A few issues with the Numenera character sheets:

[SightUnseen555]

Hey, I just found out about Foundry VTT after using Roll20 to run my Numenera game for the past year. I love what you've done with the module, and it's making me seriously consider switching my players over to FoundryVTT. There's a few issues that I've noticed in my couple hours tinkering that I think would be a huge hindrance to my games the way I've been playing them in Roll20. If these are able to be addressed then I'd definitely move my players over to this module.

1. Re-ordering skills and abilities seems to be broken if you have too many skills listed. Moving skills around doesn't move the skill you moved but shifts it and a whole bunch of other ones in a weird way. Makes it really hard to organize the skills
2. Option to click a button and insert skill proficiencies, abilities, cyphers, etc. descriptions into the chat.
3. I don't like that adding abilities adds an additional skill as well, makes the sheet really cluttered especially when they already have a lot of skills. Maybe make that optional somehow.
4. Show damage dealt on attack rolls in the chat, as well as effort points expended when making a skill check (even if they're automatically subtracted I think this is a nice feature so everyone knows what's happening.)
5. Allow players to apply effort to damage and display the increased damage and subtract that effort from their sheet.
6. Ability to enter NPC attacks into chat, combined with 7. below
7. Ability to transfer damage to characters (PCs and NPCs) from attacks (this isn't present in Roll20 but I've seen other game modules like DND5e have this feature in FoundryVTT and it's really neat.)
8. Maybe a drop down menu when a player accepts a GM intrusion to allow them to give that extra EXP to another player directly. This would just be a nice QOL change but not necessary.
9. Support for Iotum tracking. Even just a small separate section in the equipment list would be cool.
10. Maybe an option to have Io listable as a secondary currency
11. Abilities that have an up front cost (ex. Onslaught costs 1 Int) do not subtract from the pools.

Love the look of everything you have right now, hope you'll consider this feedback and make it even more user friendly and comprehensive!

EDIT: for the record this is on V0.7.9 of Foundry VTT and version 1.4.3 of the Numenera module.

[SolarBear]

Hello @SightUnseen555 and thank you for your report!

To tell the truth, I'm currently in the process of converting the system to Foundry 0.8 so it's currently eating up most of my free time, but I should be able to fix a thing or three in the process. ;) Rest assured other problems will be fixed afterwards.

Thank you and if you have any questions or problems, make sure to report here or on the Foundry Discord!

[SightUnseen555]

Cool, thanks for the reply! Glad to hear it's still being actively worked on. My biggest worry about using 3rd party modules for the core system was that it would have just been abandoned. Definitely willing to be patient though with ongoing development, I understand these things take time.

Going to be trying it out this coming weekend with my Numenera group and see what they think of Foundry and this module.

Another few minor issues that I've found since playing around more with it are the following:

1. I find the attacks section of the NPC actor sheet to be borderline useless in its current form. The size of the text box is tiny and doesn't expand when you fill it with text, so I can't read attacks that are longer than a few words long. So I've been using the other tabs to store the combat stuff.
2. It would be cool if there was an option to transfer cyphers between players. My players often switch around who is holding which cyphers. So I think it would be cool if there was a way to easily transfer them. It's not a huge deal I guess to drag the original cypher from the compendia or item list and then reset its form and level and then delete it from the original player, but it's a bit cumbersome. Would just be a nice QOL improvement IMO.

[SolarBear]

Regardding your comments:

1. I've kept the NPC sheet quite minimal because, quite simply, I've rarely been asked for more from it. I do agree that it would need some love but requests I've received were almost always related to other sections of the system: PC sheet, items, tokens, etc.
2. Believe it or not, I never even thought about that. Shame on me! It shouldn't be too hard to implement so I'll add that to requested features.

Again, thank you!

[SightUnseen555]

Thanks for the reply, I appreciate the communication and honesty.

As for the NPCs, I understand that. The sheets are perfectly usable by just pasting the whole monster block into the description and info tabs and since the DM doesn't roll anything, it's not super necessary to have complex monster blocks. I agree that the player sheets are probably the most important element to get right.

Speaking of which, I had my first session with my group over the weekend to try to convince them to switch over from Roll20 to Foundry. The session was a little bit rocky with everyone having to learn both how Foundry works and how this new Numenera character sheet worked. Overall I think most of the players were pretty happy with the switch over, although some people had difficulty remembering that they had to Ctrl+click to spend effort or modify a dice roll. I'll probably let them know that you can switch that in the settings. A couple other players didn't really like the "look" (no specific feedback though...) or layout of the sheet. Two players didn't like that it was split into separate tabs and found it confusing. I think this will mostly just be an adjustment compared to what they were used to and that they'll get used to it.

I think if I were to rank my top 4 suggestions for character sheet functionality it would be:

1. Fix the sorting bug that doesn't let us order the skills the way we want
2. Allow players to easily send abilities/cyphers/skills to the chat box. Roll20 has a super convenient button that will automatically put any ability, cypher, etc. into chat. Makes it super easy for players to communicate to me and the other players what they're doing.
3. On attack abilities and weapon attacks, output the damage to the chat when players roll. With my players using a variety of weapons, skills, etc. It's hard for me to keep track of how much damage they're doing with a given attack and I found myself having to ask every time what their damage was.
4. Allow players to apply effort to damage as a separate field in the advanced roll window (combine with 3 above and output that damage to chat), and correctly deduct it from their pools. Also deduct the initial costs of abilities (eg. Onslaught uses 1 Int) from pools automatically. I find it's already confusing enough keeping track of effort costs of things, but when the sheet only automatically deducts some of the costs it becomes even more confusing to keep track of.

Keep up the great work! Thanks!

[SolarBear]

Great feedback, thank you so much!

1. That sorting bug is strange, I can reorder skills, abilities, etc. without a problem. Could you give me any more details? Do this happen occasionnally or all the time? Any errors in the console? (Just in case: press F12 and, in the window that appears, there should be a "Console" tab, errors are displayed in red)
2. Awesome idea! I had something similar planned out for cyphers and artifacts, some time ago, but generalizing this to pretty much any kind of item wouldn't be too difficult. (Famous last words...)
3. That would make sense! I was just so used to my players having the right skill already created (rolling Medium Ranged means, well, it's a medium weapon, thus 4 damage...) but for abilities, yeah, it's not a given.
4. Effort on damage was also a planned feature. I had to take some (a lot of!) time off so features have stopped for some time now.

I'm really close to a release for Foundry 0.8 so I'll have time and energy to spend on these, afterwards.

[SightUnseen555]

For the sorting bug, it happens for me on every tab of the character sheet (Skills, abilities, equipment, etc), on every character sheet that I've made, and on both my locally hosted server and the cloud hosted server. And my players had the same issue when they tried it.

The issue is strange, but seems to have a pattern to it. When you drag a skill upwards in order, it seems to instead shift everything down by one, including the row you dragged the skill to, but keep the order of everything intact. Anything above the row you dragged to will be unaffected. Anything on the bottom row wraps around to the top.

When you drag a skill down to a lower row, it will keep that skill where it is, and everything below it will shift downwards by 1.

I included a picture below to help illustrate this. All of these pictures were taken after 5 skills ( A, B, C, D, E) were in the initial order and only moved the skill shown in the title heading.

There are no console errors that I can see that are relevant to this module. There are a couple red errors for lost image files for pictures that I changed the root folder to. And a couple yellow issues for things that look unrelated to me.

That would make sense! I was just so used to my players having the right skill already created (rolling Medium Ranged means, well, it's a medium weapon, thus 4 damage...) but for abilities, yeah, it's not a given.

Yeah, normally that works ok because Numenera is pretty simple when it comes to damage. But this might affect me more than other groups but I seem to have a lot of players with atypical damage outputs. For example, I have one player who is a glaive (+1 to all melee attacks) and another player who is also a glaive (same +1) who Masters Weaponry (gets another +1 to damage with their chosen weapon type only) So their medium weapon attacks do 5 and 6 damage, respectively. I also have a Jack with an artifact medium melee weapon that does 6 damage instead of 4, but they still do only 4 damage with their normal ranged weapon. They all have a box on their sheet that shows this damage already, but I have to either remember their respective damages with all their various weapons or ask them for them to make sure I get them right. My group is currently 7 players so it's a bit hard to remember all of their individual damage outputs on the fly.

Anyway, I appreciate that you're still working on improving things and am definitely willing to be patient because I know these things take time and I sure as hell don't have the skills to do anything like this, haha.

[ServantofShiloh]

Hey, hey!

I wanted to chime in on this since it's here.

First, thank you so much for the work you're putting into this. We started a Numenera mini-campaign and having this system available made things so much easier in Session 0. Kudos.

That being said, much of what has been discussed here already I agree with like:

1. The sorting bug happens with me as well. Does not go where I want it to go but randomly jumps.

2. That doubling of the Skill when you add an Ability is annoying. You don't really need that unless they decide to train it, so it should be scrapped until PCs need it or have an option under Abilities which allows you to activate it once it is trained.

3. This is a small one but avoids confusion—the tab heading should be changed from Cyphers to Numenera. Oddities and Artifacts are not Cyphers. I've edited that on my sheets for my players.

4. I agree that another place should be added for Iotum. The most appropriate place should be under Numenera tab. This is not a necessity, of course, but just a nice thing to have. Currently, I just put it under Equipment which works out just as well for the time being. I tried a little editing but what I did broke the sheet. So I switched it back. Not a developer here. :-)

Thanks again.

[SightUnseen555]

Not the developer but I'm getting pinged on this thread and thought I'd reply to some of this :P.

We started a Numenera mini-campaign

Hope you guys enjoy the Numenera system! I love it personally, I think I even like it more than DND 5e which is still my main game.

The sorting bug happens with me as well. Does not go where I want it to go but randomly jumps.

Can you confirm whether the behaviour of the sorting is similar to what I described in my post last night? The behaviour I've seen is weird but definitely not random.

That doubling of the Skill when you add an Ability is annoying. You don't really need that unless they decide to train it, so it should be scrapped until PCs need it or have an option under Abilities which allows you to activate it once it is trained.

Would it maybe make more sense to add another drop down window for abilities that let you enter whether that ability is untrained, trained or specialized instead of duplicating it in the skills tab?

[ServantofShiloh]

Not the developer but I'm getting pinged on this thread and thought I'd reply to some of this :P.

Good to hear from you. :-)

Hope you guys enjoy the Numenera system! I love it personally, I think I even like it more than DND 5e which is still my main game.

Thank you! I don't play DnD at all. I'm that guy that plays other games—Classic Marvel Superheroes Advanced (favorite of all time), The One Ring (love me some Tolkien), and now Numenera. Looks like it will be pretty enjoyable.

Can you confirm whether the behaviour of the sorting is similar to what I described in my post last night? The behaviour I've seen is weird but definitely not random.

What it does is if you move a skill to where you want it, the skill that was there jumps and the skill you wanted to move stays in the same place. Pretty much what you described above.

Would it maybe make more sense to add another drop down window for abilities that let you enter whether that ability is untrained, trained or specialized instead of duplicating it in the skills tab?

That would be preferable. However, either way is fine with me. I'm not particularly picky. Like it would be a good idea to have a separate place for Plans as well, but I can work around that in Equipment with no problem.

Now that I have your ear, I just have one off topic thing about being trained in Initiative. What is that supposed to do exactly since initiative does not have task levels?

Thanks ahead of time. Peace and hair grease!

[SightUnseen555]

Now that I have your ear, I just have one off topic thing about being trained in Initiative. What is that supposed to do exactly since initiative does not have task levels?

None of my players chose to train in initiative, but I would treat it as a +3 to their initiative roll (or +6 for specialized characters) if you use a conventional turn order system. Also not sure if this is in the rules or not, but I also rule that you can't apply effort to initiative, because what does that even mean physically?

I think rules as written you're not meant to have a super rigid turn structure like you would with DND and maybe some other games, you just roll initiative checks trying to beat the difficulty of the enemy's initiative (which is most likely just its level) and then if multiple players are before or after the monsters they can decide what order they want to play that out in.

But +3 to initiative works just fine if you want something more rigid. And it's how this module does initiative. It also defaults to giving the enemies initiative of three times their level, simulating a skill check against their level (to beat a level 3 initiative you'd need to roll a 9) with the enemy losing on ties (a level 3 creature would have 8.9 initiative instead of 9 so it loses ties).

[ServantofShiloh]

Good morning!

I was reading the corebook last night, and it dawned on me what being trained in initiative is meant to do.

When the PCs are facing someone or something, a player who is trained in initiative will lower the target number of what they need to beat their opponent.

For example, let's say the PCs face off against a Deadly Warrior. Deadly Warriors are Level 6. That means their initiative will be 18 (good googly moogly). So they would need an 18 or higher beat them in initiative. However, someone who is trained in initiative would not need an 18 to beat them. Their skill eases the task a step. So, for them, it would be like facing a Level 5 creature, which means they need only a 15 to beat them. If they were specialized, it would take it down two steps to Level 4, meaning they just need a 12.

You could go the other route you mentioned as well. But I believe it's original intent was as I explained it above, which is easier. :-)

Mystery solved. Have a good one. :)

[SolarBear]

@SightUnseen555 : FYI, version 1.7 implemented point no.2 of the list in your first message:

Allow players to easily send abilities/cyphers/skills to the chat box. Roll20 has a super convenient button that will automatically put any ability, cypher, etc. into chat. Makes it super easy for players to communicate to me and the other players what they're doing.

I'm slowly plowing through the rest. :)

[SightUnseen555]

@SightUnseen555 : FYI, version 1.7 implemented point no.2 of the list in your first message:

Allow players to easily send abilities/cyphers/skills to the chat box. Roll20 has a super convenient button that will automatically put any ability, cypher, etc. into chat. Makes it super easy for players to communicate to me and the other players what they're doing.

I'm slowly plowing through the rest. :)

Awesome! I've been holding off on updating since the last big Foundry update since a number of modules weren't updated and stable yet but I'll definitely look into getting a backup made and trying to update again soon!

Also, I've found another issue recently, on version 1.4.3 where when you make a skill check on the advanced rolling window, when you DO NOT set the difficulty of the roll, the "Other Enhancements" box does not contribute to the success level of the task. Training and effort work correctly, but not the Other Enhancements box. It works correctly to lower the final difficulty when you set the starting difficulty, though.

Not sure if that's been found and fixed in newer versions yet so thought I'd point it out.

[SolarBear]

I'll check that out, thanks! Next time though, please create a new issue for new bugs: it makes it much easier for me to track remaining bugs and other requests. For now I'll create it for you because I'm just such a good guy! ;)

[SolarBear]

@SightUnseen555 Hey! Let me do a breakdown of some of the points of your initial message.

Re-ordering skills and abilities seems to be broken if you have too many skills listed. Moving skills around doesn't move the skill you moved but shifts it and a whole bunch of other ones in a weird way. Makes it really hard to organize the skills

I'll create an issue for this one.

Option to click a button and insert skill proficiencies, abilities, cyphers, etc. descriptions into the chat.

Done. :)

I don't like that adding abilities adds an additional skill as well, makes the sheet really cluttered especially when they already have a lot of skills. Maybe make that optional somehow.

This is something I thought was really useful (and still do) but I realize it's fairly heavy-handed to automatically add it. I was going to review this soon anyhow, I guess I'll simply speed up the process.

Show damage dealt on attack rolls in the chat, as well as effort points expended when making a skill check (even if they're automatically subtracted I think this is a nice feature so everyone knows what's happening.)

Damage dealt: in some circumstances this is easily done (eg. using a weapon...) but in some others it might not make sense (eg. abilities don't necessarily have damage) or simply be confusing (eg. Onslaught(?) allowing you to attack more than one enemy at once). I can definitely improve this, here, but there are limits to what I can do.

Allow players to apply effort to damage and display the increased damage and subtract that effort from their sheet.

Adding Effort to damage is a planned feature.

Ability to enter NPC attacks into chat, combined with 7. below

Sounds good! For some reason I did it for every item type but not NPC attacks.

Ability to transfer damage to characters (PCs and NPCs) from attacks (this isn't present in Roll20 but I've seen other game modules like DND5e have this feature in FoundryVTT and it's really neat.)

Short version: no.

Long version: this is a LOT (and I do mean A HELL OF A LOT) of work. The 5e system is awesome and does great things, such as damage handling. It also has been in development for longer and has quite a few developers working on it as well as direct support from Atropos, the Foundry developer.

I'm a single guy working on this system, for a game which is way less combat-oriented than 5e is (or at least that's how I run itt). I don't mean to ask for pity but it's just the way it is. Full combat damage automation would be an incredible amount of work, work which would be useless to the users wishing for less automation in the system.

So, if I ever get a full team of developers working with me, I might revisit this but... it won't happen.

Maybe a drop down menu when a player accepts a GM intrusion to allow them to give that extra EXP to another player directly. This would just be a nice QOL change but not necessary.

This has been on my TODO list for a long time. On the one hand, it's not that hard to do: on the other hand, I don't feel this is a very commonly used feature. But I might be wrong!

Support for Iotum tracking. Even just a small separate section in the equipment list would be cool.

Good idea.

Maybe an option to have Io listable as a secondary currency

Might bundle with the previous idea.

Abilities that have an up front cost (ex. Onslaught costs 1 Int) do not subtract from the pools.

This should be fixed.

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I'm gonna close this issue for now. If you have more requests, simply create a new one. :)