Constructing encounter tables using Nisus
If you use the method in the Adventure Guide’s Handbook for creating encounter tables, you’ve probably sometimes made mistakes totting up the ranges. What I usually do is work out the percentages first, using my word processor’s “sum column” function to make sure the sum of the percentages is always 100. Then, I manually create the d100 roll ranges; if I make a change to the percentages, I end up having to manually change the ranges.
It recently occurred to me that it should be easy to automate this in Nisus Writer Pro; turns out, it is. Let’s say I have the following table:
| Animals | 34% |
| Dinosaurs | 25% |
| Insects | 21% |
| Saurians (1d20) | 18% |
After I run the macro on it, I’ll have:
| 01-34 | Animals | 34% |
| 35-59 | Dinosaurs | 25% |
| 60-80 | Insects | 21% |
| 81-98 | Saurians (1d20) | 18% |
And I’ll know immediately that I’m missing 2% in the percentage totals. If I add one to animals and one to insects, I can re-run the macro to get:
| 01-35 | Animals | 35% |
| 36-60 | Dinosaurs | 25% |
| 61-82 | Insects | 22% |
| 83-00 | Saurians (1d20) | 18% |
Here’s the macro. If you have Nisus Writer Pro, you can copy this and then save it in your Macros folder as something like “Calculate Encounter Rolls.nwm”.
[toggle code]
- # check if there is a table selection
- $document = Document.active
- $tableSelection = $document.tableSelection
-
If Defined $tableSelection
- $table = $tableSelection.table
-
If $table.columnCount < 2
- Prompt "Encounter tables must have a creature column and a percentage column."
- Exit
- End
- #Add the third column if it doesn't exist yet.
-
If $table.columnCount < 3
- Select Table Cell 1, 1
- Menu "Table:Insert:Column to the Left"
- End
- $currentRow = 0
- $bottomOfRange = 0
-
While $currentRow < $table.rowCount
- $percentage = $table.textAtRowAndColumn $currentRow, 2
-
If $percentage == ""
- Prompt "Found empty cell. Exiting."
- Break
- End
- $topOfRange = $bottomOfRange + $percentage
- $bottomOfRange = $bottomOfRange + 1
- $cell = $table.textAtRowAndColumn $currentRow, 0
- $replacementRange = Range.new(0, $cell.length)
- #Handle single-digit numbers and 100s
-
If $bottomOfRange < 10
- $bottomOfRange = "0$bottomOfRange"
-
Elsif $bottomOfRange == "100"
- $bottomOfRange = "00"
- End
-
If $topOfRange < 10
- $topOfRange = "0$topOfRange"
-
Elsif $topOfRange == "100"
- $topOfRange = "00"
- End
-
If $bottomOfRange == $topOfRange
- $range = $bottomOfRange
-
Else
- $range = "$bottomOfRange-$topOfRange"
- End
- $cell.replaceInRange $replacementRange, $range
- $bottomOfRange = $topOfRange
- $currentRow = $currentRow + 1
- End
- Menu "Table:Fit to Contents"
-
Else
- Prompt "Select inside an encounter table to use this macro."
- End
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