Excel 2002 D&D Experience Calculator

[StarFire13]

I am using Excel 2002 for XP and I'm fairly new to Excel, but I'm technology savvy in that I will be able to follow directions well.

Background:

I'm trying to generate a tool that will help me calculate experince awards for the players in my D&D game based on:

The level of each Player vs. The Challenge Rating of the Monster divided by the number of players assisting in that fight.

I found a tool at this link that is similar to what I want to do.

http://files.meetup.com/47257/Experience Calculator.xls

The problem with the Excel sheet listed above is that it makes the assumption that all of the Players attend every game seession and every fight.

I'd like to figure out a way to adjust the file so I can include an attendance chart so that each player recieves experience for ONLY the fights they attend instead of every fight (CR).

When downloaded, the file above needs to be unprotected. It does not have a password. Once unprotected, you can select all the columns and Unhide them to see the chart being used to generate the experience for each player.

While the sooner I come up with a workable solution the better, this is also a learning process for me. If you could point me in the right direction of the Microsoft Help files to reserach an answer that would be great. (IE the logical flow of equations needed to integrate an Attendance Chart and generate an appropriate experince total).

I have cross-posted this to one other board. I can't post the link right now since their forum servers are doing an update. I can say that I posted it under the D&D forums on www.wizards.com/dnd/ under the Digital Tools sub-forum. In the morning when the servers come back up I'll try to edit this post and include the direct link to the thread. If an answer is posted to either thread, I will re-post it in the other as well, including whether or not it solved my dilema.

I think the above information/links meet the criteria for posting in this forum. If not, please tell me what other information I can provide and I will asap.

Thanks in advance for any and all help.

StarFire



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This is the link to the other website:
http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=577962&page=3

Below is a response I've recieved there and my response for further clarification to him. The response I recieved didn't quite answer the issue I had.


jazzman381:

No problem StarFire!

The sheet that I created sounds like it might be what you are looking for. You type in all the characters, their level, and whether they are there for the current gaming session (It automatically bolds the characters/players who are there so you can tell at a glance who it's including in the calculations). Then you put the total CR for each encounter (if there are multiple creatures you have to use the table from the DMG manually) and it looks up how much XP should be given to the party based on the average level of those attending. Finally, you can also put in the character's current XP and it will add the new XP to the total, and alert you when they have reached a new level by highlighting their XP in yellow.

I posted this somewhere on a previous page, but here it is again anyway: http://www.students.bucknell.edu/bmetz/EXP.xls. The sheet you are interested in is the second one (EXP). It also can create random treasures based on the CRs you type in on the experience page.


My response:

Wow, that is a very indepth tool jazzman831. Nice features!

I realized today, the link I referenced earlier would not point people in the right direction. Below is the correct link.

http://files.meetup.com/47257/Experi...Calculator.xls

Your attendance tool is a good one, although it isn't exactly what I was looking for.

Ideally I'd like to be able to:

List the names/levels of the players in one chart.
List CR's of ea. battle in a second chart.
Then have it cross reference the exp given (per CR) against an attendance chart prior to awarding a total to each player.

Using your file as an example, while I can list the CR's of monsters fought and put a 1 or 0 for attendance (which will calculate them as being there for all the fights or none), I can't cross reference someone with shoddy attendance in one attendance in a single calc it seems.

IE. Below's attandance

CR attandance Chart

CR's 12 10 9 9 11
player1 1 1 1 1 1
player2 1 0 1 0 1
player3 1 1 1 1 0

For this example chart we will assume 3 players, 1 encounter per session, attance shown on each session with a 1 for yes, 0 for no.

Player 1 attended all of the sessions. Player 2 only shows up every other week. Lastly Player 3 couldn't show up on the last session.

On another chart (like the one you have already) we could have their level vs CR being calc'd.

Level vs. CR
CR 12 10 9 9 11
Player 1 Lvl10 X X X X X
Player 2 Lvl8 X X X X X
Player 3 Lvl9 X X X X X


And of course total em up somewhere, excluding CR's where they didn't attend.

Is what I'm asking even possible? I have not worked with Excel much since ~1998 or so. And does what I'm asking make sense?

Your tool is very close to what I'm looking for...I'm just needing help developing a better attendance vs CR aspect of it.

Thanks in advance...I'll check back here tonight after work.

 

[StarFire13]

A Potential Fix...

Below is another response in the Digital D&D forum... I intend to take a look at the calc's to see if I can expand the number of players in the spreadsheet from 3 to 10.

If anyone has any comments/advice on this matter, it would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance to all those who viewed this thread. Hopefully this creation by jazzman381 will be able to help others out there...

StarFire

__________________


jazzman381:

I think I understand what you want. Here is what I'm working on and you can tell me if that's what you are looking for

1: Attendance chart -- a boolean chart for who is there which week
2: Creature chart -- a chart that lists what the CR's were each week
3: Total -- what each character gets after a certain number of weeks.

It can be done (I'm working on it as we speak -- uh -- type) but I'm curious why you need something like this Do you just hand out experience periodically or have some players not participate in parts of sessions or something?

Edit: I finished the sheet, which can now be found at www.students.bucknell.edu/bmetz/EXPperWeek.xls. For now if you it assumes you stay at one level, but if you want to include some sort of auto-level that can also be done.


My Response:

Thank you jazzman381. I just downloaded the file and am looking it over. It DOES look like what I asked for. I'm currently taking a look at the equations to see if I can expand the number of players displayed/calculated since there are actually 10 players in the group I run.

As to question of why... I generally hand out experience after major tasks/quests are completed in the game. I might hand it out early if I think they are close to leveling and/or may need to level up for a "Boss Fight."

We actually run my game every other week, trading off with one of the other players who DM's a game on the other 2 weeks of the month.

So with the bi-weekly playing schedule (that causes tasks to take a while to complete), coupled with a potential 10 man "team" that may or may not all be showing up to any given session...it is sometimes difficult keeping track of who gets what exp. I don't keep any of the players from participating, life and the way we have our game schedule set up prevent a 100% attendance each week.

Thank you again. I wasn't sure where to go to incorperate the attendance chart. I appreciate you pointing out the boolean chart and taking the time to put together this chart.