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orffen / basicfantasyrpg

The Basic Fantasy RPG system for FoundryVTT!
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Add config option to automatically calculate AC for characters #51

Closed orffen closed 12 months ago

orffen commented 12 months ago

Original from https://github.com/orffen/basicfantasyrpg/issues/3#issuecomment-1033143830:

Q) Looks like you ruled out doing "AC automatically calculated for characters - maybe"?

I think so, yes. I've been thinking about various scenarios and how the sheet would handle them - what about a Basic Fantasy RPG class that got a bonus to AC, or items like shields or treasure that increase AC when used. I can't think of a good way to do it.

If you look at Attack Bonus or XP fields on the Monster sheet, they are automatically calculated and can't be overridden - the sheet automatically re-calculates even if you put in a manual value. For attack bonus I don't think this is a problem since weapons have a "bonus AB" field which can be adjusted as needed for the monster's attacks.

Also, which items should be accounted for when calculating AC? Just "Armor" type items? What if a character picks up a second piece of armor and is carrying 2? The player could put that under "Armor" - do I just default to using the higher AC value? What if the player would prefer to wear the other piece of armor? Now I need a way to mark which items are worn, and in my experience, this is often clunky/annoying to manage on a sheet. Plus, I still can't account for shields because "+1" and "1" is the same - I'd need another field like "Bonus AC" which in most cases would be 0 just to account for shields etc.

I could have a "manually edited" flag in the sheet - if the AC is manually updated it would turn on and the auto-calculation would be disabled. But then the sheet would never auto-calculate from that point on, so we are back to a non-calculating AC sheet.

But above all, Basic Fantasy RPG has a great community and a wealth of supplements, and I want the sheet to be able to support all of that. I think I'm leaning towards the philosophy that the sheets should make some things easy (like automatically calculated values like Load), but in general they should function a lot like a paper sheet.

Always open to feedback of course :)

orffen commented 12 months ago

Created this issue just to note that this is not planned for the BFRPG system.