines. Both Vista32 w/ Firefox4.

To balance that complaint, since you mentioned that workspaces can be coloured and renamed and moved  - it blew my mind AGAIN. 

I'm using this to run my new campaign, and I can basically flowchart the entire adventure. It's awesome.

Is there a link somewhere to give you money for this? 'cause I wanna. 

P.S. _Beat THAT WotC!!!_


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## Kelvor Ravenstar (Apr 2, 2011)

Thank you so much for continuing to update this so quickly.
The way I use Power2ool most is to relevel monsters and then reduce their hit points and increase damage for exporting to my adventure docs. I would just use WotC's monster releveler for this purpose if it actually allowed me to edit them and then export in any useful manner.
So from my perspective, the most important update you should be working on is the math for changing the level of an Existing monster, with how it effects hit points, defenses, attacks, damage, and skills. I don't mind how the program currently gives you suggestions for the attack workspace rather than doing all the work internally, but the others should be simple enough to implement.


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## doublewumpus (Apr 2, 2011)

Nemesis Destiny said:


> I've actually had trouble trying to print; it opens the new tab with the print status, but it hangs at 0%. Tried on two separate machines. Both Vista32 w/ Firefox4.




Hmm. Worrisome. I've been trying to track that bug down for a while. Hrmph.



Nemesis Destiny said:


> Is there a link somewhere to give you money for this? 'cause I wanna.




Awesome! I'll probably put up a donation link after I finish the next update. Need to think of a nice perk for donating, like unlimited spaces for a year or something....



Kelvor Ravenstar said:


> Thank you so much for continuing to update this so quickly.
> The way I use Power2ool most is to relevel monsters and then reduce their hit points and increase damage for exporting to my adventure docs. I would just use WotC's monster releveler for this purpose if it actually allowed me to edit them and then export in any useful manner.
> So from my perspective, the most important update you should be working on is the math for changing the level of an Existing monster, with how it effects hit points, defenses, attacks, damage, and skills. I don't mind how the program currently gives you suggestions for the attack workspace rather than doing all the work internally, but the others should be simple enough to implement.




Yeah, the automatic stats button has been confusing people. Are the rules for monster level adjustment in the DMG still valid or are there updated ones?


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## eriktheguy (Apr 2, 2011)

doublewumpus said:


> Hmm. Worrisome. I've been trying to track that bug down for a while. Hrmph.



I get this one occasionally (chrome). I just close the print tab and open another. It always works the second time.



doublewumpus said:


> Awesome! I'll probably put up a donation link after I finish the next update. Need to think of a nice perk for donating, like unlimited spaces for a year or something....



I would also consider donating. Be very VERY careful with this. I don't think you are at much risk for receiving a C and D right now, but if you begin to profit off of wizards material (strictly, off a tool that accesses compendium) you might. I'm not sure how these things work. Maybe accepting donations is perfectly okay, maybe it isn't. When you start to offer perks in exchange for donations it starts to seem more like a transaction, so maybe that is more risky.

I also know that companies like to send legal threats to people who actually aren't violating any laws/copyrights. If you can't afford or don't know a lawyer to ask advice of, they might hope you give in to avoid any ramifications because you can't buy as much law as them.

So just be careful; google the hell out of it or ask a buddy who knows some law before you make any serious changes in this direction. Maybe you can even email people who have had their tools shut down by Wizards before and ask them what the trigger was. I'd love to see you get paid for this as much as the next guy, but I'd hate to see you get shut down.


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## Nemesis Destiny (Apr 2, 2011)

doublewumpus said:


> Hmm. Worrisome. I've been trying to track that bug down for a while. Hrmph.



I can live with it for now; I like to do most of my DM work on a netbook anyway, but I was trying to use it to print custom and customized powers for some of my players and got stymied there. I just went back to good ol' Magic Set Editor, but power2ool is even better 



> Awesome! I'll probably put up a donation link after I finish the next update. Need to think of a nice perk for donating, like unlimited spaces for a year or something....



How about remembering your DDI login? I know there may be legal complications there, but it would be a nice perk. 
Seriously though, more space is a swell idea. It woulld also be neat, following on my almost suggestion from last post, if on the Zoomed out view, you could draw lines between the workspaces and label them in a flowchart like manner.



> Yeah, the automatic stats button has been confusing people. Are the rules for monster level adjustment in the DMG still valid or are there updated ones?



I do believe all the monster math (including levelling/delevelling) has been updated and has been reprinted in the DM's Kit.


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## Kannik (Apr 3, 2011)

This is a crazy great tool.  

I'm using it right now for some campaign planning.  (coupled with One Note)

I gave it a try as a player in the game I play in by throwing into the tool all of my power cards, edited at the bottom to say the specifics for my character*.  I placed die rollers under each card, customized for the specific attack/damage rolls for that power.*  I placed a few other die rollers to the side for my most oft-used skills.*  And I gave it a whirl to see if I could play a game with it, running most of my combat through it (albeit still needing my character sheet for defences, hit points, etc)*  

I wasn't sure I'd like it, I'm very partial to the feel of rolling dice, the tactile nature of paper and pencil, etc.  And I wanted to give it a go.  And, I liked it!  It worked out remarkably well.  I could grey out my power usage, the die rollers didn't feel too bad and were quick, and... I dunno.  I think I could keep on playing this way for this character.  

This is a crazy great tool.  

* - feature requests/suggestions:  How about enabling a toggle for power cards to let you put in your character's specific attack and damage that would show up at the bottom of the card (or as a separate daughter card).  Clicking on the specific values would automagically run a die roller and spit out the result.  

* - similarly a special card for your character's vital bits -- stats, skill values, HPs, defences, etc) would be grand.  For the stats/skills, as per previous paragraph, clicking on them would generate a value roll.  For the HPs, clicking on it would let you enter a + or - value, and it would adjust your current HP total.  Clicking on a healing surge will apply a surge, and you can enter in a bonus.  That kind of thing, and it/they can be reset via the rest menu/option already in the tool.

* - oh, new thought -- the ability to dim items to indicate the usage of their powers (or just the section of their powers that say either encounter or daily -- though that might be tough given some items have multiple powers, hmmm...)

Doublewumpus, serious rockage on your part in creating this tool, very well done.

peace,

Kannik


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## Dalamar (Apr 4, 2011)

Second the possibility of a special card for vital statistics, though personally I've just used the monster card as a base so far. Since you can name sections however you want, I've recorded racial abilities, class features and feats in there instead of powers.

Though that does remind me... The ability to add notes to the HP and Defenses section would be nice. For example, I'd love to be able to add "see Zombie Weakness" right next to the HP line for a zombie


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## Dr_Ruminahui (Apr 4, 2011)

Ignore my previous request for multiple dice rollers open - you can do that very easily.  Turns out I was trying to drag new ones down from the bar to where I needed them, when what I needed to do was simply click the bar to get a new one, then drag it to where I want it.


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## Mechanimal (Apr 5, 2011)

I finally got to actually try it during a session, and I've got to say it worked out pretty well. After doing that, I was able to think of a few more things that I think would be a great addition to this:


Able to highlight multiple items to drag as one
Auto pin items when they are together
Maximize and minimize certain blocks (when minimized, can only see block title)
Also, maybe there could be a way to have a certain block "always on top," if there isn't already a way to do that.

- What I mean on the last one is that I could put, for example, all of my encounter powers for my character together, and maximize one when I wish to read it, but overall it won't take up all of my screen, because I won't need to read all of them at once. As of now, I have to do some scrolling, which isn't a huge deal, but I figured it would still be a good thing to implement. Thanks again for the great application!


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## Nemesis Destiny (Apr 5, 2011)

After using it, my biggest and only real complaint about it so far is that my netbook doesn't have enough screen real estate to display a whole encounter's worth of critters all at once. I can't think of a "real" solution to this besides "get a _real_ laptop."

Adding flowcharting on the larger scale view, and a combat tracker in the zoomed view are my only two requests. Oh, and fixing your printing bug. 

Keep it up, and add a "donate" button!


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## eriktheguy (Apr 5, 2011)

Just want to reiterate how awesome this is, and bump for anyone who has missed it. This program is so sleek/minimalist/intuitive/smooth. It's like the chrome of D&D Tools.


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## Dalamar (Apr 6, 2011)

I've ran into what I think is a new bug, but I can't exactly replicate it on a consistent basis.

Sometimes, when I'm repeatedly alt+tabbing between power2ool and another window, power2ool seems to lose the Finnish/Swedish layout of my keyboard. I'm using Chrome on a Win7 32bit, if that matters.
The first time I ran into the bug, I was alt+tabbing between two different Chrome windows, and another time between the power2ool Chrome window and an Adobe Reader window.
The problem seems to be with power2ool only, as I was able to type normally in the address bar of the same Chrome window that power2ool was in.


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## TheClone (Apr 7, 2011)

I just watched the video, but it looks really cool! I will have to check for its supporting capabilities for DMs. Can you click monster powers if you used them? If so, an automated dice button for recharge would be cool. Can you import custom monsters from the old offline builder?

I wouldn't use it as a player, I guess, since I always print out the charakter sheets and maybe use markers if I used a power and that works okay. But DMing online is will be pretty usefull to put in all the monsters, one screen per encounter and then click out all the used powers, maybe track HP/status or click out the dead monsters and so on. As a DM its really nasty to print out all that stuff, because no table will be large enough to handle it easily, if you still need room for a keyboard and a mouse, as it is the case with online groups.


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## DNH (Apr 7, 2011)

power2ool is pretty much the dog's.  I have posted on here before about updating older monsters and older adventures to use the revised monster maths and power2ool is making this process a lot less painful than it might have been, especially with the "automatic stats" feature.  I am generating revised statblocks for all the monsters and NPCs then printing them out and pasting them in to the adventures, over the outdated ones.  

Kudos to doublewumpus, in short.  And a *bump* to get this thing noticed.


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## eamon (Apr 7, 2011)

Dalamar said:


> I've ran into what I think is a new bug, but I can't exactly replicate it on a consistent basis.
> 
> Sometimes, when I'm repeatedly alt+tabbing between power2ool and another window, power2ool seems to lose the Finnish/Swedish layout of my keyboard. I'm using Chrome on a Win7 32bit, if that matters.
> The first time I ran into the bug, I was alt+tabbing between two different Chrome windows, and another time between the power2ool Chrome window and an Adobe Reader window.
> The problem seems to be with power2ool only, as I was able to type normally in the address bar of the same Chrome window that power2ool was in.




You're probably inadvertently changing the input language: this is a windows misfeature.  If you press left-alt and shift, you switch languages; and IIRC this actually occurs on a per-process (who thought that made sense ???) level; and since chrome (and IE9) use a separate process for browser chrome and web content, you can easily - particularly when alt-tabbing - switch the input langage for web content only.

It's a terribly confusing misfeature.  See How to avoid keyboard layout automatically changing on windows - Super User for more discussion and a way to disable it.  Incidentally, if you always use the same input language anyhow, you can just remove the other languages from the keyboard layouts altogether - this doesn't affect spelling correct or currency or whatnot, it's just about keyboard layouts - and that has the slight advantage that you won't see an icon in the notification area concerning language settings.


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## Dr_Ruminahui (Apr 9, 2011)

DNH said:


> power2ool is pretty much the dog's.  I have posted on here before about updating older monsters and older adventures to use the revised monster maths and power2ool is making this process a lot less painful than it might have been, especially with the "automatic stats" feature.  I am generating revised statblocks for all the monsters and NPCs then printing them out and pasting them in to the adventures, over the outdated ones.
> 
> Kudos to doublewumpus, in short.  And a *bump* to get this thing noticed.




While I agree the tool is awesome, you want to be careful using the "automatic stats" feature... the levelling doesn't work quite right if you are relevelling a creature (rather than building one from scratch).  The thing to be the most careful of is that while it does change damage, it doesn't change the attack bonuses.

That said, I believe DW is going to put in a feature for relevelling existing monsters, which will be heavenly.


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## zoggynog (Apr 9, 2011)

doublewumpus said:


> [MENTION=65861]zoggynog[/MENTION] Thanks for the ideas! As far as 4x3 note card printing, do you just want them to change to be the same size as 4x3 cards? I'm not sure how that would work, do you print them out on large paper and then cut out the pieces you want, or do you print them directly onto 4x3 cardstock?




I currently print them directly to a 4X3 note card.   Most printers these days can handle the size.  The ability to print out item cards, power cards, and (improved) monster cards straight to a 4X3 card would be ground breaking...and make hand outs very nice.

Also figured I'd throw my hat in for snap-to-grid and a way to create tables so we can load them up with commonly used info.

Again, this is some awesome stuff, please keep it up.  Really appreciate coders who take time out to do this sort of a thing.  Even more so when they can pull something like this off.


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## DNH (Apr 11, 2011)

Dr_Ruminahui said:


> While I agree the tool is awesome, you want to be careful using the "automatic stats" feature... the levelling doesn't work quite right if you are relevelling a creature (rather than building one from scratch).  The thing to be the most careful of is that while it does change damage, it doesn't change the attack bonuses.
> 
> That said, I believe DW is going to put in a feature for relevelling existing monsters, which will be heavenly.



Thanks, Doc.  As it happens, I haven't had to relevel many monsters so far.  For those that I have, though - say I find an appropriate post-MM3 monster in the Compendium which is good for a direct swap but it's the wrong level - then I fire up the online (so-called) Monster Builder and use that slider tool, which is about the only good thing about the MB.

Note to DW - mmm, slider tool.


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## Ajar (Apr 11, 2011)

I tried this out on the weekend and I'm totally hooked. Love the interface, love having multiple virtual "desktops" to work with, and love the automatic formatting of things like monster powers.

Nice work.


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## eriktheguy (Apr 15, 2011)

The entry for Fomorian Slavedriver just says 'invalid markup'


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## Dr_Ruminahui (Apr 15, 2011)

I got something similar for a number of the high level solos - haven't tried searching them directly through the compendium, but I suspect the problem is on that end.


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## ScorpiusRisk (Apr 16, 2011)

A lot of monsters pre-MM3, especially in the higher levels, gives this error. I suspect its due to inconsistent setup.


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## brehobit (Apr 17, 2011)

*failing :-(*

Whole thing is failing for me.  Search works, but all cards come up blank.  Created a new account just to see if it was something wrong with my old one, but same problem...


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## Nemesis Destiny (Apr 17, 2011)

brehobit said:


> Whole thing is failing for me.  Search works, but all cards come up blank.  Created a new account just to see if it was something wrong with my old one, but same problem...



Have you tried it in other browsers? What browser are you using?


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## brehobit (Apr 17, 2011)

Nemesis Destiny said:


> Have you tried it in other browsers? What browser are you using?




Firefox.  It is working in IE though.  Thanks so much for the suggestion!


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## Nemesis Destiny (Apr 17, 2011)

brehobit said:


> Firefox.  It is working in IE though.  Thanks so much for the suggestion!



No problem. I used to do tech support and was a network admin for a while. Does it show? 

Out of curiosity, what version of FF were you using? It's been working for me since at least 3.6.x and now on 4.0.x, on three different machines (Vista, Vista on a laptop, and a netbook running 7 Starter). A friend of mine also uses it on his macbook with no difficulty, I'm assuming with Safari.

Actually, now that I think of it, he has pointed out that if he edits a creature or power by renaming it then when he logs back in, he does not need to re-login to the Compendium, but for me, that doesn't work. Any idea why [MENTION=6670472]doublewumpus[/MENTION] ?


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## doublewumpus (Apr 21, 2011)

Woooooooooops!

The notification e-mails from ENWorld stopped showing up, so I assumed the thread was dead. My bad!

Gods, I'm gonna have to work back through the thread to find things to respond to, but for now:

Re: brehobit's issues with Firefox
Not sure why he's having problems. P2 has been tested with FF 3.6 and 4.0, but not with anything older than that. Also, he might have some addon installed in Firefox that's blocking part or all of P2 from working.

Re: "Invalid Markup"
A number of monsters on the Compendium contain invalid XHTML (some tags are left open). Web browsers are designed to handle these errors gracefully, but it makes the XML parser that P2 uses barf all over itself. P2 _tries_ to fix invalid markup when it encounters it (this happens a lot more often than you think) but it still breaks sometimes. A list of offending cards would be useful, though (PM me the name of the monster, or e-mail me).

Re: Any problems people might be having with the printing interface
These bugs have been really hard to fix, since I can't seem to replicate them on my machine. I've added a "Not working?" link on the top left that will e-mail me a set of diagnostics if you click on it.

Re: Monster level slider
Most definitely! I don't have a copy of the Dungeon Master's Kit (which I believe has the most recent level-adjustment rules), which I've been meaning to buy. My local game store never seems to stock the damn thing.

[-]PS: Does anyone know if this forum suports HTML in posts? Specifically iframes in posts? Or embedded flash movies in posts? I leave it up to your imaginations why I'm asking this question.[/-] *Nevermind, looks like HTML is disabled. Ah, well.*


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## doublewumpus (Apr 21, 2011)

Nemesis Destiny said:


> Actually, now that I think of it, he has pointed out that if he edits a creature or power by renaming it then when he logs back in, he does not need to re-login to the Compendium, but for me, that doesn't work. Any idea why [MENTION=6670472]doublewumpus[/MENTION] ?




It's possible to stay "logged in" to the Compendium even if you log out of Power2ool, depending on how long your browser decides to hang on to the Compendium's auth cookie. So, the next time you log in to Power2ool, it'll start fetching your cards from the Compendium without needing to ask you to sign in. If he completely quits his browser and then tries it, he'll probably be prompted to re-auth with the Compendium.


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## Dalamar (Apr 21, 2011)

No real new problems with the program so far, and it even stood the test of one session use. Personally, I felt it helped, though my laptop did take a sizable amount of space behind the DM screen. Well, I did run into the maximum number of spaces problem, but that's not a problem per say.

Some suggestions, though:
1) Could you add "Property:" to autofills with item cards? It's pretty common in items, after all
2) Would it be possible to indent more than once in power cards? For example, if I want to do a Secondary Attack line that is indented, and then indent all the information regarding it further
3) How hard would it be that for items that have powers, each power would could be double-clicked to be used separately?

Keep up the good work!


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## TheClone (Apr 24, 2011)

I recently used your tool to plan two Dark Sun encounters. If was great to put down the stat cards and print them. Much better than the official tools in any verison I've tried so far. auto stats seems also cool, but what I often do is modify existing mosnters. And what the MB is not able to do so far is "minionizing" monsters. Just take a monster and give it minion stats. I think there must be some (semi) official rules for that. Something like gibe it 1 HP and raise all defenses by one. That would be a cool feature, although it's more a feature for the MB itself, but that'll take time.

Everything else went good for the first try except for one thing: My Opera is warning me that I'm sending data to the sever every time I serach a monster. Any idea how I can get rid of that?


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## Ferghis (Apr 24, 2011)

doublewumpus said:


> Re: "Invalid Markup"
> A number of monsters on the Compendium contain invalid XHTML (some tags are left open). Web browsers are designed to handle these errors gracefully, but it makes the XML parser that P2 uses barf all over itself. P2 _tries_ to fix invalid markup when it encounters it (this happens a lot more often than you think) but it still breaks sometimes. A list of offending cards would be useful, though (PM me the name of the monster, or e-mail me).



I urge you to add a button that simply reports bad links. Andrew Reutter did this in iPlay4e and it seems to have worked really well.


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## Stumblewyk (May 6, 2011)

Hey [MENTION=6670472]doublewumpus[/MENTION],

Just wanted to chime in and say I used power2ool in a recent gaming session, and it worked well.  I've used a laptop to DM for years now, and p2 has quickly become my defacto tool.

Thank you.

Now...I've decided I wanted to build a random encounters table (based on the one used by Greg Bilsland), so I made a work space for each encounter, and filled with monster cards from the compendium, and I ran into the "maximum number of work spaces" issue.  I'd like to petition to have that cap extended, but I understand that's probably on the back burner as far as issues that need to be addressed.

All-in-all though, a GREAT tool.


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## eriktheguy (May 9, 2011)

Just gonna come back every week to bump this and say thanks.


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## Nemesis Destiny (May 9, 2011)

This deserves weekly bumpage, until every player and DM has tried it! 

Awesome tool. I use it every week when I run games and several of my players use it to track their powers.

One of my few complaints is that you can't zoom in or out on the workspaces - my netbook that I run games on can't show enough cards and data at once, and my main system displays everything too small - but this is more a matter of the netbook having crappy 1024x600 resolution and the other machine using 1920x1080 and being too far away to read well.


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## doublewumpus (May 10, 2011)

Hey guys, sorry for the lack of updates recently. I'm in the middle of moving, which is a bit of a nightmare. The next feature release might also have been a bit much to try to do at once. Sigh. BUT. Something new soon, I promise.


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## jeffh (May 10, 2011)

From the videos, it looks like it could be very useful. However, it doesn't seem to work on my system; it just gets stuck forever on a page that says "Connecting socket" and never finishes loading.


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## Nemesis Destiny (May 11, 2011)

jeffh said:


> From the videos, it looks like it could be very useful. However, it doesn't seem to work on my system; it just gets stuck forever on a page that says "Connecting socket" and never finishes loading.



This happened to me a couple of times as well. I closed my browser, reopened it and it worked.


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## Kelvor Ravenstar (May 11, 2011)

I, too, would like to second the request for viewing the workspaces at different sizes or resolutions.
I use Power2ool from my laptop (my only personal computer, and I'm not going to do D&D planning at work), and when it comes to the bigger monster stat blocks, they can become too large to be useable, since the entire image cannot be viewed all at once.
Instead of printing the workspace, I use screen captures as the fastest way for transfering the monster stat blocks into the word documents I compile my adventures in. When I can't see the entire stat block, I can't capture it all as one image, which causes problems.


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## Nemesis Destiny (May 11, 2011)

Kelvor Ravenstar said:


> I, too, would like to second the request for viewing the workspaces at different sizes or resolutions.
> I use Power2ool from my laptop (my only personal computer, and I'm not going to do D&D planning at work), and when it comes to the bigger monster stat blocks, they can become too large to be useable, since the entire image cannot be viewed all at once.
> Instead of printing the workspace, I use screen captures as the fastest way for transfering the monster stat blocks into the word documents I compile my adventures in. When I can't see the entire stat block, I can't capture it all as one image, which causes problems.



It would be nice to have an option that allowed stat blocks to break into another column like they do in Dungeon when they're too long for a page; maybe set the default break length at 600px, but have it be a user-adjustable option (netbook users might want it at 450 or 500, while folks with 1920x1200 screens might want to set it at 1050 or 1100). Just a thought.


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## jeffh (May 11, 2011)

Nemesis Destiny said:


> This happened to me a couple of times as well. I closed my browser, reopened it and it worked.




Seems to have taken a full restart in my case... but no matter, it's working now! Looking forward to playing around with it.


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## Saracenus (May 17, 2011)

Hey. Heads up.

I just tried to access items in the tool and nothing is showing up in browse or search mode.
EDIT: I can view classes but as soon as I click on a power level nothing shows up.

I have tried it with FF 4.0 and IE 9.

Today was the compendium update so maybe the changes messed it up... I know they are implementing rarity as a search criteria now.

Thanks,


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## doublewumpus (May 18, 2011)

Saracenus said:


> Hey. Heads up.
> 
> I just tried to access items in the tool and nothing is showing up in browse or search mode.
> EDIT: I can view classes but as soon as I click on a power level nothing shows up.
> ...




Yep, that's exactly what happened. I'll post a fix tonight after power2ool finishes its server migration.  Thanks for the heads up!


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## doublewumpus (May 18, 2011)

Phew! Server migration complete. Hopefully. Power2ool is actually hosted from a legit VPS now, not a random computer in my living room. This should greatly decrease the frequency of cat-related server crashes.

I'm sure something got broken during the migration, so let me know if you run into anything that's not behaving as it should.

Oh, and p2 should be updated to work with the new items API. And I finally got around to adding the Assassin to the class browser.


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## Truename (May 18, 2011)

doublewumpus said:


> Phew! Server migration complete. Hopefully. Power2ool is actually hosted from a legit VPS now, not a random computer in my living room. This should greatly decrease the frequency of cat-related server crashes.
> 
> I'm sure something got broken during the migration, so let me know if you run into anything that's not behaving as it should.
> 
> Oh, and p2 should be updated to work with the new items API. And I finally got around to adding the Assassin to the class browser.




Thanks again for your hard work on this! P2 is hands-down my favorite D&D tool.


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## Highland Raider (May 26, 2011)

*Mighty [big] tool*

Wink wink nudge nudge. Ehem.

No,, really, power2ool is an awesome piece of work. Something that WOTC should aspire toward as a piece of online software that is easy to use, pretty to look at, and actually works. I will be most happy when you get rituals and feats and traps [I think that's the other thing missing] up and running.

My only _complaint _would be the spacing of things when printing.   It doesn't seem to matter if I just dump stat blocks [monsters, items, or powers] in one big pile or carefully arrange them on the screen--they print only one or two to a page wasting a whole bunch of paper. Maybe I'm doing something wrong here, but I can't seem to get anything arranged more conservatively.

Other than that, keep up the good work on this project.


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## jbear (May 27, 2011)

I can't connect 'connecting socket' and that's it. I've tried at least 10 times, and restarted computer.

I'm using Chrome. 

How long does it take for other people to connect to this page?


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## Bagpuss (May 27, 2011)

What sort of firewall are you behind, I have the same problem from work but not from home.


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## doublewumpus (May 27, 2011)

jbear said:


> I can't connect 'connecting socket' and that's it. I've tried at least 10 times, and restarted computer.
> 
> I'm using Chrome.
> 
> How long does it take for other people to connect to this page?




Yeah, some corporate or educational firewalls block the port that P2 uses. Try it at home - if it still doesn't work there, let me know. This turned out to be a much more common problem than I had anticipated, so I'll try to implement a workaround for you guys soon.


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## jbear (May 27, 2011)

Just a normal windows 7 firewall. Nod 32 anti virus. I'll try and disable it and see if that is the problem.

The most important function for me is to be able to arrange various monster stat columns onto a single page. Can that be done with the old Monster Builder (the non-online version)?

Someone mentioned upthread that they could only print one per page, which is the same as the monster builder itself. 

Anyway, looking forward to checking it out when I connect.


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## doublewumpus (May 30, 2011)

jbear said:


> The most important function for me is to be able to arrange various monster stat columns onto a single page. Can that be done with the old Monster Builder (the non-online version)?




When you print a workspace, power2ool will try to fit your monsters onto the same page. However, it's not very good at arranging them at the moment, so you usually get only 2-3 monsters per page (3-4 if you print in landscape).


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## Nemesis Destiny (May 30, 2011)

I printed some ally minions for my PCs this weekend, and I too had some printing issues. They printed fine, but I could not control the order in which they appeared (I was trying to group them in certain combinations to minimize the amount of cutting I would have to do).

One other thing occured to me while I was doing this - being able to copy and paste my homebrew stuff, or any monster card post-edit would be fantastic. Saves a lot of typing. As would the ability to juggle the items between workspaces (I know this has been asked before), and maybe have a workspace-neutral "stash" for your custom material (not sure how this would affect your storage costs - I don't think they're THAT big).

Otherwise, once again, power2ool made my DMing experience immeasurably better


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## Pour (May 30, 2011)

I've actually copied blocks from the ready to print window, as they are treated like images, and managed to fit several into word doc pages for printing. I use the same technique for fitting them into my general adventure notes and when posting to my campaign blog.

Thanks again for this amazing tool!


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## Highland Raider (May 31, 2011)

Actually, through a bit of experimentation, I've found a way to print to paper more than 2 blocks per page. This takes several steps, so if you're in a hurry, the copy-and-paste of blocks from the ready-to-print page might be the better way to go.

Anyway, print as PDF first using doPDF or CutePDF or similar print driver. Then, using OpenOffice with the Oracle PDF import extension installed, you can pull up the document in Draw and cut-and-paste blocks to arrange them as desired prior to printing.

Granted, you require a PDF print driver [or Acrobat I'd think might do so as well], OpenOffice, and the PDF import extension. I already had the first two and had to add the extension, so that wasn't a hassle. Being able to rearrange the images so that I can print 4 blocks  [or 5, haven't managed to squeeze more than that] is worth a little extra time.


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## brehobit (Jun 2, 2011)

Issues:

Some monsters don't parse.  Actually quite a few.  (Warcasters, dragonshields are two I've hit recently)

Really need more than 10 slots to work with!  

An undo on a delete would be _really_ nice.


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## Thanlis (Jun 6, 2011)

Any way to copy and paste cards?


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## Nullzone (Jun 7, 2011)

Select the "Print cards" option -- once they're rendered on the next page, they're each a .png image file that you can do with as you please.


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## Feetz (Jun 7, 2011)

Would it be possible to include the ability to edit what's in the Auto-Complete library?  For example if I'm creating a group of similar monsters I'd like to be able to give them all the same trait.  I could program into the Auto-Complete the name of the trait and it would fill it in for me.


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## ScorpiusRisk (Jun 7, 2011)

That would be nice. Luckily, for now, you can copy and past the text for traits and other powers.

I think what Thanlis might be asking for, is the ability to duplicate cards, or move cards from one desktop to another. This, I believe, is in the works.


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## doublewumpus (Jun 9, 2011)

ScorpiusRisk said:


> That would be nice. Luckily, for now, you can copy and past the text for traits and other powers.
> 
> I think what Thanlis might be asking for, is the ability to duplicate cards, or move cards from one desktop to another. This, I believe, is in the works.




Indeed it is. Apologies guys, my life has been topsy-turvy with moving and a new job, so things haven't come out as fast as I'd like. I have a working prototype of those features, but they still need a little work before they can be released...


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## Thanlis (Jun 12, 2011)

doublewumpus said:


> Indeed it is. Apologies guys, my life has been topsy-turvy with moving and a new job, so things haven't come out as fast as I'd like. I have a working prototype of those features, but they still need a little work before they can be released...




Cool cool. I'm patient.


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## DeusInnomen (Jun 16, 2011)

doublewumpus said:


> Yeah, some corporate or educational firewalls block the port that P2 uses. Try it at home - if it still doesn't work there, let me know. This turned out to be a much more common problem than I had anticipated, so I'll try to implement a workaround for you guys soon.




Just adding my voice in here. I keep getting told how cool Power2ool is, but I can only use it at home. We have a ridiculously overbearing firewall at work with zero chance of opening up ports on it. That wouldn't be a problem, but I do the vast majority of my game planning at work. :/

I'd love a workaround eventually, but until then, I can only sigh wistfully at the login page.


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## Pour (Jun 17, 2011)

Last night I was disconnected from Power2ool, close to 11PM I think. Still can't connect to the socket. Is the site down, or am I having issues?

EDIT: Working again!


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## Nemesis Destiny (Jun 19, 2011)

I just thought of a new suggestion - collapsing cards.

If you could place a small toggle button, like "minimize/maximize" on one side of the card (perhaps on the opposite side as the X) when you hold "shift" that would collapse the card to only show the title line, you could fit a lot more cards on one screen. This is especially an issue at lower resolutions, such as netbooks.

It would be swell, particularly with higher level characters, and even more so with ones that have the spellbook class feature. Or combats with a lot of monsters. Huge treasure hoards. And so on.


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## fuzzlewump (Jun 23, 2011)

First of all, amazing program!

I'm getting an "Invalid markup" error on monsters from MM3, Dark Sun creature catalogue, and from the first MV. The MV:Threats to Nentir Vale seems to work fine though.


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## minion (Jun 23, 2011)

Totally awesome tool.


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## doublewumpus (Jun 23, 2011)

fuzzlewump said:


> First of all, amazing program!
> 
> I'm getting an "Invalid markup" error on monsters from MM3, Dark Sun creature catalogue, and from the first MV. The MV:Threats to Nentir Vale seems to work fine though.



Wizards must have changed something in their Compendium markup, because I just got a slew of e-mails reporting more-than-average levels of breakage.

I'll try to post a fix some time tonight


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## Nemesis Destiny (Jun 23, 2011)

Several things are broken in the compendium right now and they are aware of it - this is supposed to be fixed in next week's update (06/28).


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## doublewumpus (Jun 24, 2011)

Well, I pushed out an update that should fix the current spate of "Invalid Markup" problems. 

This update also fixes all of the other "Invalid Markup" errors that I was aware of. Let me know if you discover a monster that still doesn't render...


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## Pour (Jun 24, 2011)

You are the man! All fixed for me.


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## TheClone (Jul 25, 2011)

When I print out the cards, the quality is not good. It is readable with a good printer, but with a moderate one you can't make out some parts. I'm using Opera. Is this a browser thing? Ir have others experienced the same? An example of a PDF print: http://www.herzliches-rollenspiel.de/herzlich_data/echos/MagicItems.pdf Looks same with different PDF printers. Used FreePDF and PDFCreator. Any ideas?


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## ender_wiggin (Aug 8, 2011)

I'm having trouble with printing. The print preview will fail when I push the button to do so, and I will be unable to print to anything (including pdf). My guess is that this is due to incompatibility with the latest build of chrome.


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## Highland Raider (Aug 18, 2011)

*Cards lost somewhere on workspace*

I've had an odd problem the last few times I've tried working with power2ool. I'd dumped some monsters to the workspace, then printed them. Later, when I cleared the workspace and dumped other monsters on the workspace and printed those, some of the monsters from the earlier group still appear. I've done this a handful of times and each time I've had several monster cards from an earlier batch still show when I attempt to print a new batch. I dump the browser cache each time I shut down the browser. I've scrolled around the workspace to see if maybe, just maybe, I could find the "lost" cards, but no luck. Any idea what might be happening? Why I have cards showing up in print that do not appear on the workspace?

Any help/feedback would be appreciated.

Thanks.


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## Feetz (Aug 20, 2011)

Is there a way to remove a field from a card?  For example, I'm creating a vehicle for Gamma World.  I don't need things like xp, initiative, or ability scores on the monster card.  Right now I'm just leaving them blank but it would be nice if I could just remove or hide them to make the Monster Card look cleaner.

Your tool has been a big help with my Gamma World Campaign considering there is no digital support from WOTC.  Thank you.


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## Radiating Gnome (Aug 21, 2011)

This weekend I had games both Saturday and Sunday to DM. Tons of prep, lots of work. I could never have put myself together as well as I have without your tool.  

My one suggestion would be to put up a donation button or something. I'd pay for this tool, and I'm sure I'm not alone. 

rg


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## ssheftall (Aug 21, 2011)

First: Love the tool!

Only problem I see on a quick glance, compendium/classes page, strikers list overlaps tabs at bottom. (my interface: Windows 7/Chrome)

Traps!  Please!

Already been said, but a disease track generator would be cool also.

Thanks, this is great!

-S.


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## MortalPlague (Sep 1, 2011)

Two things.

*BUMP*!  It would be a shame if people missed this tool.

Secondly, I've been using this tool for a while now, mostly for putting together custom monsters.  It's been a great help.

Is WotC aware of this tool?  Why don't they hire Wumpus to develop it and replace their lousy digital offerings?  Lol...

/only partly kidding...


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## Radiating Gnome (Sep 1, 2011)

The functionality that allows us to make our own monsters (and magic items) is incredibly cool and useful. 

I'm ready for my pro account, though: I'm outgrowing my ten spaces!  

-rg


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## Nemesis Destiny (Sep 1, 2011)

Radiating Gnome said:


> The functionality that allows us to make our own monsters (and magic items) is incredibly cool and useful.
> 
> I'm ready for my pro account, though: I'm outgrowing my ten spaces!
> 
> -rg



Tell me about it. I've started using multiple email accounts for more spaces, but it's getting confusing!


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## Radiating Gnome (Sep 1, 2011)

Is there a way to move home-made cards from one window to another?  I could make do with just my ten spaces if I could create a dump for my home-grown stuff I don't want to lose. 

-rg


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## ScorpiusRisk (Sep 2, 2011)

There is no way to move cards from one space to another at this time, but the author is aware of this desire and has stated it is something he is working on.


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## Radiating Gnome (Sep 17, 2011)

Okay, for those of you who may not have noticed, the tools were updated yesterday. You may need to clear your browser cache to get it to work but HOLY CATS AND DOGS the new features make this even more awesome:

1. Unlimited spaces!  
2. A "pocket" that allows you to move cards from one space to another
3. Cards can now be "duplicated" (shift-hover to see the option)

And some other usability/bugfixes/kewl stuff.  

This is absolute dynamite, dude.  Thank you thank you thank you.  So, like, where's the "donate" button?   

-rg


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## ssheftall (Sep 17, 2011)

Given the announcement this week...possibility of direct XML import of monster data?


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## Nemesis Destiny (Sep 18, 2011)

ssheftall said:


> Given the announcement this week...possibility of direct XML import of monster data?



This would be excellent.

Also, is the complete changelog available somewhere other than his twitter feed? I can't be bothered with tweets.


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## Radiating Gnome (Sep 18, 2011)

Nemesis, here:

https://power2ool.com/changes.txt

(there's a link to it on the home page, too)

-rg


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## Pour (Sep 18, 2011)

I LOVE this etool! That is all...


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## Nemesis Destiny (Sep 20, 2011)

The updates to the tool are FANTASTIC!

Please keep up the good work,  @doublewumpus !

there are only 3 things that could possibly make this any better:

* collapsing power blocks by double-clicking the title
* getting support for feats, rituals, and traps
* a "character sheet mode" option integrating everything (doesn't have to be fancy, just a way to organize powers and feats with some basic preformatted stat and skill blocks)


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## ScorpiusRisk (Sep 20, 2011)

Great work! With the new pocket, I actually ended up with less spaces, as I was able to group things better.


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## Arksorn (Nov 4, 2011)

Is the main page down? All I see is grey. It was working last night, but I loaded explorer 9 since then. Any know issues with explorer 9?


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## Nemesis Destiny (Nov 4, 2011)

Working fine for me on FF6. Working fine also in ie9 - though I had to install Flash first (i rarely use IE).


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## Arksorn (Nov 4, 2011)

Thank you Nemesis

I tried Chrome and it is working fine. I must have something hosed up with IE9.


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## Nemesis Destiny (Nov 4, 2011)

IE 9 disables all plugins by default now in order to improve performance. You may need to manually re-enable Flash. Mine prompts me to do so, but maybe yours doesn't?


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