Hero System 5th Edition Character Sheet

This is a message primarily for @Dan L. For some reason, I can't send a private message. My apologies.      Hey Dan! I would have posted this in the appropriate forum thread, but it's locked because apparent two months is too old. :D My friends and I have a long-running Hero game (it's been forked a couple of times but has been going since 2006 or something like that) in 5E and I recently saw your sheets. We've been making do with the 6E sheet, and while the automation was nice, maintenance was a real pain. So first and foremost, thank you for making a 5E sheet readily available (and yes, I know you built on earlier work--but who doesn't?). I don't know if you have any plans for updating or enhancing the sheets, but if so, I'd like to volunteer myself and my players as guinea pigs. Also, I don't know if it is possible, but I would love to be able to import directly from Hero Designer, either from the .hdc files (yeah, right; although come to thing of it, they're just .xml's) or from an exported character sheet. I know: If wishes were horses.... :) Anyways, if nothing else, thank you. Scott PS - For anyone else that is reading this and is working on a Hero 5ER sheet that wants guinea pigs, my offer of sacrific.... er, volunteers, stands. :D

Importing from HeroDesigner would be amazing. I used to use that all the time.

That would be great - i imagine its a very big task though, so I wouldnt get hopes up. They might just be xmls, but there's a LOT of possible data there, that has to be transformed into appropriate data for the roll20 sheet. And probably a lot of it wont be compatible directly - a simple 1:1 name transformation wont work.

I'm guessing it would probably be easier to write a brand new sheet, just to interface with HeroDesigner. The data is strongly structured.

keithcurtis said: I'm guessing it would probably be easier to write a brand new sheet, just to interface with HeroDesigner. The data is strongly structured. I thought the same as I was writing my last post. You could even base it on the hero designer layout, too - -maybe have a design mode like that, and a play mode which rearranges the attributes to be a bit more convenient when you're actually using it in play. Nice to dream about.

Actually, the way Herodesigner works, it would probably be easier to have it do all the pre-processing. Output templates are one of its strengths.

Roll20 cant use its output templates-  there's no way to import a layout, you'd only be to import the raw data, and would have to create your own layouts entirely within roll20. Since you'd need the data in the same format, you might as well build the tools to manipulate that data in roll20 (you'd have 90% of the work done building the import routine, if you are keeping the data in the same format).

GiGs, it sounds like you're talking yourself into writing this sheet :)

I can discuss how to do something, without carrying through on doing it (yet). Anyone following my UCM thread knows that!

Would be great if Hero designer could output .json , I'd assume that would make parsing easier than raw data, or other data formats.

That's the point I was trying to make. Internally, HeroDesigner is XML. Its output templates can be built to parse to anything. People have made templates to export to txt, hmtl, rtf, php and more. IIRC. It's been a decade or more since I ran it. I was just saying that HD could export a file that could be more easily parsed by whatever importer you build for Roll20. Heck, you could probably build a gigantic ChatSetAttr command with an export template.

keithcurtis said: I was just saying that HD could export a file that could be more easily parsed by whatever importer you build for Roll20. Heck, you could probably build a gigantic ChatSetAttr command with an export template. That also illustrates my point: the hero designer output cant do anything on its own. If you did make a massive chatsetattr, that would only work because chatsetattr has already been built, a massively complex script using the API which is only available to a small fraction of roll20 users. (You'd also need a character sheet with all the attribute objects you need already created.) There's no way to put hero designer output into a format suitable for a character sheet, without also building the character sheet that can take that output first, and that's the hard part.

I think we are having some fundamental misunderstandings. I'm not claiming that herodesigner can create a character sheet, only that it has some nice qualities for providing data in a useful and consistent form for something else to take advantage of. Example: It could parse spoken languages into a single string if the character sheet needed that line as a single string instead of a repeating field. The example with ChatSetAttr was only a silly example of the outer limits of this HD capability. Of course you need something that can receive and use the data and that will take work.

I've just been replying on the practicalities of the sub-thread started from your initial comment: Importing from HeroDesigner would be amazing. I used to use that all the time. It could be done, but I've been describing what needs to happen to make that possible.

So @GiGs and @keithcurits, what do you think it would take? Quite frankly, I'd be willing to contribute with testing and / or financially (within reason). If either of you (or anyone else) are interested in a serious conversation about this, let me know.

Gigs is the sheet author. I'm just an old hand at Hero 5ed. I could help playtest, but have never made a sheet.