How to use Bigby's Helping Hand - IV

A Guide to this wonderful tool.

Installation

Installing Bigby's Helping Hand - IV is rather simple, and if you follow the steps described below there should be no trouble.

  1. Find a place to unpack the BHHIV.lha file. The 'where' is not important, nor is the name. Into this 'place' will go the BHH Drawer.
  2. Add the system ASSIGN BHH: to the drawer BHH.
  3. Copy the fonts to your system Fonts: assign. Rember to update any cache you might have installed.
  4. Double click on the BHHIV icon. A note about the icons. I am useing the NewIcons patch and as shuch the normal icons will appear as a small square. Sorry for all the MagicWB fans, but I have no MWB icons. Feel free do design you own.
The window should open on your WB screen and shortly after it's own screen should appear. Unfortunatly this and other windows that open on the WB screen can look a little strange, this is because I use 'sysihack' to modify the borders of the windows on my system. I feel that the 2 point borders look silly and wimpish. A nice even 4 points all around looks much nicer. But hey, thats just my opinion, it need not be yours.

Now, how to use it

Opon loading you will be presented with the Bigby's Helping Hand - IV screen. In the middle of this will be the 'About' window. Click on it and you are left with the screen. It probably has already loaded the D&D.Party.

The screen is devided into three parts. The party information is at the top, in the middle we have the control section and below this the monster section.

The party and monster sections differ only in apperance, so I shall cover them togeather. The controls will be dealt with later. Now lets tour the menus.

The 'Project' menu

Open

Character
Adds a single Character from one of the saved parties to the current party.

Load into
Adds an encounter to the existing encounter, alows for extra troops to arrive after the start of combat.

Calendar
Loads in custom calendar files.

Events
Adds an events file to the current events list.

Save
Encounter
Saves either the Party or Encounter. When saving an Encounter do not include the .Encounter extension. (lazy programmer has not fixed it yet)

Restore
Backup A
Backup B
At the end of every combat 'round' Bigby's Helping Hand - IV saves the HP of every Player Character and Monster. The file it is saved in is writen to the BHH_(date) file in T: Should the computer crash or there is an interuption to the power supply, simply load up the party, load the encounter and select the correct Backup and all the HP will be restored as at the end of the last round.

The 'Edit' menu

Items
Events

The 'Tools menu

Calendar
Dice
Events
Movement
Potion

The 'Game' menu

Share Remaining XP
When a monster is 'killed' Bigby's Helping Hand - IV adds the XP to the players total, when the DM decideds that an encounter has been defeated but some monsters still remain he may select this item and share the XP of the remaining monsters with the party.

Add XP...
This brings up a requester, enter the total amount of XP for the party. This is then shared by the whole party.

The 'Options' menu

The options are fairly self explanitory, and are saved when you Quit Bigby's Helping Hand - IV. Only the first two might need an explination.

KO PC's Share XP
When this option is checked any PC who is between 0 and -10 HP will still gain XP for monster that die or when either of the XP items from the Game menu are chosen.

PC's Share Monster Kills
When this item is checked PC's gain experence when a monster kills another monster. Why? I actually have no idea! But it's there if you want it.

The 'Print out'

Bigby's Helping Hand - IV writes an output file labled BHH_(date) where the (date) is the current system date. This file is mainly for debuging during development, but has been included here as some of my players offten ask 'How did they do that' and I have to lookit up and say 'well, they needed a 19 or better to hit and they rolled 19'. You know how it is, it's ok in the players eyes for a monster to get a thrashing but not for them to give one.

This file will look something like this. The (on #) refers to the initiative and weapon speed of the attacker. Where the file begins with a number (ie: 2:) it is the number of the monster attacking. This is because I often have 5 or 6 goblins all called 'Goblin'

=================
Load Encounter
BHH:BHHIVData/Encounters/atest.Encounter
=================
=================
Begin Round 1
=================
Keshi, 1, Soaku Haru 0:00:0 Comment: This is the Calendar Field.
=================
Katerina is attacking Body_Guard (on 5)
With a Dager
Rolled a 4, Needed a 14
Missed
=================
Yasei Yagi is attacking Body_Guard (on 6)
With a Long Sword+2
Rolled a 5, Needed a 7
Missed
=================
Yasei Yagi is attacking Body_Guard (on 9)
With a Long Sword+2
Rolled a 12, Needed a 7
A Hit: 19
=================
=================
End Round
Saved as 'Backup_A' This is the HP Backup file.
=================
=================
Begin Round 2
=================
Keshi, 1, Soaku Haru 0:00:10
=================
2: Big_Body_Guard is attacking Katerina (on 3)
With a Battle Axe+2
Rolled a 12, Needed a 2
A Hit: 6
=================
Katerina is attacking Body_Guard (on 5)
With a Dager
Rolled a 7, Needed a 14
Missed
=================

Bigby's Helping Hand - IV is ©1993-1997 by Primitive Software.
This Document, and all related documentation is ©1997 R.Brown-Bayliss
Bigby's Helping Hand - IV is still under construcion.