Remaker's All-In-One Feedback Thread

Hi guys. We've been using D20 Pro for a few months now and are very happy with the results. This platform has made it possible for my old gaming group, now spread out over four states, to play again. Even if we still met face-to-face, I would still want D20 Pro to run the more complicated battles.

We're all upgrading to judge licenses and we're spreading the word to everyone we meet. My biggest complaint is that D20 Prop is 'only' twice as fast as running a normal game, when it could be three times as fast

I've been keeping notes of things that pester as about the current version. Don't take these as demands or complaints, but rather as friendly feedback.

1) Initiative There have been a lot of times when I wanted to rearrange the initiative order during a fight. I know that I can use G to bump a specific creature to the front, but this is very clumsy for more complicated operations. What we all would prefer is a drag and drop method for changing initiative.
2) More Automation on the Character Sheet I love the fact that D20 Pro is based on human judgment rather than computer game logic, but sometimes I wish the program would be a bit more aggressive. In particular, I'd like it if D20 Pro assigned a base value for saving throws based on the creatures hit dice, just like it does for attacks. Right now, this is one of the slowest parts of statting up new creatures.
3) More Stats Done the Way AC is Done The way AC is handled is great. It tracks all of your separate types of bonuses and correctly stacks them when new spells take effect. Very fast, very handy! We'd like it if a similar method was used for saves and ability scores. It slows things down when the cleric casts Mass Bull's Haste and we all have to sort through our gear to see if we already have an Enhancement bonus or not. I know there's not enough room on the screen for this, so maybe if clicking on the name of the stat opened up a menu similar to the AC menu, that would be great! Actually, I'd like a feature like this for every stat, if possible.
4)Faster Spellbook Management I mentioned this in an older thread, but building a high-level spell book is unnecessarily slow and tedious. There needs to be some mass select options.
5)Spellcasting I know that you guys are planning on a major rewrite of the magic system, but I'm giving you feedback anyway. Spellcasting is by far the slowest part of the platform right now. When a DM wants to cast an area of effect spell, he ends having to make tons of clicks and has to deal with four panes blocking his view and interfering with his ability to set the center of the spell. I think it's a mistake to make the user opena separate pane to access the shape templates. What if the templates were added to the spell effect menu, right under the effect tab? They could be handled as small icons, with drop-down menus underneath each one to set the parameters. That would speed things up a lot.
6)More Spellcasting I'd really like it if duration, DC, and the preferred area of effect could be saved to specific spells so that we don't have to rewrite them on the fly each time. Ideally, I'd like to be able to select Fireball from a character and immediately be able to place my cursor at the center of effect with a single click, with all of the appropriate parameters already loaded from the file. That would make magic about as fast as attacks (which are super-fast by the way, thanks!)
7)More More Spellcasting Players really need a way to rearrange their spell lists during a game. Changing spell lists in the current implementation is slower than in real life, and unlike most slow situations in D20 Pro where you can just sidestep the issue, you can't really dodge this problem.
8)Fog of War Shortcut I probably use the Fog of war tool more than anything else when running a traditional dungeon crawl. Right now, it's buried under two submenus and requires me to have a bulky window open when trying to use it. This slows things down noticably, to the point where my players were able to make bathroom breaks/beer raids while I was revealing new rooms. This could be solved by simply adding a toggle icon at the top of the screen that turns the cursor into a fog of war tool (maybe left clicking could add fog and right clicking could remove it?).
9) Even More Spellcasting When players have multiple copies of the same spell prepared, it would be nice if D20 Pro displayed how many copies are available. Right now, it's difficult for players to easily track how many spells they have left.
10)More Graceful Minimizing There is very little difference between minimizing a window and closing it. In order to fetch a minimized window, you have to fish it back out of the original menu. Most of us are used to Windows style panes, where minimizing panes appear as small, easily clickable tabs at the bottom of the screen.
11) Dice bag shortcut The dice macros are great, but the screen space is at a premium (especially for the DM), so almost no one plays with it always open. As it is, it takes just a few too many clicks to reach the dice bag, and we usaully end up just physically rolling a die instead. I understand and appreciate the 'use it only if it makes things faster' ethos of D20 Pro, but having a tool that is slower than the task it is trying to simulate largely defeats the purpose of having such a tool. Having a dice bag icon ont he top of the scree would help a lot here. Come to think of it, I wouldn't mind it if every sub menu had it's own shortcut icon at the top of the screen.
12) Better Stacking D20 Pro really needs to display stacks better. There is no quick way to see if there are more than one units on a square, and players can sometimes get their figures stuck underneath a unit that they don't control. I know that they can fish the unit out by using the roster, but there should really be a better way to handle stacks.
13)Other Stuff That I've Forgetten But Will Remember Later I'm sure that stuff will go here eventually.


EDIT: Added item #9
EDIT: Added item #10 and #11
EDIT: Added item #12

 

We certainly use the load effect option as much as we can, but right now, it isn't powerful enough for our needs. You can't save the duration or DC, and recalculating those time. Oddly enough, special abilities do remember these values, and so we try to simulate our spells with special abilities instead, using the spell menu only as a checklist to track spells used. It works, but it is cumbersome.

What I think everyone wants is a way to store specific spell parameters on a character-by-character basis, so that Bob's fireball is always preset to reflect Bob's abilities. Most of this is moot, because you folks are no doubt planning to do something like this for your summer release already.

Speaking for my own group, we have no problem writing own own spell effects, and would much prefer an open-ended user-created system to a rigid prefab solution. Ideally, you could store the DC, duration, area of fffect, and all other parameters for a specific spell and for a specific character, so you you would have to do is click on the spell and then click on the target. If this ease-of-use requires a few seconds of one-time preparation, I don't think anyone will mind.

 

Some more notes from our last game:

10)More Graceful Minimizing Right There is very little difference between minimizing a window and closing it. In order to fetch a minimized window, you have to fish it back out of the original menu. Most of us are used to Windows style panes, where minimizing panes appear as small, easily clickable tabs at the bottom of the screen.
11) Dice bag shortcut The dice macros are great, but the screen space is at a premium (especially for the DM), so almost no one plays with it always open. As it is, it takes just a few too many clicks to reach the dice bag, and we usaully end up just physically rolling a die instead. I understand and appreciate the 'use it only if it makes things faster' ethos of D20 Pro, but having a tool that is slower than the task it is trying to simulate largely defeats the purpose of having such a tool. Having a dice bag icon ont he top of the scree would help a lot here. Come to think of it, I wouldn't mind it if every sub menu had it's own shortcut icon at the top of the screen.

I'll tack these onto the first post for convenience.

 

Oh God yes.

This has been my experience exactly. The roster and game log windows are super useful and I almost always leave them open. Everything else I open on an as-needed basis.

As long as I'm at it, here's a long standing gripe that I can't believe I left out of my initial list:

12) Better Stacking D20 Pro really needs to display stacks better. There is no quick way to see if there are more than one units on a square, and players can sometimes get their figures stuck underneath a unit that they don't control. I know that they can fish the unit out by using the roster, but there should really be a better way to handle stacks.