Excel Character Builder

By Bren_Waynero, in Star Wars: Edge of the Empire Beta

Well, Beta Update 5 was much easier to implement this week. So here's the most recent version… SWEotE_CharSheet_0.35

Improvements and changes include:

Fixed Insight talent to turn Perception and Vigilance into career skills.
Removed Surveillance from skill list and assigned appropriate replacement skills to careers and specializations that had it per Beta Update 5.
Added Adversary to master list of talents, but it will not appear in any talent tree (yet) since it is an NPC only talent, per Beta Update 5.
Human bonus skills are now limited to non-career choices (based only on starting career and specialization).

Also, I will try to keep the link in my signature up to date as well.

I must be missing something. I cannot get the next tier of talents to unlock. On the specializations page everything below the first tier lists as #VALUE. Even after buying all the available talents the tier below does not unlock. I think your sheet is phenomenal and would really like to use it but I just cannot figure out how to unlock the rest of my talents.

I am using Excel 2003 with a file converter so I thought that might be part of the problem. but my friend has the same problem using Excel 2010.

I'm Heilo's friend and I'm not sure what happened, this morning I was using the .35 version and the talents didn't work, so on a whim I re-downloaded the sheet and now the talents work as intended. /Shrug. Awesome excel sheet, and I really appreciate what you are doing! I checked with Heilo and excel 2003 is still having the issue. Maybe it's an Office compatibility issue?

It might be an error caused by the older version of Excel, or it might be a problem with a specific spec/talent tree. I thought I had corrected all my formulas that pointed to the wrong spot, but I may have missed a few when I rearranged some screens. If you can give me more details on what you were building I will try to replicate the error and fix any formula problem. I'll need career and specializations you have, including what order you selected them if you had more than one specialization. And give me the species just in case, I don't think species should affect the talent tab, but the more info I have the better chance I have of finding an error.

Thanks for the feedback, and hopefully we can get it working correctly for you.

I wanted to post and update the situation regarding the Excel 2003 sheet #VALUE error. I switched to using LibreOffice 3.6 and the talents work correctly now. Comparing the formulas in your 0.3 sheet and the expanded specializations on the sheets starting in 0.33 the amount of information was too large for Excel 2003.

However, the skill section was calculating incorrectly. It was changing all the skills to a value of two instead leaving them at the default of 0 once I picked a race or spec. It would then set the free racial(s) skill to a three. I could not find where your sheet was deriving the default value of 0 so I changed the base value in the ‘R’ column from =5-{equation} to =3-{equation} if I was getting 0 free skills from spec or race, =4-{equation} if I received 1 free skill and left the formula as =5-{equation} if I took two free skills.

I am sure that’s not the most elegant way of doing it but it allows me to use your sheet as you intended it.

Also, Skullduggery is misspelled on the skill tab and Character Sheet 1 page. Deceit and Encumbrance are also misspelled on the Character Sheet 1 page.

Thanks for all your hard work Bren.

Great sheet - keep up the good work ! A couple of comments below

Found an error

* Upon trying to select my 2nd specialisation skill (or 4th class skill for that matter), I keep getting told I already have 2 selected … (error!)

A couple of suggestions

* Would be great if you could expand it with a tab for customizing weapons, so teh stat block presented on the sheet would be uptodate with all the mods.

* Would be great with a summary of teh talents … (dont know if FFG would like this?) but it would sure be practical to immediately have the text description of the talents available upon selection.

* Personally I always love finding an appropriate picture of my character (I suck at drawing, but photoshopping *w*) so I always want a charactersheet with the option of inserting a pic - could u make a frontpage with a layout to accomadate a pic? that would be great IMO. - I could probably make an alternative frontpage if u want?

otherwise great work

Hi mate

Not sure if you have been told about this one but if you buy a skill while it is non career/spec and later buy a speciality which gives that skill it treats the eariler level as career, effectively giving you a discount on the specialisation. I have dealt with it by giving a -5 xp penalty.

E

just checking in to see if you are working on the next update to the excel sheet since there are new stat and cost balances in the game now

Suggestions if they are possible

Unoffical species

short discription links for tallents and abilities

optioin to modify Characteristics ie brawn/agility (for those of us who have un official species as a character)

I really like what you have done here, and although I recognize it is off topic, I wonder if you would be kind enough to help me.

I am trying to work on a similar sheet for a different game, but I am still learning some of the more complex aspects of excel. Can you tell me how you attach specific values to the drop down menus? For example, how you auto populate the basic stats when you select a race.

I know how to create a drop down, but I cannot figure out how to have that selection fill other cells. and I am not sure what to search for to find the answer.

I appreciate any help you can provide, and thanks in advance!

Sgt Klein said:

Can you tell me how you attach specific values to the drop down menus? For example, how you auto populate the basic stats when you select a race.

I know how to create a drop down, but I cannot figure out how to have that selection fill other cells. and I am not sure what to search for to find the answer.

In order to crete a drop down list you need to create a table somewhere on your spreadsheet, select the cell you want the drop down list to be in and go to Data, data validation, and then in the box that appears at the bottom enter the table details (either the cells range or the table name if you have assigned it a name). As getting it to populate information based on that, you will need to create another table based on each entry on your list with the information you want to be entered. In the cells you want the data to appear in use the vlookup or hlookup formulas to tell that cell which line of your 'race' table you want and then which peice of information from that race.

i.e. If you have a dropdown list including Wookiee, then in the races table you should then have something like

Mon Calamari 2 N/A Mon Calamari Blaster

Wookiee 3 Claws Shriiwook Bowcaster

Zabrak 2 N/A Zabrakian Blaster

The 1s part of the array above is the race selection, the 2nd part refers to the brawn stat, the 3rd if he has claws, the 4th what language he speaks, and the 5th what he is armed with - please note I am just using these as examples). Make sure that the races are listed alphabetically, then use the vlookup function: the first box (assuming you are using the formulas entry methos which gives you boxes to fill in) should be the location of the drop down list, the second box should be the list of races (vlookup will use this to find Wookiee), the third box you should select which of the Wookiees stats you want this cell to display (assuming this cell is for his language you would tell it to look in column 4), and the last box should state true as you want it to find a specific race and if it is not there you will want it to report an error.

Hopefully this makes sense, please forgive me if it is a bit jumbled but it is post midnight and I am about to stagger off to bed.

E

Thanks very much!

to fix the skills issue you need to change the data validation to >4 and >6 or >=5 and >=7

IF($E$2<>"Droid",IF(OR($M$37>4,D36<>"Career Skill"),"",1)IF(OR($M$37>6,D36<>"Career Skill"),"",1))

my copy and paste didnt work for his so I had to type it but you should see where you need to change it.

its been almost 2 months since the creator posted anything so i think we are kinda left without this nice program for a while.

Well, it has been far too long. I apologize for my disappearance. I was moved around at work into a job that I don't enjoy, and I allowed my dissatisfaction to carry over into my personal life and lost all my momentum. Sorry.

But now… I have been moved back to a more enjoyable role at work, at least for now. I have made a bit of progress… newer features include the following.

Updated to reflect all changes through the week 11 final update.

Moved Weapons, Armor, and Attachments off of the Gear tab onto their own tab, and added the ability to apply/assign purchased attachments to the weapons and armor. Once an attachment is placed in an available hard point, the base stats of the weapon or armor should change to reflect the benefits of the attachment. However… I have not yet added the ability to add mods to the attachments. Also, I have not limited the attachments to only be applied to an appropriate piece of equipment. For example, you can put a weapon attachment in an armor's hard point slot, though it shouldn't reflect in the armors stats. Also, you can put Bowcaster attachments on any weapon, so I still need to set up some limitations, but that will take a bit more work.

Added a 'Looted' option to all but the attachments, allowing a zero cost for looted items. I personally don't agree with the loot everything mentality in my Star Wars games, it does happen, so the feature will come in handy.

Added the ability to select additional career skills when the 'Well Rounded' talent is taken.

I believe I have corrected the spelling errors… or at least spelled them as seen in the book.

I also am aware of the skill costs being 'refunded' if a new specialization is chosen that grants career access to an already purchased skill, and I can't think of a way to prevent that. So eldath's solution of an xp penalty (which could be added as a -xp reward on the Character Description tab) is the way I think it should be handled. I don't think I can come up with an easy formula to calculate it out since there are too many variables between which specializations can be chosen, which skills they grant, which skills you already have… yuck.

I still hope to put in descriptions for talents, at least a short note that will be displayed on the character sheet. But trying to consolidate it down to what will fit on the sheet looks a bit daunting, so I have not put much effort into it yet.

I will consider adding some of the unofficial species, but that is not a high priority yet. What I may try is to create a 'custom' choice that will begin similar to the droid, with 1's across the board and a nice initial XP. You could add your own bonus XP on the Character Description tab to allow further customization as you see fit, though special abilities can't be purchased… so I will think some more on that one.

I like the idea of a space on the character sheet for a picture of your PC. I have not done much to make the sheet look cool. I am not much of a designer, which is why I just slightly modified Sumqui's excel sheet for my use. If someone else is able to design a good sheet in excel with accessible spots for all the necessary information, I would be happy to try using it, no promises though.

I have also thought about creating a text block summery… but that is also not a high priority.

Regarding the proposed fix to the skills issue, changing the >=4 to just >4 can be abused. If we use the >4, you can actually get away with selecting 5 skills. I wish I could believe that nobody would cheat the system, but I know some of my players. So for now I have left it as is, and instead of hitting [enter], [tab], or arrow keying after your last bonus skill, you still need to use the mouse to click a different box.

Anyway… that's where I'm at for now. Thanks for all the support and feedback. Keep up the good work in finding errors and giving ideas. Hopefully we can make this work well and have an excellent jumping off point for when we get a final draft of the rules sometime next year.

Wow, all that typing and I just realized I still didn't put in a link. guess I'd better get that in here.

SWEotE_CharSheet_0.4

That was a close one.

Just so you know the link doesn't seem to work

I can emphathize with the sucky job situation, but glad to hear things have improved for you.

The MediaFire link worked just fine, so it might be something on eldath's end of things.

Also, thanks very much for taking the time to put this together and updating it.

Hi, I have tried the link again and it now seems to work. At the time it was showing a mediafire error 404 page. It is ood to see you back and as Donovan says, thanks for your work.

E

No update available yet, but I am working on things. Some nice changes coming, and a few fixes for errors I found. Some of the changes and fixes include the following…

Adjusted most screen displays so that fields that shouldn't be filled in (you don't meet requirements) will not be seen, though they can still be selected.

Added 'Custom' to the list of species. This selection has enough extra XP to create the same base stats as existing non human/droid species with 100 XP left over. This selection also opens extra fields where you can name the species, select a bonus skill, a bonus talent, and type in your own special abilities. All of which should then appear on the Character sheet.

Adjusted Armor & Weapons tab to prevent overuse of attachments based on hard points. If you have too many hard points assigned, the benefits of all attachments will disappear from the stats.

Corrected Cumbersome quality to only affect weapon's difficulty die notification… it no longer adds/subtracts from ENC.

Limited ability points to a maximum of five (5) through creation XP purchase.

Added the ability to add ability points through the "Dedication" talent, and capped the ability points to the maximum of six (6).

In addition to these, I am thinking about some layout changes and would like some input from other users. When it comes to equipment, we currently have the carried option for gear, and the equipped option for weapons and armor. What I would like to do, is have the gear and weapons with the "Carried" option and armor with the "Equipped" choice. I would then set up a fourth character sheet page where any non-carried/equipped items would be listed. The second page would then only display currently equipped/carried items. As I type this, I am beginning to not like this idea… it puts too much book keeping into the play experience. I like the idea of keeping a record of what the PC has left on the ship, but unless you're using a tablet or laptop to make on the fly changes, reprinting a sheet every time you change gear out seems like a waste of time. I would still like to set up a fourth sheet for extra equipment, The current layout can't fit all the gear slots available. Thoughts?

Another question… regarding Bipod and Tripod attachments. They currently do not automatically grant the Cumbersome bonus, as the weapon has to be set up to gain the benefit. Should I change it to include the benefit automatically in the weapon stats, or should I leave it as is and have an asterisk ( * ) show up near the Cumbersome rating to note that it could be different if properly set up. Or… try to set up a dual cumbersome listing… 5 / 3.

Next up… Looking at the Weapons and Armor tab. I am going to try and set up attachment mods on this page. My thinking is to add a set of mod options underneath each attachment slot. My goal is to have a valid list of whatever mods are available for each attachment. You would then be able to select each mod slot for each attachment. While I believe I could attach a cost to the 'successfully' added mods whenever a mod was selected, to track failed attempts I think a player would have to do a negative credits entry on the Character Description tab. Anyway, as a layout question… I know an early request was made to try keeping the layouts narrow and long to accommodate monitors that are not widescreen, so should I try to narrow this tab up some more by moving the armor and attachment portion above and/or below the weapons list. Or just try moving the weapons SA's into the space between the weapon selection line and the attachments line(s)? Doing this as well as adding the mod lines would mean a lot more scrolling up and down on this tab, but should hopefully eliminate any left and right scrolling.

That's where I am right now. Hopefully I will have my changes done and uploaded within a week. Have a good holiday.

Thanks sir we unofficial species users have been dieing for those changes let us know if there is a donation option for all the hard work you do.

I haven't tried this out yet, but I just wanted to thank Bren for making this available.

I do plan on using it, and I don't want to be one of the lurkers that uses an amazing product and misses the opportunity to express

gratitude :)

So sincerely, thank you so much for your hard work.

Newest version here… SWEotE_CharSheet_0.41

In addition to the changes mentioned in my last post, I went ahead and added notation for the cumbersome adjustments when a bipod or tripod attachment is assigned to a weapon.

I also added a dice pool notation to the character sheet. I hope this works… I had to use the 'Wingdings 2' font, which I think was included with windows, or excel, or MS office, so hopefully everyone has it available to them. It took a lot of trial and error to get it to do what I wanted, and I do have it working for myself, so please let me know whether if it works for you or if it doesn't.

My next few objectives are to get the mods working for attachments, and a few layout changes. And eventually I hope to clean up a lot of the extra data that is all over the place.

Also, as far as donations go, just getting feedback on how things are working is what I would like the most. I work hard to correct mistakes, but I know I can't catch them all. So if fellow users can catch any I really want to know about them. That way I can at least try to fix them. There are those that I can't think of a solution, such as the XP refund for skills when a specialization is chosen later, but at least we know about it.

Thank you for your support and feedback. Have fun.

BAZINGAA! Thank you. With the Google+ die roller somebody made up and this generator program... I AM SET. Thank you very much for your hard work.

Thanks so much for this character generator! A friend of mine just recently introduced me to this game and this makes rolling up a character so much easier.