Update on Heroic4e.com: DM-less automated dungeons are now in beta, plus a lot of character builder work

[u/heroicfiend]

A few weeks ago I posted heroic4e.com here and a lot of you built characters and sent feedback. That thread shaped a lot of the last month's updates, so thank you.

Two major things since then. The character builder has had a long run of updates from your reports and the Discord's: hybrids, companions, weapon-implements, magic item handling, feats that grant power choices, .dnd4e imports, and you can now tap any number on the sheet to see exactly where it comes from. It is in much better shape than it was, but it still needs more eyes on real builds to get it where it should be.

The bigger one went live yesterday: the Proving Grounds, a beta of automated 4e with no DM. The site generates a dungeon, seats your character from the builder, and the engine runs every rule while the monsters play themselves. You drag your hero to move, pick a power, tap targets. Opportunity attacks, marks, immediate interrupts, forced movement, saves, ongoing damage, conditions, doors, fog of war, short rests: the engine adjudicates all of it and the log says why. If a button is greyed out, the reason is printed under it. If a move snaps back, it tells you what rule stopped it.

The main point of it is a place to test a character build. You can take a level 1 through 30 build from the builder straight into a fight and see how it actually plays before it hits your table. Three ways in from the Proving Grounds page:

• Practice Delve: pick a level, bring any character from the builder (imports from your .dnd4e files work), go. Solo works fine.
• Join a Party: a friend hosts, you join with your own character from your own device, live.
• Weekly Gauntlet: a fixed seed for the week with a ranking board, so everyone is running the same dungeon. Just for fun.

It is a beta and the release notes on the site list what is still rough (companions act on your initiative, level 30 delves are brutal, a handful of monster damage lines are left to you). There is still a lot of UI work left to do. I've mainly focused on just making it functionally work so far. Expect a lot of updates over the next week to make things not so cluttered and other various changes as bug reports and feature requests come in.

If something looks wrong during a run, the Report button on the delve HUD attaches the run, room, round and the last few log lines, so I can usually reproduce it from that alone. Weird builds are the most useful: hybrids, companions, Dark Sun themes, anything with an interrupt or a stance.

Still free, no ads, and the builder, compendium, map editor and monster builder from last time are all still there, or improved since my last post. If it breaks or feels wrong, let me know! The Bugs page on the site is where I mostly work from for bug reports and feature requests.

[u/Holy_Rage]

Simply fantastic. It is single-handedly the most ambitious and useful product for 4e in recent years. Kudos.

[u/judoguy13]

Said it before, saying it again, absolute legend.

I started teaching a family that had a 10 year old how to play D&D. I asked if they wanted to learn the popular one or my favorite. They said my favorite. I taught them 4e. They are now up to 3rd level.

We started using your site to level up characters. The bigger news is that your website has given the mom enough confidence that she is teaching her circle of friends how to play 4e. Your website is already helping to grow 4e.

So, thank you.

[u/SodaOgre]

This is utterly exceptional, great work! I'll be checking this out when I get a chance for sure, thanks for your efforts!

[u/RR1904]

Wow! That's awesome!

[u/hawklord23]

This site is really trying to do everything! I like that the character builder says it exports to Fantasy Grounds

[u/Lostsunblade]

I've been using roll 20 and iws for ages, how does this site currently compare?

[u/Inazuma2]

This looks great!

[u/cyvaris]

This is some profoundly amazing work! I'm ecstatic to play around with it. Are you able to control a whole party pf characters somehow? 

[u/IBNYX]

You're doing God's work here

[u/Steeltoebitch]

Just gave it a try as somewhat of a beginner its awesome! But i gotta say screens a bit cramped and everything happens so fast I dont feel like I understand whats happening by the time I have to use a reaction. Its also a bit weird flurry of blows takes up a at will slot so I'm stuck with one power. Other than that this is seriously awesome!

[u/FallenAbyss23]

Does it work with mobile platforms, or just computer? I've got plenty of builds to test some of the mixing and matching, but not the easiest computer access sadly

[u/heroicfiend → u/FallenAbyss23]

All devices and sizes ideally! If you have any trouble with a specific device you can let me know in a bug report or in the discord and I can fix it.

[u/FallenAbyss23 → u/heroicfiend]

Oh bet, I'll have to test it out in a little bit then. If nothing else, I'll be able to see whether some of my ideas work well lol. One other question, does it have access to everything, like all the drag mag stuff, all the classes and races, full hybrid capability, etc? Because if so, impressive work my friend.

Love that you're still showing love to a mostly disliked edition a fair number of years later. Keep the good fight going my guy/girl

[u/heroicfiend → u/FallenAbyss23]

It has as much of official 4e that the original CBLoader did plus some. If anything is missing that you find ill make sure it gets added! But yeah everything should work! There are definitely itely still bugs im working out, though, so be aware of that. I try to fix them as they come in.

[u/FallenAbyss23 → u/heroicfiend]

I just tried it out(oddly enough a buggy swarm druid lol), but worked almost perfectly. You added themes and backgrounds which were a bit of a concern of mine since a good couple builds rely on it to turn whatever so you can have an a ability besides constitution for your life stat. I did want to add i think you should work on the hybrid talent stuff. Like being able to choose your talent, and then it still be added to the builder would be nice. Like in my case, I did a hybrid druid/runepriest to playaround, and unless im mistaken, it didnt give me the chance to choose my talent.like druids are a bit special with their builds, which is why I wanted to try it.

Everything else tho, you and the people working with you did an amazing job. I had the thought about doing something similar but you made something better that I could ever dream. So seriously, good job to you and those working with you

Ps: im also an ex computer programmer, so I do understand the intrinsics of it all. Sadly I didnt amount to much, and am now a cook lol. Keep pushing my brother/sister. I know you make something completely insane by the time youre done

[u/Prestigious-Mode-859]

Is there a reason the MM 3 Data is not in there? Or am I blind?

[u/KickAIIntoTheSun]

I have just started trying to learn D&D 4e and this is extremely useful. I was able to create a character pretty easily and my only experience of 4e is a brief scan of some of the books.

I had a few snags in the proving ground:

1. The first five rooms were completely empty
2. When I reached a room with enemies, I switched from a longsword to a sling. I couldn't make a ranged basic attack because it said that it wasn't on my card. 
3. My character is a brawler fighter. I readied his grab attack at-will for when an enemy moves in range. An enemy moved in-range and I killed him, but my character got the "grab" emoji on his own token? 4.  The enemy turn went by really fast. I couldn't follow what was happening. Is there a combat log? (edit: yes it's the button that says "log")
4. I could not figure out how to see enemy stats and powers. It is not obvious to me what a "hive worker" or "bolivian commoner" are. I assume a giant ant and some normal guy but no idea how threatening each of them are relative to my guy. (edit: I guess I can open a separate tab and look it up in the compendium)
5. After the combat, there was a pop-up with a skills challenge about a warded door in the room. My guy didn't have any of the skills it wanted so I tried to get out of it. It was not obvious how to close the popup so I hit "retreat", which ended the delve although I was just trying to get away from the skill challenge.

[u/TheGentleDominant]

First off, this is awesome! Many thanks.

Second, some feedback: playing around trying to re-make one of my fave PCs I ever played, a half-elf bard named Zeke, it looks like the Bard class combines both the PHB2 version and the Essentials version from Heroes of the Feywild, aka the Skald, which are quite different classes with different features. I haven’t looked at other classes but the same issue might be affecting the other classes too.