search

espositos / fvtt-tokenactionhud

Creating a token action HUD module for Foundry VTT
32 stars 38 forks source link

Option to group by action type #91

Open benbarbour opened 3 years ago

benbarbour commented 3 years ago

Thanks for a great module! I was thinking about some new players in my game, and I think it would be nice to have a mode where the HUD was organized first by the type of it's activation cost, and then by the heading it appears in on the character sheet. So something like this:

Maybe NPCs could have Legendary and Lair categories too? But it's basically for players. I think it would help my newer ones if I could say something like: "On your turn you can take one Action from the first column and one Bonus action from the second column. Once per round you can do a Reaction from the third column. The rest is stuff I'll ask for, mostly out of combat."

espositos commented 3 years ago

It's an interesting idea, but it sounds complex to implement. I'm time-poor at the moment so I think it's unlikely, but i'll think about whether I can implement something like that.

benbarbour commented 3 years ago

So I implemented a version of this, and tested it with some very new players. They said they found it pretty helpful! The game tutorial became:

See those buttons on the top left? On your turn, you can click something in the "Actions" menu once and something in the "Bonus Actions" menu once, if you want. Between turns, you can click something in the "Reactions" menu once. The other buttons are things you'll click when I ask you for either a "check" or a "save". You can right-click on most things for a detailed description.

and then we were rolling! 🎲 :D Here's the screenshots. "Kaldrfang" is a magic item (made with the Magic Items module).

Actions The "Dash", "Disengage", "Dodge", etc are all just references I put on their sheets and could easily be removed for slightly more experienced players. I just wanted to remind them that there's more to combat than swinging your sword repeatedly.

It filters out unequipped items, ammo, and spells for which there are no slots. Things like "acid flask" end up under "Attacks", but it does show their uses remaining. It doesn't show how many slots of a given spell level are left, which I think is some functionality I lost. :/

Bonus Actions

Reactions

Special Actions

Checks

Saves

I'm hesitant to open a PR because I only had a few evenings to work on it before our first game, so I really hacked up the dnd5e-actions.js file without much regard for what was already there or understanding your class hierarchy. I'm pretty sure it now ignores a few settings as well. In short, it's kind of a mess and it hasn't been thoroughly tested, but it works! I suspect the magic items support isn't very flexible though. I ignored the extender class and just got the one magic item my characters will get this short game working. Anyways, I just thought I'd show what it looks like and see if there's interest in trying to get it polished up and merged as an optional feature for 5e.

Admittedly, I'm concerned about what the HUD of a 20th level wizard with tonnes of magic items would look like with this organization... but the idea is really for new players so I haven't bothered to think too much about it.

espositos commented 3 years ago

That's very cool. The big blocker at the moment would be that my wife and I are expecting our second kid in the next few weeks and I don't really have any time to thoroughly check something like this. However, I'd suggest you submit a PR anyway and I can at least glance at the code and steal your ideas when I have time. Does that sound okay?

benbarbour commented 3 years ago

Haha - I feel you; I have a 5-month old daughter and everything else in my life has crawled to a halt since she arrived. Just now starting to get a bit of free time back as her sleep schedule has evened out. The only reason I get to play D&D and work on this is because my wife is a saint and she thought a 3-5 session virtual game would be a good way to connect with my family over the holidays. Hope everything goes smoothly as you prepare for baby number two! :D

Anyways, I'll try and get it up sometime soon. Cheers!

benbarbour commented 3 years ago

https://github.com/benbarbour/fvtt-tokenactionhud

benbarbour commented 3 years ago

Haven't looked too closely yet, but perhaps this module could be leveraged? https://github.com/ElfFriend-DnD/foundryvtt-dnd5eCharacterActions

benbarbour commented 3 years ago

Hello again! Take a look at https://github.com/benbarbour/fvtt-tokenactionhud/commit/a7eac8aaaec523bbf5f5d7c50fb24ae07eb31c93 for a proof-of-concept using Character Actions List 5e.

Before I open a PR, if you're interested in me doing so, I'd want https://github.com/ElfFriend-DnD/foundryvtt-dnd5eCharacterActions/issues/23 to be resolved, and probably do some cleanup so that the ActionHandler5eList and ActionHandler5e class use the same base class to share more code. Feel free to just take the idea and do your own thing though.

apoapostolov commented 3 years ago

Just want to drop my 2 cents that this is going to greatly improve 5E usability of the mod.

benbarbour commented 3 years ago

Glad you like the idea! Have you tried it? Just install Character Actions List, and then find the Group By Action Type setting in this module's settings.

apoapostolov commented 3 years ago

It looks good. I am waiting for the fix for Skills and Spells to come via official update though.