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[Deathwatch] Sheet update (translation, and certainly more to come)

1607095951

Edited 1607096041
Hello Fellow Deathwatch GM and players, I am currently in the process of enabling translation on the Deathwatch sheet. However, I am wishing to improve further the sheet, seems it does not feel very easy to use (some fields are cryptic, the inner workings of the sheet are not intuitive, etc…) First and Foremost, I should warn you , with the translation update coming, there is a small issue with the Navigation skills in the first tab since it's currently referencing the Linguistics characteristics, so you'll lose your navigation proficiency (not the skill, but how well you master it). If you keep the record of your spending in experience, that should not be an issue, but I still warn about that. Like I said, I'm wishing and willing to make further improvements in order to make the sheet easier to use and understand, but to do so, I need to ask y'all some questions : Do you think advanced skills should always appear on the sheet or do you think it'll be better for your character to just add manually the skills they are proficient in? What should we keep regarding fear / insanity / corruptions / mutations? I think we could strip the entire thing and keep only "Insanity points", "Corruption points" and "Primarch's curse" (possibly with a level, since I gathered it's going on a scale from 1 to 3). What should we do with the 3rd tab (Other skills)? I feel like we could get rid of it entirely. How would you organize the tabs if you could move everything where you like? (please don't refrain from sketching and uploading that to show me, regardless of how crudely it may appear) Of course, don't hesitate to make suggestions. I'll try to gather everything and do the best I can. Thanks for your attention.
1607107561
Andreas J.
Forum Champion
Sheet Author
Translator
Couldnt the old value be saved and displayed in some remote corner of the sheet for some tips, like on a "Settings" page, or at the bottom of the page it belongs on? Really great you made the translations, it fell of the radar for me with so many other more active stuff going on.
Thanks for taking this on, it's appreciated. Just having the skills labelled up with their bonuses makes it less confusing for my players. Although we use macros a lot, this is partially down to the clunkiness of the sheet. As GM, I work with lots more sheets and have to make LOTS of enemy types so workflow and usage improvements would be high on my list. There is quite a lot of 'real estate' on the first sheet that is taken up with elements that aren't used on a turn by turn basis. The character and player details, XP, Insanity, Corruption, Primarch's Curse etc. aren't used much ingame. Characteristics tests and skills tests are, the wound count isn't on the first page and weapon profiles would be really nice on the same sheet. My players, as mentioned, run loads of macros so they seldom use their sheets. I, however, sometimes have 10+ different character sheets for NPCs and enemies open and in use. These generally don't have the marine specific info anyway, and having Characteristics, Skills and weapon profiles on one sheet would save me a lot of hassle and avoid clutter that isn't needed for any characters except Marines. I'm quite happy about having as much of the deeper info available, but having more turn by turn stuff on the first page and burying the less used stuff further back would make for a much better workflow. My one request would be getting Wounds, Armour Values and weapon profiles on the first page; that would be huge for me as a GM.
Thank you for your feedback. Let me assure you that it's well appreciated too (I was kinda desperating to see nobody cared, but in the other hand, that's mean I'm free to do what I feel like a good job). Indeed, my fellow players and I also felt we were swapping from tabs too much. I think we will try some patterns to see what is better. Maybe some infomations will be repeated on some tabs. Before I go in an extended refactor of the sheet, I think I'll try to clean up the html code which is currently a bit far from what is considered “good practices” (no harm intended on the sheet creator, I'm no better web developer, I'm no web developer at all, in fact). I'm not sure I'll have much time by the end of the year to work on this, but I think I'll start working on this after new year.
Thanks for the reply, and thanks again for taking this on. Our group has had a break for the holiday season, but we will be getting together again soon; if I think of anything else during play I will make a note of it.
1609770976

Edited 1609875508
First of all, thanks from invest time to improve this. Certainly deathwatch sheet needed some improvements, specially since yesterday I tried to use the Rogue Trader sheet and was far better to use for the players. About your questions: 1. I think the default advanced skills should be allways there, from my experience my players allways try to find if they have the ability if there are there but empty they wont waste more time trying to find it. But at same time some slots for custom skills or lore skills to fill manually is necesary. 2. About insanity, corruption, primarch curse and mutations I didn't use it yet, and probably won't be used very often, that's why I don't feel comfortable saying how it should be, but at least I think it should be in the same tab where talents and traits will appear, or maybe in the combat tab, but certainly not  in the main tab. 3. In my opinion its a wasted tab, could be better to add more slots in the skill tab and leave that to list talents and traits with a short description and some places for background info or other information of this kind. 4. About organization of tabs I would use the 1st with basic info of character and skills, 2nd with combat and equipment, 3rd talents, traits, and other extra abilities, 4th solo/squad modes, 5th vehicle, 6th experience (or this one mixed in the 3rd). Once again I will say that Rogue Trader Sheet could be a good example to follow, It feels a comfortable and at same time able to combine extra descriptions and be clean to see at same time Edit: Maybe some button for enemy hordes to throw extra dices dependen of magnitude could be useful too I hope to be usefull and my best wishes to your project ;)
Hmmm, interesting point; I have taken a look, and both the Rogue Trader Improved and Only War sheets have a lot of nice things about them. Chiefly they are well organised, with the Only War sheet having internal tabs that keep the main characteristics available at all times. Buttons for critical, fall damage, initiative rolls etc. are already baked in. What has become noticeable about our first 2021 session (a few of the guys have been looking at new loadouts) is the usage and treatment of unnatural characteristics and bonuses. DW uses a multiplier (UT x2, x3 etc.) whereas other systems (Only War springs to mind) use an addition (UT +2) system instead.In order to keep good enemy variety I am poaching profiles from almost every other FFG game, so occasionally I have to work with this difference. To make things more complicated, some gear (such as power armour and certain other requisition items) add a flat Unnatural Strength bonus, with SM power armour adding a flat +2 on top of the unnatural bonus. For things like melee attacks this needs to be taken account of (and it is, to a certain extent, in the current sheet), but it also needs thinking about in terms of toughness too. The Felling mechanic, for example, reduces the MULTIPLIER by one and not by a set amount which further complicates things as well. My players are HEAVILY into macros and are technically very capable, so it's not a massive problem, but it would be good to be able to have both the unnatural modifier (x2, x3) available and the total calculated bonus (TB 14 or whatever) accessible for macro writing. So, some things I have learned from the other sheets, OW mainly: - characteristics: the RT and OW sheets have you input your base skill and have a second box that shows the trained value as a value in a second larger box. It's a lot clearer to understand, my players have been simply replacing the values in the box and ignoring the drop down menus. Seeing the number of the characteristic is helpful when considering which test to choose based on the value. - skill bonuses: having the multipier AND the final value, and a way of inputting modifiers is pretty important for gear and mechanic/macro reasons - buttons for scatter, critical damage, intitiative rolls etc. are a nice addition - the OW sheet has some nice 'standard' additions built into the combat macros such as Aim, Range, Full Auto, Charge, All Out etc. - the ability to add base modifiers to weapons (for Master Crafted gear etc.) is cool - baked in jam/overheat mechanics for ranged, with a drop down menu for Unreliable, Reliable weapons. Reminding GMs/players when a jam occurs (the macro says 'that's not good...', lol) is really helpful. - ability to add additional modifiers for skills tests, which is great for gear that gives bonuses to those tests (such as sensory gear, or Balanced melee weapons) Sorry if that seems like a huge list, but most of them are just quality of life things. Given that the RT and OW sheets have been modified from other games, perhaps it is easier to use some of the HTML from them rather than reinvent the wheel?
Any updates as to whether or not work has started on this? I'm getting into Deathwatch right now, and I'm trying to figure out an ideal sheet for me to use.
Hello. At the moment, I did not start the extended rework I advertised. However, I still want to go through this. Right now, I'm undertaking the necessary resarch and checking the other sheets to identify the good ideas. I'll try to keep this thread up to date with my work.
Thank you, it is much appreciated!
1616721088
Mago
Sheet Author
You could overwrite the whole thing using the rogue trader improved html/css code if you want, i dont mind and you would only need to adjust the necessary fields and aesthetics  i was planning to do that anyway in the future, same with black crusade, but i dont have the time atm.
Baleine82 said: Hello. At the moment, I did not start the extended rework I advertised. However, I still want to go through this. Right now, I'm undertaking the necessary resarch and checking the other sheets to identify the good ideas. I'll try to keep this thread up to date with my work. Take your time, I would appreciate any updates along the way. I know I  couldn't figure out making a sheet like this, so more power to you.