General usage

The package you downloaded includes three sample party/encounter files. These files define the combatants that are taking part of the battle. These are simple XML files, you can copy and modify them to setup your encounters.

To load one of these files simply select menu: File > Load Party; choose one of the files and click open. As an example load party.xml and enc-c1.xml. All combatants will be in Reserve, until you roll initiative.

The Party Files contain multiple entries. Each entry may have an ID attribute. This is used to identify that combatant. The monster do not need them, these IDs will be generated automatically (they will be numbers). If the ID matches one that is already loaded, the new definitions will over-write the previous one. For Characters the IDs should be unique, and will ensure, that they can’t be overwritten (I use letter, or initials, as character IDs).

Mid battle screenshot

Once the parties have been loaded you can select menu: Combat > Start Combat. This will bring up a window that allows you to change the Initiative Bonus (Init column) and the Roll. If you leave the Roll as zero, the program will roll for you. Click on Ok, and the list will be re-ordered to match the initiative rolls and bonuses.

Clicking on a combatant on the table will change the panel on the right, to indicate the current status. The panel on the right allows you to:

Change Health

Allows you to apply damage, heal, and set temporary hit points to the currently selected combatant.

Initiative Actions

This is where you control the initiative order, only the actions available in each condition are allowed. “End Round” will put that combatant at the end of the list (just ahead of anyone in reserve)

Comments and Notes

Write down conditions and other information; the information is saves area will be saved as you click on something else

If dead combatant are cluttering the sequence table, you can hide them using the View > Hide Dead menu. Dead will be skipped, so if you want your troll to rise again, give its hit points back on somebody else’s turn.

VCC Encounter Editor

Virtual Combat Cards version 0.20 includes a simple encounter editor. With it you can create encounters and save them to a file or add them directly to the combat sequence window. It also allows you to adjust other information of combatants in ongoing battles.

To access the editor window, select View > Encounter/Party editor … menu from the main window. This will open a window similar to the one shown below (but it will start out empty). The buttons on the right side of the window allow you to add monster, minions and characters.

The new windows include a file menu that allows you to load existing files, save to a file, or add combatant to the main window. When adding combatant to the main window, those that do not have ID will be added as a new combatant. If the combatant has an ID the new values for HP, Init, defense score, will replace the existing ones but the old combatant status will be preserved (including health and initiative situations).

Similar combatants collapsed

Minions can only have one hit point. Other combatants must have at least 2 hit points. You can edit all columns, but there are some rules concerning the ID and Qty columns:

ID

This is a unique ID used to identify combatant while loading and during battles. This should be unique, but the editor does not check that. In order to se an ID, the Qty (quantity) columns must be equal to “1”.

Qty

Stands for quantity, you can have a specific combatants several times in a battle. To avoid having to edit them several times, you can simply increase the quantity. However if the combatant has an ID value, you cannot increase quantity.

If you want to make changes to a specific instance of a set of combatants you can use the Expand Similar button to make each instance appear in it’s own line. This will allow you to have different values on any field.

Similar combatants expanded

If you want to revert back to the compressed view, use the Compress Similar button. This will make multiple entries with identical columns to be places in a single line with the appropriate Qty value.

VCC on Mac OS (10.5)

Virtual Combat Cards can run on Mac OS X 10.5. There are some important points to consider:

• Your Input Source can't be using Unicode, if none of the text field receives any input it's probably that the source is issue Unicode;
• You need to use Java 1.6 Run-time Environment; this is available on Mac, but is not necessarily the default option;

Besides these points Virtual Combats Cards should work fine. Since there are no native installers the process is slightly different than on Windows and Linux. These instructions should be enough to get you started.

In order to get VCC working on Mac OS, follow these steps:

1. Download the Full Install (you can get it here);
2. If you used Safari the Zip file will be expanded automatically, but it's not operational yet; it should be found under the Downloads folder as vcc;
3. Open the Terminal; on the Finder, press the shift-command-U keys; this will show the Utilities folder, Terminal is down at the bottom of the Utility window;
4. On the terminal window issue the following command:
   cd ~/Downloads/vcc
5. To run, issue:
   sh vcc.sh

This instruction assumes the full version of VCC is in Downloads/vcc. Once you have it running please use Help > Check for update... to update your VCC version.

If we have people or Mac to test this, this should be solved by the next full release. Please place comments on how to improve this installation process.

What to do if things go wrong?

Virtual Combat Cards has been design trying to make it resistant to problem, so that you don't lose you combat. Eventually a bug might popup and may cause it to stop it's normal behavior. If this happens please report the bug, but don't panic there are ways to recover you combat.

The internal tracker is quite resistant to problems, and most of the times you should try the following before giving up:

1. Show the dead combatants (if you have hidden them); most of the problems with starting and ending rounds, is caused by a dead combatant lingering on the top o the sequence list.
2. Use the Undo command (Ctrl + Z) to undo the last command; you can normally undo the combat until the very beginning of the battle. If you can figure out what happened to lead to the bad behavior, this will help us fix it quickly; If you wish to redo use the redo command (Ctrl + Y).

If all fails, take a screen-shot of the combat sequence and the logs, and open a bug report.

Editing Encounter and Parties Files (version 0.x)

This information is only applicable to VCC version 0.x (e.g. 0.30,0.90, and so on). From Version 1.0 onwards things change significantly

Virtual Combat Cards(VCC) can help you run your combats, but in other to do this you have to create party and encounter files. For the time being VCC does not include a party/encounter editor. This page explores the syntax of these files and describes how you can edit these files manually. This process is not difficult. It involves copy and pasting and changing some attributes (or field) in a XML file.

Anatomy of the Party file

First let’s start with a black party file. It’s a simple XML file, which has the following rules (or read this tutorial: XML Syntax):

• Must start with a line like this:<?xml version="1.0" ?>
• Must start with a top level tag; a tag is a name surrounded by the < > symbols

For a party or encounter this top level tag must be party. So an empty party file will look like this:

<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<party>

</party>

The file above has little use. So will include some monsters in it:

<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<party>
  <monster name="Goblin Blackblade" hp="25" init="7">
    <defense ac="16" fortitude="12" reflex="14" will="11" />
  </monster>
  <minion name="Goblin Cutter" init="5"></minion>
  <monster name="Goblin Cutter (Super Minion)" hp="2" init="5" />
</party>

This file now defines three monsters. Each monster is defined by one of the following tags: monster or minion.

These tags may or not contain other tags. If they contain additional information they must end with a </monster> or </minion> closing tag (depending on the tag in question). If it an empty tag, all you have to do is put a slash (/) before the greater than symbol at the end of the tag, like in this line:

<minion name="Goblin Cutter" init="5" />

Or simply use the opening and closing the tag without anything in the middle, like this:

<minion name="Goblin Cutter" init="5"></minion>

Monsters and Minions

A monster or minion entry will lock like this:

  <monster name="Goblin Blackblade" hp="25" init="7">
    <defense ac="16" fortitude="12" reflex="14" will="11" />
  </monster>

Between the < > symbols besides the tag name, we have attributes. Attributes must be surrounded by quotes. For monsters and minions these are the available attributes:

name

Mandatory: Is the name that will show up in the tables and panels

init

Optional: Initiative bonus, if this attribute is omitted the value will be assumed to be zero

hp

Mandatory for monsters: total number of hit points.

Editing attributes is simple; simply change the value between quotes.

The first monster in the file above includes defense information (in the defense tag). This is an optional tag; it is not currently being used. Future versions will use this information, so you may or not place it in the file. The defense can also be used for characters.

As per rules in the core books, minions have one hit point. And VCC will not allow them to have temporary hit points. This is a design decision based on the fact that minions die on a single hit, no matter how many hit point they have. In this case it makes no sense to gain temporary hit points. Some people may not agree with this interpretation. There is a work around for this, which is shown in the last monster in the file above, the last one named Goblin Cutter (Super Minion). Being a monster with two hit points allows it to receive temporary hit points. To kill it in a single blow, simply apply one additional point of damage:

Characters

Characters are written much in the same way as monsters. The difference happens mostly in how VCC handles damage done to them. While monsters die when they reach zero hit points, characters go through the save versus death rules. If you want monster to behave this way, simple make them characters. A character is defined by the character tag, and looks like this:

<character id="k" name="Kantrex" hp="46" init="3">
  <defense ac="22" fortitude="16" reflex="16" will="16" />
</character>

The key difference is the id attribute. All combatants (monsters and characters) will have an ID in VCC, which is used internally. Any entry in a file without an ID will have one generated by VCC. Generated IDs will be numbers, starting from one.

You don’t want monster to overwrite characters, to avoid this put an unique ID the character entries. Lower case letters will be converted to uppercase. The best bet is to use letters or the character’s initials; it just has to be unique. This way you can load monsters over and over, without loosing loaded characters.

Tips & Tricks

You should create a file for each encounter in you adventure ahead of time. When that encounter comes along, simply load the file. However in some published adventures there is a tendency to merge encounter. The guard flees and calls his friends. If you load the new file, with no IDs the monster will be overwritten. There are some alternatives to this:

• If you know encounter are likely to merge, simple create on file. You can roll initiative for every one, or you can let the backup in reserve. Leaving them in reserve means they will not clutter the combat sequence. However there is no way to roll initiative for them, you will have to use the “Move up & Start Round” button to place them in combat. This is similar to the 3.5 way of handling new combatants.
• Give unique id to each monster. That way you can load files after the combat has started. In this case they will enter combat in reserve.

Keyboard Short Cuts

To improve control Virtual Combat Cards has some short cuts for common tasks.

These are the currently available shortcurt

• Ctrl+F: Select the first combatant on the combat sequence.
• Ctrl+Z: Undo last operation
• Ctrl+Y: Redo last undo
• Alt+S and Alt+E: Start and end round
• Alt+T: Set Temporary HP to currently selected combatant on the sequence table.
• Alt+H: Heal currently selected combatant on the sequence table.
• Alt+D: Damage currently selected combatant on the sequence table.
• Alt+A: Set the Active Combatant on the effect panel as the currently selected combatant on the combat sequence
• Alt+M: Mark the current combatant using the combatant on the effect panel.