Basic Action Super Heroes!

Howdy folks,

Here's an Excel spreadsheet our group is using for BASH. It's currently posted on the Yahoo BASH group site here:

AMZ_BASH_BOOK
*updated*

You can check out some sample character sheet output here:


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The sheet doesn't do a lot of fancy auto-caluclating of powers and such. Instead it's designed to be light and flexible, giving you the highest degree of control over how you are building your character. It's also supposed to look purdy. It's also Macro-less.

Comments, feedback, suggestions, etc are welcome.

Btw, It works great in Windows though there seems to be funky behavior on Mac Excel 2008. You don't get the XML import/export functionality. I'm a Windows nerd, so I can't really help all that much there. XML is really only handy when the sheet goes through a lot of revisions and you want to move your existing characters to the new version.

See the "About" tab for the necessary fonts (free from Blambot). Enjoy!

simpson wrote:Here's an Excel spreadsheet our group is using for BASH. It's currently posted on the Yahoo BASH group site here:
...
The sheet doesn't do a lot of fancy auto-caluclating of powers and such. Instead it's designed to be light and flexible, giving you the highest degree of control over how you are building your character. It's also supposed to look purdy. It's also Macro-less.

Comments, feedback, suggestions, etc are welcome.

Btw, It works great in Windows though there seems to be funky behavior on Mac Excel 2008. You don't get the XML import/export functionality. I'm a Windows nerd, so I can't really help all that much there. XML is really only handy when the sheet goes through a lot of revisions and you want to move your existing characters to the new version.

See the "About" tab for the necessary fonts (free from Blambot). Enjoy!

Best resource for BASH! I've used!!! I may be biased, ahh... heck, I am totally biased... but this is an amazing work of awesome folks!
Simpson is the guru and (for what little I can) I've been helping him find all the rule updates and glitches. We're still toying with things... I, personally, would love to hear thoughts and comments on any corrections or suggestions for using the "AMZ BASH! BUILDER" as a quick tool to make awesome characters and sheets to print.

We used the prints to great effect this past weekend in our short-shot of a COSMIC Issue and I've been posting my own builds (in my thread) using it quite a bit.

As Simpson noted, there are some minor wonky on the Mac. Not many though, I've used my Mac Laptop to make all the sheets I've posted with no big issues. The only challenges have been "printing to PDF" with page/print problems and I haven't been able to use the xml function to import/export in characters from older sheets.

Otherwise...
as the name says ... it's an
AMAZING BASH! BUILDER

and it's getting better!
-kev-

I need to download this when I get home!

Does it also work in Open Office?

urbwar wrote:I need to download this when I get home!

Does it also work in Open Office?

most likely.... some of the functions may be weird, but as I recall the simple non-macro sheets work. I havenot tried it though... good luck, tell us the outcome

I have Excel on my desktop (after I had to get it fixed from a nasty virus, they put Excel on for me), but my laptops have Open office. I'll have to give it a try on the laptop, and see if it works

btw, neither link worked for me. I had to go to the group's file section directly to download it. Might want to check them

Hmm... neither those links work for me

urbwar wrote:I have Excel on my desktop (after I had to get it fixed from a nasty virus, they put Excel on for me), but my laptops have Open office. I'll have to give it a try on the laptop, and see if it works

btw, neither link worked for me. I had to go to the group's file section directly to download it. Might want to check them

Bummer... I grabbed a new copy last night from the second link, but today neither are working for me either. If you want a copy immediately (before Simpson sees this to fix it) you can email me and I'll try to respond quickly with a copy - kevperrine @yahoo.com


I am SUPER curious to know what folks think of using the Excel builder! Simpson created a sheet similar to this one for M&M 1 & 2 back in the day. It became quite popular and was the only thing I used to make characters for M&M.

Neat history of "The AMZ BASH! BOOK"
I started a project to make a BASH! Excel sheet about 6-7 months ago... Then (after not having gamed regularly with Simpson in 7-8 YEARS) he *found* BASH! and started making a sheet on his own... We hooked up again here on the forums (hey look - BASH! is not only a great supers RPG, but it rekindles old friendships!! hehe) and I offered him all the "data tab" info I'd collected. He grabbed it from there and worked his awesome excel-mojo and after several versions of trial and error and suggestions and fixes with rule issues, etc... This is the result. I am still toying with imagery and such to help give the sheet even more of a fantastic "comic book look", but Simpson's done an amazing job.

The sheet is built (as he mentioned) for ultimate flexibility. You can't really make a character without a core BASH! sourcebook or a strong understanding of the rules and character build process. But, once you have either/both of those... making characters is just a joy with the sheet.

Watch the sheet's tabs and go through all the various input areas and tabs to understand *what* each thing does, because there are alot of "little things" that really make the sheet neat. It won't auto-calculate your Armor or Deflect or anything in from your Power tab selection - but you can run back to the "Stats" tab and have a place to enter all that (including Priority, Stat changes, Soaks, Defense, etc...) and it'll auto-calculate all the final numbers for you on the character sheet.

Also... one of MY favorite things is that there is NO "choose a Character Point total" at the beginning... My meaning - many point based systems have the GM tell the players "you have THIS many points to build a character with... GO!" ... with BASH!, one of my favorite (implied) rules is that you have NO direct Character Point total to build from. The Narrator suggests a range (as the Campaign Scale) and players can go hog-wild... making a PC-Hero that is within those limits, or one that's lower/below limits, or even one that's high/beyond the limits. The "difference" is then equaled out with HERO PTS/DICE or PERSONAL SETBACKS. So that no player/hero needs to have exactly the SAME total but still "balances" well for the game part of the game.
"The AMZ BASH! BOOK" does that well, only noting what you have spent, not giving you a total to choose then subtract from.
Then awesome of AWESOME, the final total of your Character Point build is tallied up and auto-posted on the character sheet to look like the "$ cost" of the "comic book" (Simpson had it there in that spot, I am proud to have suggested it be the price! hehe)

Anyway...
I love the sheet. I love the sections (Gear, Vehicles and HQ need tested more I think) and we have some more ideas to build onto the sheet later.

What's needed is heavy playtesting to make sure all the rules and auto-calculating and populating that the sheet DOES is solid.
So all help is appreciated!


Still lovin' "The AMZ BASH! BOOK" Simpson!!
Thanks for working your excel-mojo so well!!
-kev-

Sorry about that. The link to the Yahoo Group should be fixed now.

Kev,

you didn't read my comments properly

I couldn't get it via the links in this thread, but downloading it from the yahoo group file section directly worked fine

urbwar wrote:Kev,

you didn't read my comments properly

I couldn't get it via the links in this thread, but downloading it from the yahoo group file section directly worked fine

Oh sorry... I musta read quickly, plus I couldn't download it - so I assumed. Oh well... what ends well....

Hey! So what did you think?

I haven't had a chance to check it out yet. I was at work last night, and tonight was the V&V game I play in. Will try and play with it tomorrow

urbwar wrote:I haven't had a chance to check it out yet. I was at work last night, and tonight was the V&V game I play in. Will try and play with it tomorrow

Got a chance to play urbwar?
Anyone else try out the AMZ BASH! BOOK yet?

I'm playing with it right now, as I wanted to do new sheets for my next one shot. One thing I'd suggest adding (which I did in the movement section) is for panels. Since Super Speed gives extra panels, having that listed somewhere would be a big help.

My only problem is not remembering all the point costs I spent on powers, which makes copying over a character a bit of a pain.

I will say that other than that, I do like this better than trying to use Metacreator. Nothing against the BASH add on for it; I just don't like Metacreator itself, and consider it a wasted purchase. This at least I can figure out fairly easily (other than trying to remember point costs for powers at 4 in the morning!)

Oh, and any idea why it gives me an error while trying to import a png file? It won't let me do one, but it let me do a different one, so it's not the file type itself. However, this is preventing me from importing the image for a specific sheet....

Edit: Never Mind. Seems all the files Kris sent me have large dimensions, so I had to resize them to a much smaller size, and made jpg files so there wouldn't be any problems. Seems to be working ok now.

hmmmm....

Now all the skills are not displaying on the sheet, even though they are set up in the right file.