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morningstar42 August 26 2007, 20:44:01 UTC
Yeah, that is fairly... depressing, I suppose is the word. Question, though: are you the same t3knomanser who posted about a Numbers D&D character sheet on David Weiss's blog? If so, that is exceedingly awesome, and can I have a copy? I should probably make my own copy, but I don't know much about spreadsheets, and I'd like to use your copy to learn from (and of course just use), if that would be okay with you.

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t3knomanser August 26 2007, 20:55:11 UTC
One and the same.

Here's mine. It could do a lot more, but it's got the basic calculations. It'll figure out your AC, the attack modifier for weapons, skill modifiers, etc.

I should probably tweak it some and add more stuff to it. Then again D&D4 is coming out now, so it might be wasted effort. Considering I just bought a 3.5 book, I don't think I'm upgrading for awhile.

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mqstout August 28 2007, 14:14:27 UTC
t3knomanser August 28 2007, 14:42:44 UTC
Really? I haven't looked into it that much, but the guys I play with were pretty excited about it.

Personally? D20, in all its incarnations has some serious flaws. It's ancestor wasn't much better. My objections are these:
1) Levels - these are unnatural and unrealistic. They artificially balance/unbalance a character in ways that are finely tuned to a primary usage of a character type- min/maxing with style.
2) Hit Points - Tracking the health of a character is an important, and complex task. D20 oversimplifies this to the extreme. There's no degradation of performance as a character is injured. This is a common approach, but a bad one.
3) Alignment - C'mon, seriously. This is like picking out your character's zodiac sign for all the practical meaning it has.
4) Classes - like levels, these are bullshit. They create this false relationship between career and ability.
5) Unbalanced random-number generation - using a single D20 might be simple but it's got some disadvantages. It has an equal chance of rolling any number in range ( ... )

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