First, thanks for writing the extension. It adds some nice tools to keep things on the screen in an easy to reference manner. Based on this support thread alone you have put in some serious work and it's absolutely appreciated.
Just installed for the first time the other day (version 0.7.0), and ran into a couple issues.
The first has to do with the dice roller. I was not able to get it to work at all. I tried turning it off and still had the highlights with links for a bit too. With it on, the links showed up but clicking them didn't do anything. I checked the chrome popup blocker was off but the behavior persisted. I've turned it off for now, but I would be happy to provide any information on my setup that may help find this issue if needed.
The second has been discussed above quite a bit: I ran into the chrome storage issues being discussed. On this, I understand the issue well enough, but I figured with the addition of the options dialog it might be worth adding an option to allow the end user to choose whether they want the data synched and accept the 100kb limit or choose local storage without a limit/with a higher limit but get no synching across devices and the risk of data loss if something happened to that machine?
My use case doesn't seem terribly out of the bounds of normal or reasonable. I am running a group through the Phandelver adventure and they are about to embark on a trek through the triboar trail area as well as head to Thundertree. I wanted to setup the encounters from Thundertree (9 if I recall with up to 8 enemies), then also have the potential encounters from the triboar random encounter table ready to go (also 9 possible with up to 10 creatures I believe). Unfortunately, those two things at once are too much data for the chrome storage and I got the errors and at one point one of the encounters just went away.
I do realize these are not specifically your limitations and that alternatives are being looked into. It also occurs to me it might be too much of a pain trying to swap from "sync storage" to local storage (especially the other direction) without losing previously entered data. But, for me at least I would definitely choose local storage to work around the synch limits.
Thanks again for your work on the toolbox, and any consideration given to my above gibberish :)
Thank you for pointing that out. I have found the issue and am going to push an update for the dice roller. I accidentally messed up the code for the roller.
As for the limitation, I am actually working on adding an option to choose between sync and local. As for the limitation, I am looking into alternative solutions such as google drive, GitHub gist, and even Dropbox.
Only thing I note is that you have the wrench Icon and then right below it you have it listed like the forumns and other stuff. Why have both, when one or the other would do? But really good job Mouse I am still liking it. Oh one other issue can you set the dice roller to bottom right of screen instead of left. When you in the compendium it blocks access to the bottom selection in several places?
Already live and can confirm that the dice roller now works for me - you are much faster than anyone deserves at updating :)
Thank you much!
Wait til September, when I have to go back to teaching and school. lol. The updates will slow for sure. I will do my best to fix things, but during the school year I would 4 jobs and have to take online classes. My time because much harder to find. I do appreciate the kind words.
Only thing I note is that you have the wrench Icon and then right below it you have it listed like the forumns and other stuff. Why have both, when one or the other would do? But really good job Mouse I am still liking it. Oh one other issue can you set the dice roller to bottom right of screen instead of left. When you in the compendium it blocks access to the bottom selection in several places?
The wrench is there because with the old menu on smaller screens the toolbox icon was hidden and couldn't be seen. So the wrench was added because it would allow people to toggle the Toolbox when viewing on smaller screens. It probably should be removed.
As for the Dice Roller being at the bottom left, I believe that is from D&D Beyond Interaction. I don't really have control over it, sorry. I will let you know that in my next update I am adding a dice roller (I was avoiding it because I hate stepping on the other chrome extensions feet). I would prefer a dice roller inside of my toolbox then floating around on the page, so sadly I think I might step on his feet a little.
I just feel bad, because I keep adding stuff that D&D Beyond Interaction has. For example, I already added his monster attack roller. I actually use to have a character sheet roller and a dice roller in one of the first versions of this extension, but removed them during the re-write and didn't add them back because they were being provided by another extension.
By the way, if you don't use the dice roller for beyond interaction you can disable it in the settings.
I have added the option to choose to sync either local or sync.
This version comes with a new feature and that is the dice roller. This is a small feature that lets you roll any number of dice with any numbered side with any modifier value you can think of. It is fairly simple to use, so here are a few screenshots to show it off. In the first image, I show two dice rolls of 1d20 + 4. I could have added 2d20 + 4 to the first one, the reason I chose to add them in this manner is that in the second screenshot, you will show that it rolls each 1d20 separately. Making this method an easy way to roll for either advantage or disadvantage.
While I like this tool quite a bit, I must say I'm a little discouraged by the method monsters are added to the Initiative tracker. The requirement that monsters first be added into "encounters" before they can be added into the initiative works well for groups of like monsters, but is troublesome when you're adding multiple single monsters that act on their own initiative. This results in a bunch of encounters consisting only of a single monster. The way I run combat, no encounter would ever contain more than a single type of monster (though perhaps multiple instances of that particular monster). This really defeats the purpose of having encounters, which would be to save a group of monsters ahead of time and add them to the initiative all at once when I run that encounter in a game.
Being able to add single monsters directly into the Initiative Tracker without first adding them to an encounter would be a huge improvement. Alternatively, being able to assign different initiatives to monsters within an encounter is a must.
While I like this tool quite a bit, I must say I'm a little discouraged by the method monsters are added to the Initiative tracker. The requirement that monsters first be added into "encounters" before they can be added into the initiative works well for groups of like monsters, but is troublesome when you're adding multiple single monsters that act on their own initiative. This results in a bunch of encounters consisting only of a single monster. The way I run combat, no encounter would ever contain more than a single type of monster (though perhaps multiple instances of that particular monster). This really defeats the purpose of having encounters, which would be to save a group of monsters ahead of time and add them to the initiative all at once when I run that encounter in a game.
Being able to add single monsters directly into the Initiative Tracker without first adding them to an encounter would be a huge improvement. Alternatively, being able to assign different initiatives to monsters within an encounter is a must.
You probably wouldn't be surprised how much this feature is requested. Its not really how I build encounters, so it isn't something I thought of.
However, it is a heavily requested feature so I have added it as an issue on GitHub. It requires some reworking of how initiative tracker, because that isn't really how the data is stored, so it might take a little longer to get to especially since I already have a few other things planned and in progress.
I mostly wanted to let you know I have added it to my list of things to look at.
The more I think about it, I actually like the way encounters are build currently. Adding monsters to a group that I can add to the initiative tracker at once is great. This lets me build and store all of my encounters for a session ahead of time, as adding individual monsters to the initative tracker during the game would be cumbersome and time-consuming. The only drawback is that this limits the 'encounter' to a single initiative, which I vehemently do not like, as all the monsters going on a single initiative makes for really swingy combats.
Dream scenario is that I can build encounters with multiple types and groups of monsters, that are stored as a unit to be added to the Initiative tracker together, but can have different initiative counts for each monster (or group of like monsters).
The more I think about it, I actually like the way encounters are build currently. Adding monsters to a group that I can add to the initiative tracker at once is great. This lets me build and store all of my encounters for a session ahead of time, as adding individual monsters to the initative tracker during the game would be cumbersome and time-consuming. The only drawback is that this limits the 'encounter' to a single initiative, which I vehemently do not like, as all the monsters going on a single initiative makes for really swingy combats.
Dream scenario is that I can build encounters with multiple types and groups of monsters, that are stored as a unit to be added to the Initiative tracker together, but can have different initiative counts for each monster (or group of like monsters).
Yeah, that is kinda how it was meant to run. You would build all of your encounters prior to your session so you could easily add them as you play.
You are able to add different monsters to the same encounter, all you have to do is select the encounter from the dropdown when adding the monsters. It will merge those monsters together.
I have added this issue to GitHub. This is a bug, with the dice roller only knowing how to handle plus and minus. I will have to look into a good solution to fixing this.
The more I think about it, I actually like the way encounters are build currently. Adding monsters to a group that I can add to the initiative tracker at once is great. This lets me build and store all of my encounters for a session ahead of time, as adding individual monsters to the initative tracker during the game would be cumbersome and time-consuming. The only drawback is that this limits the 'encounter' to a single initiative, which I vehemently do not like, as all the monsters going on a single initiative makes for really swingy combats.
Dream scenario is that I can build encounters with multiple types and groups of monsters, that are stored as a unit to be added to the Initiative tracker together, but can have different initiative counts for each monster (or group of like monsters).
Yeah, that is kinda how it was meant to run. You would build all of your encounters prior to your session so you could easily add them as you play.
You are able to add different monsters to the same encounter, all you have to do is select the encounter from the dropdown when adding the monsters. It will merge those monsters together.
So, you should be able to create the encounters ahead of time, then come back to them later? In my most recent game, I created all the encounters. I then closed my browser and came back to things later. I wasn't able to find the encounters I had created already...no encounters at all. I was able to create encounters on the fly and it still was faster than not using this, but I was disappointed to have lost the work.
It's probably user error, but what should I have done?
The more I think about it, I actually like the way encounters are build currently. Adding monsters to a group that I can add to the initiative tracker at once is great. This lets me build and store all of my encounters for a session ahead of time, as adding individual monsters to the initative tracker during the game would be cumbersome and time-consuming. The only drawback is that this limits the 'encounter' to a single initiative, which I vehemently do not like, as all the monsters going on a single initiative makes for really swingy combats.
Dream scenario is that I can build encounters with multiple types and groups of monsters, that are stored as a unit to be added to the Initiative tracker together, but can have different initiative counts for each monster (or group of like monsters).
Yeah, that is kinda how it was meant to run. You would build all of your encounters prior to your session so you could easily add them as you play.
You are able to add different monsters to the same encounter, all you have to do is select the encounter from the dropdown when adding the monsters. It will merge those monsters together.
Right, but then you're stuck with all the monsters in the encounter acting on the same initiative, which I absolutely do NOT want. It's pretty essential for me that I can have different monsters within the encounter to act on different initiative counts.
The way I wish it would work is when you add an encounter to the initiative tracker, the monsters (or groups of like monsters - 3 goblins, etc.) are added individually instead of as a whole encounter.
Right, but then you're stuck with all the monsters in the encounter acting on the same initiative, which I absolutely do NOT want. It's pretty essential for me that I can have different monsters within the encounter to act on different initiative counts.
The way I wish it would work is when you add an encounter to the initiative tracker, the monsters (or groups of like monsters - 3 goblins, etc.) are added individually instead of as a whole encounter.
I guess my confusion is why can't you just make two encounters, one for a set of monsters and a second one for (3 goblins, etc.).
Nothing is stopping you from adding, multiple encounters to an initiative. I guess it would be annoying if your encounter only had 1 monster in it. Is that what you're referring to?
The way I run combat, which is the way described in the PHB, monsters are grouped by type. A group consists of any number of identical monsters and rolls initiative separately. So if I have a combat with 2 Goblins, and Orc, and a Hobgoblin, that's three separate initiative counts. So now I have create 3 'encounters' during my prep, one for the goblins, one for the orc, and one for the hobgoblin. Then, during the game, I have to find each 'encounter' from the list and add it into the initiative tracker separately, which completely defeats the purpose of creating encounters ahead of time.
I guess it would be annoying if your encounter only had 1 monster in it. Is that what you're referring to?
If you run combat the way it is described in the PHB, you would never have more than one type of monster in an 'encounter', which essentially makes encounters pointless.
I know one of the ways around this, LtDarien, is to make a single encounter with your 2 Goblins, Orc, and Hobgoblin, and then add it to Initiative 3 times. Then for each instance of that encounter, just delete the other monsters. So add the encounters and remove the Orc and Hobgoblin from the first one, the Goblins and Orc from the 2nd one, and the Goblins and Hobgoblin from the 3rd one.
Obviously no DM runs games the same way, and very few follow the PHB to the letter, but this is one option that will work. I personally run a fairly large party (6+) so having all the enemies just move on the same initiative order works really well for me to keep play going. Again that is just personal preference.
The way I run combat, which is the way described in the PHB, monsters are grouped by type. A group consists of any number of identical monsters and rolls initiative separately. So if I have a combat with 2 Goblins, and Orc, and a Hobgoblin, that's three separate initiative counts. So now I have create 3 'encounters' during my prep, one for the goblins, one for the orc, and one for the hobgoblin. Then, during the game, I have to find each 'encounter' from the list and add it into the initiative tracker separately, which completely defeats the purpose of creating encounters ahead of time.
I guess it would be annoying if your encounter only had 1 monster in it. Is that what you're referring to?
If you run combat the way it is described in the PHB, you would never have more than one type of monster in an 'encounter', which essentially makes encounters pointless.
Yeah, I don't run each group of monster individually. I play with either 5 - 8 people. So I've never really thought to run an initiative like that. I am looking at ways to improve the initiative tracker, its just not as high on my list since I am mostly happy with how it works. Whatever I do, I want to be fast and easy.
Also as a side note, I started working on a completely new feature that is basically pointless, but not sure if anyone would be interested in it. I thought it was cool that they added themes to the character sheet so you can choose a different color. However, I was shocked to find out that they were using svgs, but didn't allow an option to pick your own color. So I have started building that into my plugin. I might make a pull request on beyond help instead though because this is something that feels more like it belongs within his plugin than mine. Here are some screenshots.
I am also working on a way to change that background too...
The way I run combat, which is the way described in the PHB, monsters are grouped by type. A group consists of any number of identical monsters and rolls initiative separately. So if I have a combat with 2 Goblins, and Orc, and a Hobgoblin, that's three separate initiative counts. So now I have create 3 'encounters' during my prep, one for the goblins, one for the orc, and one for the hobgoblin. Then, during the game, I have to find each 'encounter' from the list and add it into the initiative tracker separately, which completely defeats the purpose of creating encounters ahead of time.
I guess it would be annoying if your encounter only had 1 monster in it. Is that what you're referring to?
If you run combat the way it is described in the PHB, you would never have more than one type of monster in an 'encounter', which essentially makes encounters pointless.
Yeah, I don't run each group of monster individually. I play with either 5 - 8 people. So I've never really thought to run an initiative like that. I am looking at ways to improve the initiative tracker, its just not as high on my list since I am mostly happy with how it works. Whatever I do, I want to be fast and easy.
Maybe It's just me, but I've always found having all monsters go on a single initiative just makes combat far too swingy, and doesn't really make combat any faster, easier, or smother to run.
Yeah, I jost
Thank you for pointing that out. I have found the issue and am going to push an update for the dice roller. I accidentally messed up the code for the roller.
As for the limitation, I am actually working on adding an option to choose between sync and local. As for the limitation, I am looking into alternative solutions such as google drive, GitHub gist, and even Dropbox.
Already live and can confirm that the dice roller now works for me - you are much faster than anyone deserves at updating :)
Thank you much!
Dude I gotta tell you that I love this tool! Bravo! If you have a Patreon account or something please pass along your info, would love to support.
Thanks
Erik
Only thing I note is that you have the wrench Icon and then right below it you have it listed like the forumns and other stuff. Why have both, when one or the other would do? But really good job Mouse I am still liking it. Oh one other issue can you set the dice roller to bottom right of screen instead of left. When you in the compendium it blocks access to the bottom selection in several places?
Wait til September, when I have to go back to teaching and school. lol. The updates will slow for sure. I will do my best to fix things, but during the school year I would 4 jobs and have to take online classes. My time because much harder to find. I do appreciate the kind words.
I probably should set up a patreon at some point. I do a lot of free work and have been asked to set up one quite a few times.
The wrench is there because with the old menu on smaller screens the toolbox icon was hidden and couldn't be seen. So the wrench was added because it would allow people to toggle the Toolbox when viewing on smaller screens. It probably should be removed.
As for the Dice Roller being at the bottom left, I believe that is from D&D Beyond Interaction. I don't really have control over it, sorry. I will let you know that in my next update I am adding a dice roller (I was avoiding it because I hate stepping on the other chrome extensions feet). I would prefer a dice roller inside of my toolbox then floating around on the page, so sadly I think I might step on his feet a little.
I just feel bad, because I keep adding stuff that D&D Beyond Interaction has. For example, I already added his monster attack roller. I actually use to have a character sheet roller and a dice roller in one of the first versions of this extension, but removed them during the re-write and didn't add them back because they were being provided by another extension.
By the way, if you don't use the dice roller for beyond interaction you can disable it in the settings.
Updated the Plugin to Version 0.7.6
I have added the option to choose to sync either local or sync.
This version comes with a new feature and that is the dice roller. This is a small feature that lets you roll any number of dice with any numbered side with any modifier value you can think of. It is fairly simple to use, so here are a few screenshots to show it off. In the first image, I show two dice rolls of 1d20 + 4. I could have added 2d20 + 4 to the first one, the reason I chose to add them in this manner is that in the second screenshot, you will show that it rolls each 1d20 separately. Making this method an easy way to roll for either advantage or disadvantage.
While I like this tool quite a bit, I must say I'm a little discouraged by the method monsters are added to the Initiative tracker. The requirement that monsters first be added into "encounters" before they can be added into the initiative works well for groups of like monsters, but is troublesome when you're adding multiple single monsters that act on their own initiative. This results in a bunch of encounters consisting only of a single monster. The way I run combat, no encounter would ever contain more than a single type of monster (though perhaps multiple instances of that particular monster). This really defeats the purpose of having encounters, which would be to save a group of monsters ahead of time and add them to the initiative all at once when I run that encounter in a game.
Being able to add single monsters directly into the Initiative Tracker without first adding them to an encounter would be a huge improvement. Alternatively, being able to assign different initiatives to monsters within an encounter is a must.
You probably wouldn't be surprised how much this feature is requested. Its not really how I build encounters, so it isn't something I thought of.
However, it is a heavily requested feature so I have added it as an issue on GitHub. It requires some reworking of how initiative tracker, because that isn't really how the data is stored, so it might take a little longer to get to especially since I already have a few other things planned and in progress.
I mostly wanted to let you know I have added it to my list of things to look at.
The more I think about it, I actually like the way encounters are build currently. Adding monsters to a group that I can add to the initiative tracker at once is great. This lets me build and store all of my encounters for a session ahead of time, as adding individual monsters to the initative tracker during the game would be cumbersome and time-consuming. The only drawback is that this limits the 'encounter' to a single initiative, which I vehemently do not like, as all the monsters going on a single initiative makes for really swingy combats.
Dream scenario is that I can build encounters with multiple types and groups of monsters, that are stored as a unit to be added to the Initiative tracker together, but can have different initiative counts for each monster (or group of like monsters).
Having a problem with the Dice Roller, but only for XdY * Z rolls, such as for gold. You can see many of those rolls on this page: https://www.dndbeyond.com/compendium/rules/dmg/treasure#TreasureTables
When you click, the Roller pops up but it just says "{0}"
I'm having the same problem. ^^
https://www.dropbox.com/s/1bhmlkbpgymgu5l/snip_20180724195352.png?dl=0
Yeah, that is kinda how it was meant to run. You would build all of your encounters prior to your session so you could easily add them as you play.
You are able to add different monsters to the same encounter, all you have to do is select the encounter from the dropdown when adding the monsters. It will merge those monsters together.
I have added this issue to GitHub. This is a bug, with the dice roller only knowing how to handle plus and minus. I will have to look into a good solution to fixing this.
So, you should be able to create the encounters ahead of time, then come back to them later? In my most recent game, I created all the encounters. I then closed my browser and came back to things later. I wasn't able to find the encounters I had created already...no encounters at all. I was able to create encounters on the fly and it still was faster than not using this, but I was disappointed to have lost the work.
It's probably user error, but what should I have done?
Right, but then you're stuck with all the monsters in the encounter acting on the same initiative, which I absolutely do NOT want. It's pretty essential for me that I can have different monsters within the encounter to act on different initiative counts.
The way I wish it would work is when you add an encounter to the initiative tracker, the monsters (or groups of like monsters - 3 goblins, etc.) are added individually instead of as a whole encounter.
I guess my confusion is why can't you just make two encounters, one for a set of monsters and a second one for (3 goblins, etc.).
Nothing is stopping you from adding, multiple encounters to an initiative. I guess it would be annoying if your encounter only had 1 monster in it. Is that what you're referring to?
The way I run combat, which is the way described in the PHB, monsters are grouped by type. A group consists of any number of identical monsters and rolls initiative separately. So if I have a combat with 2 Goblins, and Orc, and a Hobgoblin, that's three separate initiative counts. So now I have create 3 'encounters' during my prep, one for the goblins, one for the orc, and one for the hobgoblin. Then, during the game, I have to find each 'encounter' from the list and add it into the initiative tracker separately, which completely defeats the purpose of creating encounters ahead of time.
If you run combat the way it is described in the PHB, you would never have more than one type of monster in an 'encounter', which essentially makes encounters pointless.
I know one of the ways around this, LtDarien, is to make a single encounter with your 2 Goblins, Orc, and Hobgoblin, and then add it to Initiative 3 times. Then for each instance of that encounter, just delete the other monsters. So add the encounters and remove the Orc and Hobgoblin from the first one, the Goblins and Orc from the 2nd one, and the Goblins and Hobgoblin from the 3rd one.
Obviously no DM runs games the same way, and very few follow the PHB to the letter, but this is one option that will work. I personally run a fairly large party (6+) so having all the enemies just move on the same initiative order works really well for me to keep play going. Again that is just personal preference.
This is what I do.
DM: The Cult of the Crystal Spider (Currently playing Storm King's Thunder)
Player: The Knuckles of Arth - Lemire (Tiefling Rogue 5/Fighter 1)
Yeah, I don't run each group of monster individually. I play with either 5 - 8 people. So I've never really thought to run an initiative like that. I am looking at ways to improve the initiative tracker, its just not as high on my list since I am mostly happy with how it works. Whatever I do, I want to be fast and easy.
Also as a side note, I started working on a completely new feature that is basically pointless, but not sure if anyone would be interested in it. I thought it was cool that they added themes to the character sheet so you can choose a different color. However, I was shocked to find out that they were using svgs, but didn't allow an option to pick your own color. So I have started building that into my plugin. I might make a pull request on beyond help instead though because this is something that feels more like it belongs within his plugin than mine. Here are some screenshots.
I am also working on a way to change that background too...
.
Maybe It's just me, but I've always found having all monsters go on a single initiative just makes combat far too swingy, and doesn't really make combat any faster, easier, or smother to run.