MonsterAdvancerOverlord's page

I found this website quite a while ago, and if I remember correctly there is a link in another thread on these forums somewhere, but this seemed like an appropriate place to put it: Monster Advancer

Just click the quickened monster advancer and make sure to select the Pathfinder version. It creates monsters lickety-split.

While I am more than a bit biased, if stat blocks are what you want MendedWall12 has it right. Monster Advancer may be worth a look. The Monster Advancer tools all currently focus on DM needs but can often serve quite nicely for players too.

But as the name suggests, it was originally meant to help the Overlord run his gaming sessions more effectively without having boiler plate encounters. I hated having the same old creatures because I didn't want to take the time (or have the time) to add templates, increase hit dice and add class levels onto my creatures.

With that said, the random encounter generator, random encounter chart generator, the core advancer and quickened advancer all provide a lot of value completely free of charge. It isn't going to fill everyone's needs(at least not yet) and it only has started support for Pathfinder, but it is continuing to grow and find new and interesting ways to make things faster, easier and more fun.

(I also didn't even mention that I teamed up with Pathfinder SRD to release a lot of the charts from the Gamemastery guide so you can roll random stuff. Nor did I mention the custom loot generator that takes a more practical and customizable approach to loot/treasure generation.)

They are also all written in 100% Java and they are anything but slow. You can currently create charts with over 50 different advanced, templated, class-trained creatures in under 2 seconds.

Normally, I would hold my peace especially when the focus is on the big boys (HL and PCGen), but in this case, it seems pertinent and the extra comments about slowness being tied to Java also drew me into the conversation more than usual.

tl;dr Another free app to make creature stat blocks with a lot of cool tools (random encounter/treasure generators) and is not quite the same as Hero Lab and PCGen.

From the bottom of my black heart, thank you.

I am a very lazy GM and this is a great tool.

You are welcome as always. Be sure to let me know of any requests you might have.

I figured it was past time to let the Pathfinder community know that Monster Advancer has begun support for the Pathfinder Rule set. All creature stat blocks now include a link to view using Pathfinder rules using an automatic conversion from 3.5. More actual Pathfinder creatures will be available soon as we begin database entry for all Pathfinder creatures. The Froghemoth was our test case and is currently the only 100% Pathfinder creature. The quickened advancer is also the only tool to actually provide a "Pathfinder mode" which shows all the Pathfinder creatures along with all the 3.5 creatures which we auto-convert. (There will also be a way for the community to help speed up the process when the new creature entry system is released soon.)

With that said we are still at the beginning of this process so items, character classes and feats have yet to be entered. For now, everything is a hybrid allowing for easy switch over and with most of the underlying rules being handled such as the number of feats, skills and skill point handling for class skills, CMB, CMD as well as displaying everything in a Pathfinder-style format.

Our current tool set includes the following:

• The Core Monster Advancer
  
• Quickened Monster Advancer with Pathfinder Mode
  
• Random Encounter Generator
  
• Random Encounter Chart Generator
  
• Treasure/Loot Generator
  

As we are early in the process we always welcome suggestions or criticism so feel free to make your voice heard.

Just take your baseline troggy and throw Rage onto him.

This is an excellent idea...and your best chance at keeping the low CR you want. Kudos to you, DM Blake for thinking outside the box.

I hate to consider monkeying with CRs...

What CR would you say these guys are?

Hexcaliber said it right when he said creature creation/advancement is an art not a science. He also rightly pointed out that Pathfinder provided an excellent resource (Monster Creation Chart) in adjudicating some of the variance in the system. (Which, as others have pointed out, is much larger with lower CRs--not to mention more deadly as lower CRs leave less leeway for CRs that are a ways off.)

I have crunched some numbers for you as an example:
Since your Trog can basically rage the entire combat(7 rounds) I have used his raging stats for this...obviously a trog who never rages will be less powerful.
Your Barbarian Trog:
AC 19 = CR 6
HP 30 = CR 3
Avg Damage 21 = CR 5-6
toHit 8/7 = CR 4-5
saves 11/1/3 = CR 4ish
OVERALL AVG* CR 4.4 (22/5)
*(OVERALL AVG CR of rated items using lowest of all estimates)

Your raging barbarian Trog is easily a CR4 creature (even not raging he is close to a 4 but you could go light and call your non-raging barbarian Trog a CR 3).

By way of comparison I have crunched the numbers on a CR 5 Manticore
AC 17 = CR 4
HP 57 = CR 5
Avg Damage 26 = CR 7
toHit 10/10 = CR 5-6
saves 9/7/3 = CR 6
OVERALL AVG* CR 5.4 (27/5)
*(OVERALL AVG CR of rated items using lowest of all estimates)

Knowing all this it makes it much easier to adjust a creature's CR fairly without really monkeying with the system. The system IS DM judgment based. There are simply too many factors to write rules to properly adjudicate CR without making a rulebook dedicated solely to that. If even the "simple" rules were simple I would never have developed the Monster Advancer to save myself hundreds of hours of prep time. (which will work with Pathfinder rules soon enough)

This. Is. NICE!!!!!

Can I put up a link to this on my site?

Absolutely. What is the point of a good resource if you cannot share it. Take note also that creatures themselves all have fixed links now so specific creatures can be linked as well.

Ever wanted more than just a single random encounter. Ever just wanted to quickly populate the woods to the west of town when the players stray off track. Now you generate whole charts narrowed by encounter level, environment, creature types, alignments and more. The chart isn't just a chart however, every creature is pre-generated with a link to the full stat block that is easily used/reused and referenced for later use.

If you have indeed always wanted such a thing your dreams have now come true.

This, like all the tools the Overlord currently provides are 100% free and are out there for the love for D&D 3.5.

Random Encounter Chart Generator and more. http://www.monsteradvancer.com

Aside from letting people know this is out there please let me know if there are tweaks, adjustments or all-out features you will like me to look into to make this even more amazing. Enjoy.

...It's entirely possible that it's my statblock that is in error for any of these items. I'm just letting you know what I see here that seems a bit glitched at a very quick first glance, in hopes that it might help you fine-tune this already-impressive thing closer to perfection. Like I said, this is awesome even if there are a few little things still to be worked out, and I am sure I'll use it a great deal. A huge amount of work has obviously gone into this, and it really shows. Thanks!

Kang,

Your detailed feedback is amazing and I hugely appreciate it. I have been toiling away on a new release which I just got out last night and I plan on getting to some(or all) of your issues in my next small release.

You picked a good creature to highlight a lot of the small things I have not gotten to.

The main page seems to be working fine in general and your initial error seems like it could have been loading problem that prevented all the javascript from getting downloaded correctly. Let me know if you can continue to reproduce this.

The darkvision issue is indeed b/c of the template vs the base creature. It should have been matching that special ability and not adding it again.

The Rake attack is just a matter of adding another entry which I will do.

The DR for attacks bypassing entries I have currently left off of most creatures...but should probably go back and add. The extraplanar notation is something that I have meant to fix for a while and just haven't done.

I will get to all these things and you can always send me feedback that is that detailed! None of the issues you listed would be considered nit-picky in my book.

I also just released 404 new creatures and added in npc classes.

Sorry in advance if this is old news.

I think I have found a few bugs with the monster advancer - namely it does not seem to be adding size penalties to AC or attack, and is not calculating some ability modifiers correctly.

I took the Giant Centipede and added the Advanced and Giant templates, and added two Hit Die.

The statblock it spits out gives a +2 Dex bonus to AC for a creature with 17 Dex, and doesn't account for a size penalty to attack or AC.

If anyone knows the programmer, maybe someone could tip him off?

Just so everyone hears it from the Overlord's own mouth...

Oddly enough, the tool you are using is indeed not the Monster Advancer as much as I appreciate those who have linked to it from this thread. My advancer does not have a "giant" template currently enabled, nor is the AC being calculated improperly at present.

Just for additional clarification...Mine is an independent, free tool to help generate monsters, advance and customize them and it does a lot of fun things with random encounter generation as well. I adhere fully to the Open Gaming License(OGL) and while I have plans to support Pathfinder I have not yet release anything that officially supports it. Even as such, the kind folks at www.d20pfsrd.com do link to my tool as well as one of their own that does the basics of pathfinder monster customization. I am fairly certain the original poster meant to refer to this tool instead of mine.

Have fun advancing creatures and confounding players!

...Except I don't see the celestial template there.

The tool looks pretty damn nice. I only played with it for a bit but did notice one thing that seems to be a flaw. When I added the skeltal template to say an owlbear, it did not change the hit dice to d12s.

I appreciate everyone's feedback. I have been working tirelessly to get new features done while addressing concerns that have been brought up. I just did a release that adds the celestial and lich template, several creatures including the fun "Soul Reaper" from Tome of Horrors III. (I did fix the Skeleton not changing the HD to D12s as well).

In addition, I made some major improvements that allow random CR ranges for the encounter generator as well as appropriate use of "Elite Stat array" (15,14,13,12,10,8) instead of standard (11,11,11,10,10,10) whenever you add a class level to a creature.

(As far as all your other feedback Kang I am working on adding more fine-grain detail to a lot of the creature entries and I fixed couple random bugs in the random generator that should prevent any further errors.)

Keep all the feedback coming. I will continue to toil for your enjoyment...or at least my army of slave labor from the dwarven mines will...

Monster Advancer 3.5 - Monster Customization and Random Encounter Generation

This is just awesome. As soon as I can pony up some pennies, they're yours. I've been recessionized, so something like this is a godsend. And as soon as I can, I'll help pitch in.

Monster Advancer Overlord, I bow down to your awesomeness and would like to suggest that even with its few flaws, the generator is about as good as it gets for speeding up prep time.

I am glad to hear people are still finding and appreciating the tool. I am continuing to improve upon it frequently and new changes are always on the way. It is funny which things people see as flaws as some of the biggest cons for some people are the biggest pros for others. In any case, I am finding ways to cater to those who wish to always enforce the rules for template addition as well as those who love Fiendish Spellwarped Thorny 6-headed Cryo-Hydras. Fear not, I endeavor to try to please both sides....however, for now I have erred on the side of freedom without rules restrictions. As far as spell-casters with bad stats that is simply something I have not quite addressed but I just finished coding yesterday. It will take a bit before it is released as I am putting out a smoother flow-based (step-by-step) customizer for creatures which will include stat setting and I have already written logic to reassign stats based on character classes in the random generator where applicable.

I do appreciate all criticism and I, along with my host of slave labor will continue to put out new features, fixed and creatures as frequently as I can.

The main application currently allows for templates.

It has been a while since I updated this forum so I thought I would let people know that there have been several updates as of late including a bunch of new creatures and the Quickened Advancer now supports single template creatures.

This is one of the most encouraging threads I have read in a while. It always puts a bit of wind in your sails to hear you are not alone in any pursuit. It is also nice to know that people don't think that Dingle and I are wasting our time with our generators. It is strange how much energy I derive from even the smallest amount of well-wishing.

In any case I will continue to do my part to help 3.5 thrive.
--The Overlord (Monster Advancer 3.5-creature & npc advancer/random encounter generator)

Thing is, all the trolls have levels in spellcasting classes that they can't benefit from. I have 2 druids and a cleric with Wisdoms of 9, a sorcerer with a Charisma of 6, a half-fiend sorcer with a Charisma of 8, and a ghostly bard with a Charisma of 10.

The associated classes versus non-associated classes is being worked on as well as making sure that stats are readjusted to match up with the classes the creature is assigned. This should let your trolls end up with stats that would allow them to use classes they were assigned. This is already underway and after that gets released I will be adding in some ability to tweak stats (and perhaps a few other things) after the encounter generation (just in case things aren't quite what you want).

I just thought I would let people know as this has been a fairly popular portion of the Monster Advancer. The random encounter generator now lets you generate a number of creatures a given CR or generate an encounter at any level you specify (it does the # of creatures and distributions to approximate the EL you asked for)

It also lets you restrict either method by creature type or environment.
(I wouldn't currently recommend restricting too much just because we need to increase the sheer volume of monsters in the system but do what you like)

For example:

I want a 10th level EL of Goblinoids. The system generates a randomly selected group of creatures that are goblinoids (currently only bugbears and goblins I think). It decides to return the following:

Goblin Rogue4 (CR4)
Bugbear Rogue2 (CR4)
Goblin Bard4 (CR4)
Goblin Sorcerer4 (CR4)

Spellwarped, Fiendish Bugbear Cleric1 (CR3)
Vampire Goblin Monk1 (CR3)
Vampire Goblin Fighter1 (CR3)

Goblin Fighter5 (CR5)

4 CR 4 creatures, 3 CR 3 creatures and 1 CR 5 creature which adds up to about a 9.83 EL overall.

That's right...it will give back advanced monsters, creatures with class levels, creatures with templates, creatures with templates and class levels, creatures with advanced hit dice, class levels and templates...you name it. All while working out groups of creatures of all different group distributions from one creature to many--and keeping the Encounter Level fairly close to what you want.

I hope you like it and send me your feedback.
(I just generated a Half-fiend Spellwarped Drow Wizard 1, Druid 3)

Help 3.5 Thrive!

I am interested in a few more thoughts about the random encounter generator. I am in the process of working on a major feature enhancement to that section due to the use it is getting. I am currently creating a way to better "tailor" the random encounter. Select an EL, restrict by creature type and/or environment and/or "theme"(theme would be crypt, sewer, etc. Things are aren't officially environments but would great for preset thought-out sets of creatures).

I was wondering does anyone want the currently functionality left in? I am not planning on removing it but I wanted to know if most people would rather have something tailored or if people are enjoying the utter randomness of the current system.

In something like an advanced fiendish ghoul rogue, for example, it has the ghast's stench ability but was both immune to cold and had cold resistance. Should the sneak attack dice also be figured?

Could you clarify your question? Are you asking if I can display the +4d6(sneak attack) in the special ability section, the attacks section or both?

...If the program can eventually put in templates like Monster of Legend, Half-fiend, etc., then I'm in heaven. Definitely, a Killer GM's best friend.

The main application (not the quickened) currently allows for templates. Monster of Legend unfortunately is not OGL but the Half-fiend is in the application right now along with half-dragon, fiendish and a few others.

New creatures have been released:
Blink dog, Chimera, Chaos Beast, Centaur, Goblin, Gnome, Gnoll, Troll, Roper, Clay Golem, Iron Golem, Owlbear, and all ages green dragons and the red dragon great wyrm.

Also skills now are displayed and auto-assigned using a fairly intuitive strategy that tends to try to max out class skills and emphasizes a few specific skills based on creature type, or character class. Your Bugbear shouldn't usually get assigned 3 different perform skills unless he has bard levels.

Feats are now properly calculated including class levels. (Does not yet include bonus feats--although monk bonus feats are set up to assign randomly already)

There is a place on the display screen that now shows how many stat points the creature should have gained from advancement. (Just as a side note...if you ever actually do the math on the creatures you will realize that most monsters in the books ignore the whole extra stat point every 4 levels completely so I tend to not worry about it...keep in mind that in the main application that the table that shows the stats can be clicked on and every stat can be edited manually so the stats are always up to you.)

Also the main application now opens a new window for each creature you advance so that the javascript heavy page doesn't have to keep reloading.

The Stirge will be in my next release. It was a good pick too because I had to handle a number of small things with a stirge that I haven't had to handle yet...(bonus feats, racial bonus to grapple).
Do note that I never fixed my challenge ratings to handle anything but whole numbers so it will say CR 0 instead of 1/2 to start and I apologize for that inaccuracy. I will eventually fix that but it isn't a high priority and it is tougher to fix than it sounds.

I just recently release the Monster Advancer and I must say that this is something that I came up against in development. If you think about this from a complexity standpoint progression of spell-like abilities would have just been another complicated piece of an already too-complicated puzzle. Creatures could take quite a bit of time to increase in power before we even start talking about spells or other abilities.

This is something that I hope to address once I have the vast majority of most requested features into the Advancer. To create a program that does all the work of advancement opens doors that the print medium just doesn't allow. Creatures that have spell-like abilities should go beyond just progressing in power with those...they should gain new ones depending on their HD. A Hag with 20HD should have more spell-like abilities and tricks up her sleeve than the base one...but again creating a progression of that type just isn't easy in print. Once I have a prototype for these new hyper-advanced creatures I will let everyone know but I would love to hear some people's ideas of what sorts of powers creatures should and could gain as they gain HD...with a program and some standard systems we could do anything and do it easily.

I was always under the impression that the size increase was a nod to the potential size increases of creatures that have naturally grown or been bred to be tougher. While most do seem to get bigger as they get tougher it is true that they shouldn't have to. But, this was a limitation of creativity and practicality versus straight simulation. That was part of the reason I made sure you had the option to just advance a creature manually by adding racial HD and forcing the size to stay the same. So if you wanted a tougher beast with the original size you have that option.

That sort of flexibility lends itself more to an electronic medium vs. print just because of complexity.

--The Overlord
http://www.monsteradvancer.com

There is definitely no standard amount. My real goal is just to offset hosting costs as much as possible. I am currently paying $13/month to keep the site up. So, I am going to sincerely appreciate a donation of any amount whatsoever but it is by no means necessary. I will continue to keep the site up one way or the other. Thanks for the support of every sort. Just having people using the tool and liking it is enough to make my day.

Continue to email or post suggestions and requests as those are worth much to me as well. (I am entering creatures as fast as possible while still adding new features but if you have a creature you must have now or for your next session let me know and I will do what I can.)

I apologize for not having released again yet. Since the tool is being used about 22 hours a day I am waiting on a tool from the hosting company that will help me deploy quickly with minimum downtime. As soon as I have that tool I plan on having updates fairly frequently (even every couple of days as a release will only take a couple minutes...right now if I have a problem I could not get it fixed in a timely fashion due to timing issues, and I don't want to risk several hours of downtime because so many people are using the site--which is a good problem to have of course!)

You guys are awesome...keep advancing 'em.

A downloadable version is something that is definitely still on the horizon. There is definitely interest in an offline tool but that is not something I will probably start trying to accomplish until I have gotten all the "core" work done. All the OGL creatures, skills, auto-selections...things like that. But fear not the answer actually is yes.

MonsterAdvancerOverlord wrote:

My goal is to help foster and reinvigorate the 3.5 community by contributing to the tools that enhance the game by allowing time for creativity rather than crunching numbers.

Very nice - good layout on the printable stats. Copies and pastes into word just fine... coolness :)

You should also find that if you print from a browser the css is setup to remove dropdowns and such and just print the good stuff...just in case you didn't like the idea of *having* to cut and paste.

If I had a tool like this a few months ago, I probably wouldn't own any 4e books. My biggest complaint in 3.x was the amount of work involved (followed closely by high level play). This thing is amazing, I don't care about bugs or glitches, I will definately be using this for the dwindling 3.x games I am involved in.

Sorry I took so long. I hope to make up for my tardiness with awesome features.

I don't seem to be able to select any monster other than Aboleth, maybe I'd better write an adventure featuring lots of those :)

Sorry about the problems but sometimes if a website gets messed up during the loading process your browser can cache bad javascript. Since the site seems to be responding fine in all three of my test browsers try clearing your cache and loading the site again (click refresh while holding shift works in most browsers). If you are still having problems email me what browser you are using, which of the 3 applications you were trying to access and when. I can do some heavy testing. I have not had any reports that anyone is having more problems with a specific browser but I want to make sure everyone gets taken care of.

In general, I appreciate all the great feedback. I have seen a far more enthusiastic response than I had hoped. If you have feature requests please send them to the email listed on the Contact The Overlord link. Right now I am working furiously on dozens of features, creature additions, template additions and minor bug fixes. But if you make yourself heard...your requests become my top priorities. I intend on frequent updates at this point. The Overlord occasionally is occasionally magnanimous.

Sorry about the people who experienced downtime. I was releasing the newest version on Saturday night (at about 2am) that allows class level addition but had a deployment problem that took until the middle part of Sunday to fix..and then late Sunday night/early Monday morning another blip. I did not really expect the instant reaction or I would have been more diligent in catching the problem right away. I have added a service that checks my uptime continually now and notifies me if things go down. All is well now.

The half-dragon template currently will only produce black until my next release (early this week) It is already set up to handle any primary dragon type but I hadn't hooked in how to select said type. Also the templates do not apply any rules to their addition. In the long run I might exclude certain obvious illegalities but in general restrictive things I will leave up to the user. (I will eventually add notes that tell you when a rule has been broken so if you want to make sure you are obeying rules you can.) The other problem is that not all templates are designed to be used with other templates...which template's type change trumps? Is fiendish zombie different than a zombie version of a fiendish creature....it is hard to say...in any case don't expect all used of multiple templates to behave normally. :) Just have fun.

To me the restrictions are different than the rules. "Some rules can be bent, others can be broken." While a half-fiend mohrg would be difficult for most DMs to justify, it is not my place to stop you...perhaps just to let you know that you are stretching things in case you do not already realize it.

This is indeed always a problem at higher levels and I would reiterate and back up the earlier comments about designing certain encounters to play to different characters strengths. However, I would also throw out another option based upon the following thoughts:

Inevitably high level campaigns start suffering from an over abundance of out of character knowledge. This will cause people to start min/maxing because they know how to game the system and are so familiar with the challenges they may face that they don't worry enough about their weaknesses. I faced this problem myself in my current campaign. They knew too much. They could meta game without ever even realizing it. I realized that what I needed to do was keep them guessing. I needed creatures that were always unique and new and different--without abandoning all that the players knew. This allows them to always doubt what they knew without disregarding it. I did this by creating advanced creatures with templates and class levels, or gave them random feats that allowed for all sorts of things they had scarcely ever seen. If the challenges are ever-changing and always interesting and always have at least some small twist...there is always a benefit to being vaguely well-rounded instead of completely min/maxing.

This of course led to a lot more work on my part, but if you forgive the brief but shameless plug, I fixed a lot of that too. (http://www.monsteradvancer.com) (This problem is what actually led to this project).

In the end the players still min/max but not nearly as much. They are concerned about closing down their weaknesses and having more utility to combat unknown situations. So, occasionally, they do decide against the next min/max item or feat to get something to handle the unknown or to give themselves their own new trick. They just love trying to be ready for what I might throw at them next!

Once the players know too much they second guess you. You can keep the familiar while still making it new and exciting. Keep them guessing and they will drive themselves to be more than one trick spell-warped dire ponies with ranger levels.

I write to express my support for the thriving 3.5 community via the recently released Monster Advancer (http://www.monsteradvancer.com).

This compact suite of applications allows for swift monster generation, advancement and customization, all within the context of 3rd edition(3.5). What once took up to an hour of dungeon masters' time, now takes seconds. Large Fiendish, Half-Dragon Dire Wolves with 18 hit dice can now take their place of honor amongst the kraken and the hydra.

There are currently three applications worthy of note: There is a version made for massive customization (allowing templates, magical items and equipment, stat adjustments and feat selection), a version made for speed and simplicity, and another which can generate multiple creatures randomly based on the challenge rating or encounter level desired.

The entire project is completely free and available now. It is continuing to be enhanced daily with the ability to add class levels just added a day or two ago.

My goal is to help foster and reinvigorate the 3.5 community by contributing to the tools that enhance the game by allowing time for creativity rather than crunching numbers.

First time with this, still same as always:

Player name:
Character name:
PFS #:
Faction:
Perception:
Initiative:
Day Job:
Special Note of characters. Wonky abilities and such goes here:

Dozens of stone pillars known as the Gloomspires rise from the ocean west of the Eye of Abendego. Built during the Age of Serpents by a humanoid race remembered only as the Makers, many of these columns contain numerous levels and chambers since used by both the devious and the desperate to hide themselves and their wealth. Since ancient times, the Gloomspires have intrigued explorers, yet the columns’ ever-present wind-resistant fog and their tendency to shift locations at random means studying any one in particular—much less getting an accurate count of their number—is extremely difficult. Only for three nights during the winter and summer solstices do the columns stay still.

I threw this up on Reddit as well.

The feat Dorn Dergar Master lets you use the dorn dergar as a one handed weapon.

The fighter's advanced weapon training let's you treat a one handed weapon as a light weapon for two weapon fighting penalties.

Would these stack to swing double dorn dergars at -2/-2?

Can they also be modified with Dual Balanced from adventurers armory 2 to bring that down to -1/-1?

Is there some place where weapon training groups are regularly updated? I have a PC who's using a dorn dergar and a boulder helmet and can't find an official listing beyond the core book listing that GM's can add to these groups.