The Deity Combat Tool is a Work in Progress!!! It’s possible that these instructions aren’t completely up-to-date with the latest release. For help, please visit the Discord channel.
Goals:
- Fast: Every second spent using the tool is one second not interacting with the players. It should be possible to take down results in no more time than it would take to note something on a piece of paper.
- Complete: The tool should take care of as much of the accounting as feasible. Only special effects that can not practically be predicted or accounted should need to be kept separately by the GM.
- Smart: Everything should be generated so that it’s possible to choose an action for a combatant and then “confirm” the results with nothing else required but should also allow changing of any automatically-chosen value if desired. The tool should remember previous selections and offer them up as defaults for the next action when relevant.
- Flexible: The interface should be sufficiently capable of handling most-if-not-all combat variations with the standard and extended rule sets.
Non-Goals:
- Simple: Simple follow-these-steps interfaces are not fast. Instead, offer a comprehensive interface tuned for experts because that is what all users will eventually become.
- Details: Only combat results are generated. Creating a narrative from those results is left to the GM.
- Pretty: The goal of the interface is to be functional and efficient. Making it look good is nice but not important.
With the above in mind, the tool can be access via a subpage of the main app.
https://deity-online.com/app/combat-tool
The tool is, as of this writing, limited to the HERO 6th Edition game rules. Character creation needs to be done with the Hero Designer software and the results imported via “Import…” in the main menu. Hero Designer does not provide sufficient detail to set up everything. Notably, the available actions will be need some tuning the first time through a combat. Once set, though, the chosen values will be remembered for future uses. New actions can be created (using the currently selected action for starting values) at any time.
To learn how to use it, let’s try it out. First, from the main menu, select “Create test combatants”. This will create three test characters: Hero, Foe1, and Foe2. The appear in the top box of “available” combatants:
To bring these characters into a combat, select them all using the myriad of ways possible with such lists (click the top, shift-click the bottom; click the top, ctrl-click the other two; click one, CTRL-A to select all, etc.) and then click the down-arrow button to move them to the list of “active” combatants:
Combatants can be added and removed at any time. They can also be modified (and duplicated) at any time by double-clicking on their name, bringing up a dialog like this:
Once all the combatants have been added, click “Begin” to start. Instantly, the character with the first action is set and buttons show what actions can be performed.
Click the “Attack” button and select “Foe 1” as the defender. Then… whoa, what is all that!
Here is where things get complicated. This is everything that goes into an attack when using the HERO game system. In the first column is the acting character. It shows their current BODY, STUN, and END, their status (“ready”), and other general options for them. Each item has a generated value on the left and an override value on the right. If the GM doesn’t agree with the generated value, simply enter a value on the right and that new value will be used instead. In most cases, set values are remembered so if, for example, Hero had a shield which gave an “Other DCV” of 1, it would only have to be set once to appear in all future attacks.
The second column is the target. It includes the same basic information plus several other values that are applicable to being attacked. Their last-used action, along with the defensive values associated with it are displayed at the bottom and there’s an option to abort that action to do something else, like “dodge” or “block”. The lines shown with a light-yellow background are the only options that generally need to be updated each time, if so desired.
The third column is the attack details. If there are specific extra OCV for the attacker or DCV for the attacker related to this action, they can be entered at the top. For example, if the attack was against both Foe1 and Foe2 (achieved by selecting multiple defenders in the selection box) then “-2” would appear here for the attack OCV. The action here is an unarmed strike with the associated settings below it. The “+” button will allow creating a new action, for example creating a “Basic Strike (shortsword)” action from an imported “Basic Strike (weapon)” default. The “-” button deletes the currently selected action. The action has an associated number of DCs, OCV, and DCV, and any skill levels the attacker has can be set here. The action has an attack type (normal, killing, flash, etc.), a defense type (physical, energy, flash, etc.), and any extra DC or END associated with it (like from using extra STR). A targeted hit-location can be set if desired which will fill the OCV penalty.
The last column is the result. It starts with the to-hit roll automatically generated but if players want to roll for themselves (and really, who doesn’t?), the cursor is already positioned here for the GM to type in whatever they roll. The generated hit-location can be changed if they want to roll that, too. There is support for extra DCs should the GM feel it appropriate as well as any “damage negation” on the part of the defender. Two more yellow fields show the rolled damage but allow entering results from a player roll. Finally, the total protection (based on the hit-location) is shown, the multipliers, and the final values.
This is a lot but it all gets summarized back in the left column at the bottom, waiting for confirmation.
A click of the “Confirm” button once any desired value-changes have been made, and the results are committed and the controls advance for the next character with an action. Keep going until the combat is resolved! The full combat log is shown on the right side of the screen so the GM can look back if they need details from before.
Details to be added later…