Character Builder Lite

[ChicagoChris]

Here's a new version:

CharacterBuilderLite0.9.1.zip

Changes:

• Wingdings 3 fonts have been removed from the program. The Up/Down arrows in drop slots have been changed to userdrawn arrows, and the Left/Right arrows to expand/reduce the Details window in various screens have changed to ">>" and "<<".
• The five new trees mentioned upthread were added.
• Added monk form feats and the druid natural fighting feat.
• Added a note to Destinies help window that twists can be reordered by dragging.
• Added Tools => Trees List to make it easy to see what trees are done and what trees are not. 10 down, 38 to go.

Thanks for all the work!

Feats that can be only taken 3 times are allowed to be taken much more than that - Might need a new flag:

FeatName: Natural Fighting
Group: Heroic, Melee
Class: Druid 9
Flags: Repeat, *Max3*

or even

Flags: Repeat3

[TPICKRELL]

I spent a few minutes throwing up an existing build. I really like your data entry scheme, its very easy to enter the basic data.

A couple of possible minor issues:

1. Don't see Improved Martial Arts in the feat list
2. Isn't Stunning Fist restricted to the Monk Special feat slots?
3. Doesn't Vorpal strikes have a monk level requirement

Thanks for this!

Grubbby of Khyber

[Theolin]

Thanks for all the work!

Feats that can be only taken 3 times are allowed to be taken much more than that - Might need a new flag:

FeatName: Natural Fighting
Group: Heroic, Melee
Class: Druid 9
Flags: Repeat, *Max3*

or even

Flags: Repeat3

Or to make it easy
natrual fighting 1
natrual fighting 2
natrual fighting 3

and make the previous one required to take the next
cheezie I know ... but simple

[Ancient]

Here's a new version:

CharacterBuilderLite0.9.1.zip

Changes:

• Wingdings 3 fonts have been removed from the program. The Up/Down arrows in drop slots have been changed to userdrawn arrows, and the Left/Right arrows to expand/reduce the Details window in various screens have changed to ">>" and "<<".
• The five new trees mentioned upthread were added.
• Added monk form feats and the druid natural fighting feat.
• Added a note to Destinies help window that twists can be reordered by dragging.
• Added Tools => Trees List to make it easy to see what trees are done and what trees are not. 10 down, 38 to go.

Amazing stuff!

I don't see the armor and shield proficiency feats such as heavy armor. My apologies if this has already been mentioned.

[EllisDee37]

Thanks for all the work!

Feats that can be only taken 3 times are allowed to be taken much more than that - Might need a new flag:

FeatName: Natural Fighting
Group: Heroic, Melee
Class: Druid 9
Flags: Repeat, *Max3*

or even

Flags: Repeat3

Flags are just for boolean values. I'm thinking I'll pull it out into its own field:

Repeat: 0 (repeats forever, like toughness, great ability, skill mastery, etc...)
Repeat: 3 (repeats up to three times)

(EDIT: Actually, I'll probably set unlimited repeat feats to 99 or something just to make the coding simpler.)

As a long-time database programmer, I must say that it is quite nice working with these ini files. Since the internal data the program uses is never saved to disk -- it's re-processed from the raw ini files each time the program starts -- I can change the underlying data structure without a care in the world. Such a luxury!

1. Don't see Improved Martial Arts in the feat list
2. Isn't Stunning Fist restricted to the Monk Special feat slots?
3. Doesn't Vorpal strikes have a monk level requirement

Hmmm, solid questions....

Improved martial arts is in there, currently set as requiring 12 monk levels and 21 character levels. Part of groups Epic and Melee. Let me know if you should be able to select it but can't.

Stunning Fist can be taken as a regular feat, yes. You may be thinking of Fists of Light/Darkness, which can only be taken as a monk class feat on level 3. If you're not mixing them up, stunning fist is just a regular bonus feat. Deflect Arrows is the special case, a bonus feat that can't be taken as a regular feat. (See the note at the bottom of this page.)

Good catch on Vorpal Strikes, thanks much. Just now added the Monk 12 prereq.

I don't see the armor and shield proficiency feats such as heavy armor. My apologies if this has already been mentioned.

Those are selectors of the feat named "Proficiency." The proficiency feat is kind of kludged in terms of weapons, but the armor and shield aspects should be working properly.

The problem with martial weapon proficiency is that there are a ridiculous number of individual weapons. Assigning each one individually as a granted feat is prohibitively inelegant, but I don't currently support "take all selectors" logic in the feats file. Meaning I can't easily give fighters all martial proficiencies while giving other classes just a few. My solution was to code Proficiency: Martial Weapon as a single thing, and then auto-grant that one entry to the appropriate classes. For other classes, my thinking is that odds are if you're spending a feat on a martial proficiency, you're only spending ONE feat on martial proficiency. So just pick the generic feat and manually add in the weapon type in the output. That's the thought process, anyway. If that becomes untenable I may be able to just use selector 0 as "all." (Selector lists start at 1.)

EDIT: Now that I've written that out, I can't think of any reason that "selector 0" can't work as a "counts as all selectors" flag. So that's good. Look for Martial Weapon proficiency to get pulled out of the Proficiency feat and made into its own feat with a proper list of selectors in a later version. That's a fairly low priority, but it's on the list.

[TPICKRELL]

...
Improved martial arts is in there, currently set as requiring 12 monk levels and 21 character levels. Part of groups Epic and Melee. Let me know if you should be able to select it but can't.
...

Thanks, the build I used is one variant of a generic past life grinding build that I use. This variant is 8 Rogue/6 Monk/6 Fighter, so Improved Martial Arts isn't a valid feat for the build. The Show All checkbox (as opposed to the show all filter) does show it in the list.

But, if the "Show All" filtered list is supposed to be filtered down to the ones the build qualifies for, then their are some additional issues. For example:

The list that doesn't show Improved Martial arts does show all the casting meta feats like Empower Healing, Empower, Extend... And without the appropriate class levels, I don't qualify for those either.

[EllisDee37]

But, if the "Show All" filtered list is supposed to be filtered down to the ones the build qualifies for, then their are some additional issues. For example:

The list that doesn't show Improved Martial arts does show all the casting meta feats like Empower Healing, Empower, Extend... And without the appropriate class levels, I don't qualify for those either.

That sounds like a bug; the "can cast spells" logic is in the same hard-req code as required class levels: can't be dropped anywhere (as opposed to drops with errors), and won't show up unless you click the Show All checkbox.

What happens when you try to drag one of the metamagics? Do any drop slots light up?

EDIT: Oops, I do see a bug throwing together a quickie 8/6/6 rogue/fighter/monk: When I set the Show All checkbox to checked, I can see tmetamagics as expected, but it actually lets me drag them into slots without even showing an error drop, like with a feat missing a feat req. That's clearly not right. I guess for the time being, treat the Show All checkbox as a reference only; don't drag anything when it's checked TRUE. For some reason it appears to disable quite a bit of error checking.

Thanks much for the head's up.

[TPICKRELL]

That sounds like a bug; the "can cast spells" logic is in the same hard-req code as required class levels: can't be dropped anywhere (as opposed to drops with errors), and won't show up unless you click the Show All checkbox.

What happens when you try to drag one of the metamagics? Do any drop slots light up?

Out of curiosity, did the build at any point have spellcasting class levels? The logic underneath the hood on how to handle changes to the classes in the overview screen is fairly complex, and could easily have bugs. So like if you started with, say, artificer levels, then switched it out to all non-casting classes, I wouldn't be surprised if there's some lingering "can cast spells" flags left over.

If I drag empower healing, all of the general class feat slots open up and I was able to drop it on the level 6 general feat slot.

And no. I selected Rogue/Monk/Fighter as my 3 classes first then played around with the leveling order, but I never selected any other classes.

The meta feats also persist across sessions, so closing down the planner and restarting it then loading the file still shows the meta feats.

[EllisDee37]

I've never played a Half-Elf, and don't even own Half-Elf so I can't test in-game. What do the racial core selectors look like when you first click on them to choose something? The "Elven Dexterity or Human Adaptability" ones, and the "Elven Accuracy or Human Versatility" ones?

Looking at wiki they appear to be a two-level selector, which would be unique in all the trees. Can someone post a screen shot of what pops up when you click on them before you actually make the choice?

[Ayseifn]

Works well under Wine too, just need to install vb6run and smooth sailing.

It's great to finally have a program to make builds with so thank you very much for the work.

[Vargouille]

Cool stuff, still!

Two more trees are in: Spellsinger and Warchanter. Looks like it's around 30 minutes per tree.

Such jealousy.

Only *mumble mumble* trees left...*cries*.

Ah, memories.

[EllisDee37]

Works well under Wine too, just need to install vb6run and smooth sailing.

That's awesome. I know next to nothing about Linux, and had never even heard of Wine. So it's pretty cool that it works.

[Ctype]

Looks very good - thank you for your effort.

Im very happy to see that the one thing that annoyed me in the other builder works in yours.

That is skillpoints when tome is applied. If you start with even int you should get a skillpoint extra att lvl 7 when +2 tome kicks in and another one at 15 when +4 tome kicks in. Never worked in the other builder but it does in this one. I have only tested the program for a few minutes and i will be back with more feedback when i find something else.

Keep up the good work.

[mna]

That's awesome. I know next to nothing about Linux, and had never even heard of Wine. So it's pretty cool that it works.

Oh yes, starts and seems to work after installing vb6run. Though, crashed with "subscript out of range" when I tried to take Graceful Death on a Tempest/Warpriest (using my 12/7/1 build to test this, Ubuntu 12.04 / Wine 1.6.1). Does that happen on Windows too?

Still much better than Ron's planner, been annoying to have to find Windows somewhere just to use that.


I can't seem to take a lesser dragonmark, either. When I load your kensei warpriest file which already has that, it is there initially, but if I remove it I can't get it back.

[Failedlegend]

Still much better than Ron's planner, been annoying to have to find Windows somewhere just to use that.

Please don't disrespect Ron, even if LSDs planner turns out to be 1000x better Ron was and always will be worthy of thanks and praise of the entire DDO Community & Staff. Beside IIRC LSD said Ron helped her (to what degree I can't remember)

[EllisDee37]

Please don't disrespect Ron, even if LSDs planner turns out to be 1000x better Ron was and always will be worthy of thanks and praise of the entire DDO Community & Staff. Beside IIRC LSD said Ron helped her (to what degree I can't remember)

To clarify, he's not saying Ron's planner is bad. He's saying he couldn't run Ron's planner at all because it doesn't run on Wine.

The "much better" part isn't referring to the planners themselves, it's referring to the idea that mine will run on his computer. To run Ron's planner he has to find another computer to use that has Windows installed.

To your larger point, I strongly agree. No disrespect to Ron's planner or the team behind it. They've consistently done great work and I look forward to version 5.

[EllisDee37]

Oh yes, starts and seems to work after installing vb6run. Though, crashed with "subscript out of range" when I tried to take Graceful Death on a Tempest/Warpriest (using my 12/7/1 build to test this, Ubuntu 12.04 / Wine 1.6.1). Does that happen on Windows too?

That's a bug for everyone, not just you.

Right now, any abilities that point to other trees will throw a "subscript out of range" error if the tree it's pointing to isn't part of your build. In this example, Deflect Arrows (which is the next core after Graceful Death, and gets verified once you add Graceful Death) points to the Swashbuckler tree, which isn't part of your build. So it throws the error.

To fix it yourself for the time being, search Enhancements.txt for "Graceful Death", then in the Deflect Arrows entry right after it, delete the line that looks something like:

None: Swashbuckler Tier 2: Deflect Arrows

I can't seem to take a lesser dragonmark, either. When I load your kensei warpriest file which already has that, it is there initially, but if I remove it I can't get it back.

If you mean the feat, it's named Least Dragonmark, and will have selectors based on your race. One thing to try to see if it appears for you is to click on the feat slot where you want to put it, which filters the list to show feats that go in that slot. If it still doesn't appear, try checking the Show All checkbox.

[EllisDee37]

That "foreign tree" bug is all fixed now, not sure when I'll upload a new version. I wasn't planning to for a couple days, after I had added a bunch more trees, but that bug will infect quite a few trees so sooner is probably better than later. Figure tomorrow morning, or maybe early afternoon. I wanna see how many trees I can get done.

In the meantime, any time you run into one of those Subscript out of Range errors when enhancements point to other trees, you can patch it yourself by deleting the foreign tree pointer out of Enhancements.txt.

[TPICKRELL]

Looks very good - thank you for your effort.

Im very happy to see that the one thing that annoyed me in the other builder works in yours.

That is skillpoints when tome is applied. If you start with even int you should get a skillpoint extra att lvl 7 when +2 tome kicks in and another one at 15 when +4 tome kicks in. Never worked in the other builder but it does in this one. I have only tested the program for a few minutes and i will be back with more feedback when i find something else.

Keep up the good work.

Just a point of clarification. Tomes work differently on the life you first eat the tome from when they are auto applied in a subsequent life.

Ron's planner works properly for the life in which you eat the tome, as the tome has a min level that requires you to have taken that level before you can eat the tome. On subsequent lives the tome is auto applied by the system at the beginning of the leveling process, so you can get an extra skill point when the INT tome kicks in and makes your INT even.

While auto-applied tomes are the norm now days, they were not possible for most of the life of Ron's planner, because you lost all of your tomes when you TR'd...

Also, there is a fairly easy work around for this. If you are going to get the tome benefits from an auto applied tome from a previous life, just tell Ron's planner that you ate the tome one level earlier. IE tell it that you ate auto-applied tomes at levels 2/6/10/14 and/or 18 instead of 3/7/11/15/19.

[EllisDee37]

As I enter the Divine Disciple tree, what rules should I enforce for efficient metamagics? Should I make them anti-reqs with all other trees' versions of the same? Or just ignore foreign trees?

I think there's a couple that still stack with each other in-game.