QUOTE (mindcandy @ Mar 10 2010, 05:32 AM)
Hi DK - wanted to say thx for your work on this - awesome tool!
I would like to ask a couple of questions please - when I add Active skills I notice that 'group' skills seem to be listed twice in the drop down box. furthermore it doesn't matter which of the two I pick - the character sheet does not list the skills contained in the group. Should I type them in manually or am I missing a trick? It seems currently that the assumption is that my players would know which skills are in which group picks and thats simply not the case since we've not been playing long.
The group skills are listed twice on purpose. First there is an alphabetical listing of all groups, then an alphabetical listing of all skills, then it is followed by a listing of each Group with its component skills listed immediately after. For example, Climbing is found near the beginning of the skill listing, and then found again listed under the Athletics group.
I added this to help players keep track of which skills are in a group. There is no automated way to receive all skills when you select a group. You can add the group, then add each skill component separately if you want to break the group out into individual skills. The groupings from 4th edition are very sensible, and I think you will find that after a couple of weeks of playing you will have it mostly memorized.
If you are breaking a skill group out into individual skills, you need to keep the group and all individual skills in your skill list, then alot a BP or Karma adjustment on the 'Skill Group Expand' area (below your total BP/Karma on the Main_Sheet). If you had an athletics of 2 at character start (paid with BP) then decided later to get a specialization of Gymnastics - Falling, you would need to break out the Athletics group by listing each individual skill at level 2. So you would have:
Athletics (Group) 2
Climbing 2
Gymnastics 2 (x under KarmaSpec column)
Falling
Running 2
Swimming 2
Now you are showing either 24 karma lost, or 32 BP lost (depending on weither you put the individual skills as Karma or BP)
You need to go to the Skill Group Expand BP and add 32 to it, or go to Skill Group Expand karma and add 24 to it. These cells subtract directly from your Active Skills BP/Karma paid.
You also could instead give the character a 24 point karma reward on their Karma_Log sheet, and note the reason as something like 'Expanded Skill Group Athletics'.
QUOTE (mindcandy @ Mar 10 2010, 05:32 AM)
Secondly I would like to know which software is best to use with your generator? MS Office 2007 gives various warnings about format, macros and labels in formulas which are not supported in 2007 version. Is it safe to allow 2007 to replace them with cell references or should I find an old version of Excel? Would Open Office 3.2 work? I know how to input data to a spreadsheet - but macros, cell references and formula are all beyond me
The sheet is developed primarily in Excel 2003. The sheet should work fine in Excel 2007. That error message is normal. Let excel do its thing and everything should work as intended.
Some people use the sheet in Open Office. There is a quirk with XP + Open Office 3, which could make the sheet fail. I do not know much about it, and havent had any recent complaints. Open Office can be a little bit buggy, mainly due to the way that it handles automatic updating of formulas as you change cell values. Excel is tight with updating formulas. Open Office... it tries to only update certain formulas, and sometimes can be laggy or display formatting wrong.
The sheet is still usable in Open office, just not quite as slick as it runs in Excel 2003 and 2007.