Untold Horrors, Celestial Allies, and Hordes Alike—It's Time for Something New!

Friday, October 16, 2015

One of the projects that I've come to call my own during my time at Paizo is our Pathfinder Reference Document (or PRD for short). This project has been passed around and improved by different folks over the years, including our System Administrator Lissa Guillet, who was responsible for past incarnations of our global indices features. I'm proud to say that the formation of our Community team means that we now have Liz Courts championing for more useful improvements and features for GMs and players alike. Her first new feature, the Bestiary Index is ready for you to use in your own games!


Illustration by Damien Mammoliti

I've always been a big proponent of using technology to make your game run smoother, and so I put some of my old class skills to use. As some of you may have noticed during our latest update, some portions of the PRD got a bit of an improvement—most specifically the Bestiary and Spell List Indexes. More than just an alphabetical listing now, the new Bestiary Index now allows you to sort by Challenge Rating (including highlighting CRs based on the calculated APL), creature type and subtype, climate and terrain, size, and also a quick way to find companions, character races, cohorts, and familiars. (I also threw in the Template Index as well.) For the Spell List Index, there was a lot of data corrections (not to mention that the bloodrager and shaman spell lists are now completely listed), and there's now an option to filter your results by a spell's school.

I'm not done hammering out some improvements to help you find the information you need to run your game or select options for your character—I'm just getting started! Keep your eyes out for a few other "free-tures" in our coming updates!

Happy gaming, and may your next crit confirm!

Liz Courts
Community Manager

Our next round of PRD updates will include both Pathfinder Unchained and Occult Adventures. And as always, if you find any issues or have ideas for the Pathfinder Reference Document, let us know here!

Chris Lambertz
Community & Digital Content Director

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Tags: Damien Mammoliti Monsters Pathfinder Reference Document
Scarab Sages

1 person marked this as a favorite.

I just took a quick look, and the Bestiary and Spell List Indexes look AWESOME! Those are going to be SOOOOOOOOO useful!

Thanks for this, and for all of your hard work, everyone!

Dark Archive

2 people marked this as a favorite.

Thank you for all your hard work! It looks great!

Grand Lodge

1 person marked this as a favorite.

Woohoo Thanks Liz and Chris! The changes that have been made for usability already look great, I am excited to see how it develops.

Silver Crusade

1 person marked this as a favorite.

This is so, so amazing! I cannot thank you enough for doing this!


1 person marked this as a favorite.

It looks good! Thanks for all the hard work! :)


looks great

a few small requessts - may be hard to implement (may not - depends how your data is set up)

Would it be possible to add a "page number" field and search/index to the PRD?

Many PFS scenarios refer to rules in a given book by page number - occasionally this can make it hard to find them on the PRD. (for example a scenario I'm running tonight refers to "heat exhaustion" rules on page 444 of the Core rulebook). While I could download my PDF copy to my work laptop it would be helpful if I could just search by page number.

Likewise it would be nice to be able to limit searches on the PRD to given books - and to highlight which book a given search result is from (not infrequently I'm looking for a section of the PRD from say the Core Rulebook but the similar but different section from say Ultimate Campaign may show up first in the search results). Noting which book a search result was from in the search results would help select the result most likely to be what I'm looking for much of the time.

Community Manager

1 person marked this as a favorite.

The Pathfinder Reference Document follows the terms of the Pathfinder Compatibility License, so no page numbers will be included in its content.
Improving the search functionality on the PRD is definitely on the to-do list, and I really like the idea of being display or limit the books searched from, and would probably help with the page number search request.
(Also, please be sure to post any requests or issues in this thread here so we can keep track of it better!)


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I just wanted to say that the PRD has got to be the most wonderful DM tool for any RPG, ever. It has made me into a lifelong Pathfinder fan.

All of your hard work is appreciated.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

The Familiar and Animal Companion filters in particular are lovely additions. Thanks for this!

Paizo Employee Developer

2 people marked this as a favorite.

I noticed this a while ago, and it's really helped me when looking for a particular category of creature. The filters are amazing!

Grand Lodge

1 person marked this as a favorite.

Awesome!!

The Exchange

1 person marked this as a favorite.

GREAT STUFF, THANKS!!!!!!!!!!


1 person marked this as a favorite.
John Compton wrote:
I noticed this a while ago, and it's really helped me when looking for a particular category of creature. The filters are amazing!

I've been using this too. Thanks Liz and Chris!


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Finally! This has been a long time coming.
Paizo is taking the right steps with the new companions, the erratas and this new feature.
I actually have been constantly using MonsterDB, but maybe I will try this now.

Acquisitives

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

the subtype search doesn't filter right (or i did it wrong...). other than that, this is a delightful developnent.

Silver Crusade RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 32

1 person marked this as a favorite.

This is amazing and exactly what I was wanting out of the PRD!!


I noticed the Half-Janni from Qadira, Gateway to the East wasn't on the template list, any reason why ?

Paizo Employee Developer

Shadow_Charlatan wrote:
I noticed the Half-Janni from Qadira, Gateway to the East wasn't on the template list, any reason why ?

I believe that would be because the PRD encompasses the hardcover RPG books, not the softcover Player Companions and Campaign Setting books.

Liberty's Edge

John Compton wrote:
I believe that would be because the PRD encompasses the hardcover RPG books, not the softcover Player Companions and Campaign Setting books.

Has Paizo considered ever creating an index for those 'softcover' (plus hardcovers like Inner Sea Gods, The Emerald Spire, Rise of the Runelords anniversary edition, et cetera) setting materials?

I understand that you don't want a full online open content 'reference document' like the PRD for them, but couldn't they be indexed by things like ability name, stat modified, and source? So... if I remember that there is an archetype called 'Horticulturist' I could look it up and find that it is in 'Heroes of the Wild' and then go there to get the details... or if I were looking for things that give dodge bonuses I could go to a 'Dodge Bonus' page and find a list of all such abilities then click on the 'Rat Catcher' feat from that list to find that it is in 'Heroes of the Streets'. Et cetera. No stats, just an index to identify what book everything is in.

Scarab Sages

Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories, PF Special Edition Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Charter Superscriber; Starfinder Superscriber

The spell index is great. I can tell it will be really useful. I did notice a bug in it, though. I had all the schools unchecked, only cleric/oracle, only 3rd-level, and all the books checked. I saw lesser spellcrash, instead of no results. Then, I tried to check all on the schools, and that link did not check any schools. I assume because the list was too big, since picking one school seemed to work (Abjuration included lesser spellcrash, as expected).

In version 2.0, please add a filter by component option, since sometimes it's a nice challenge to build a wizard who does not need Eschew Materials but is still useful with no component pouch. And for various other reasons I'm sure people can think up.

Silver Crusade

1 person marked this as a favorite.

Thank you very much for the indexes! Definitely will make life easier with managing/building my characters as well as practicing being a GM!

Sovereign Court

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Last night, I used the monster index to search for all creatures that could be in a moderate forest that were level 7, 8, or 9 to be used as random encounters for traveling in the forest. This was super helpful. Thanks for the added features!


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Nice!


2 people marked this as a favorite.

I just noticed that Occult Adventures and Pathfinder Unchained got added shortly before Christmas. Thank you very much!

And I can't express how helpful the Spell Index is. I've gotten a lot of use out of it.

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