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.
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Please allow me to be the first to thank you for your contribution. Thank you for recognizing this opportunity to assist the thriving v.3.5/Pathfinder community.
I will explore the tool later, and stop back here to post specific thoughts. My sincere thanks on behalf of 50 gamers I know who believe that 3.5 Never Dies!
(Just what we were looking for, too!) 3.5/OGL/d20/Pathfinder systems are now easier to use than ever.
Huzzah!
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 :)
Unable to access it, but if it does what I think it can do, you may have just become my favorite person of 2009.
This is an awesome site! First thing I made was a half-fiendish half-black dragon vampiric Trex.
And Vax, make that 51!
Currently reads, "Service Temporarily Unavailable
The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later."I check again later...
+1
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Holy crap! Fantastic!
Overlord - You have made a major contribution to our community. Wow. Thank you.
All - I enourage everyone to send Daniel (the Overlord) a contribution toward his hosting costs.
Edit: I am not affiliated in any way, but I have never felt so amazed with a free application so very well done.
Thanks this is great
While playing around with the randomization I got a Half-Field Mohrg. Undead can't be half-fiends (must be a living creature).
Yeah I found another flaw i have made a half dragon 5 times and they have all been half black dragons
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.
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.
I haven't yet gotten to see the program, but regarding Template Type Change conflicts, perhaps a tag could be added that informs the user of a possible conflict, such as the aformentioned half-fiend morgh?
Although, to be fair, if the DM can't justify the creatures existance, thats the DMs fault. Morghs are ususally humans who did great evil: this one is a half-fiend human who's depravity was legendary even by abyssal standards, and so a morgh he became.
For that matter, just using Green Ronin's advanced bestiary allows this, because they have Morgh itself as a template there. With that it really does go Human+Half-Fiend+Morgh
But yeah, maybe a "Warning: Template Overlap Error" or such. Just to let us know, so we can brace for rules lawyers. But allowing the program to make them regardless is awesome!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
What's a standard donation for something like this? I think this is a great tool and I want to show my support, but I've never donated to a web site.
I donated five bucks to it the other day
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.
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Good Sir!
I would fancy to advance a Stirge, please. I have aquired a number of classic stirges and wish to spring them, for the first time in my gaming history, upon a seventh level party.
Ohhhhh. This tool rawks!!! Thank you.
P.s. Please kindly place the stirge at the top of your monster queue.
3.5 Never Dies!
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.
Holy crap this is a great tool!
I too agree that this is an innovative and long overdue application for the game. Why WoTC did not come up with this during the 8 years of 3.0/3.5 is a mystery. I can recall wishing that such a program existed. 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.
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.
...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.
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?
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.
Very nice. Awesome contribution.
If you ever need an alternate site, I will gladly host or mirror this for you. I have a domain/website that solely for hosting open material and it could use some additions. Right now, except for some forums I use for collaborative game design, I haven't populated it with anything. I've a book on design patterns in RPGs that a friend wrote under Creative Commons that needs to go up once I track down a current copy.
I like the random thing but DEFINITELY have the tailored part left in. That's central to DMing for me and improves time efficiency for tailored encounters.
Once again, great work.
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.
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The boards ate my post!
I tried the random monster thingy, and it seems very flawed to me.
Minotaur wizard 16, at a CR of 20 (Should be CR 17) with an intelligence of 7?
Or how about a Fiendish Vampire Ghost Spellwarped Half-Brass Dragon 5-headed hydra? Vampire Ghost? Really?
Other than that, it's nice to play with.
Sheesh, some ppl are hard to please........
At least you've tempered your criticism of this excellent aide with some token positivity.
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.
Thankyou.
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.
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.
Thanks this thing is great for 3.5 creatures keep up the great work
This is awesome! First thing I'm going to use it for is to stat up all the monsters from the Summon Monster spells. Except I don't see the celestial template there. Anyhow, I'll do what I can until that appears.
I recently advanced a griffon manually by adding the fiendish template, for my Age of Worms campaign. I posted the stats here. So since I had them handy I tried using your monster advancer to create the same beast so as to compare the results.
Here's what happened when I tried it in the full version with nothing selected by Fiendish and Griffon:
"Error marshalling java.util.List: Error reading collection. Input parameter probably is not a collection. (Missing: [). See the logs for more details."
When I tried it in the Quickened version though, it seemed to work just fine, although there were one or 2 things that differed from my own stat block. Nothing hugely important, but you may want to be aware of them. So at the risk of making myself seem like a nit-picking whiner, here is a list of these discepancies:
- (extraplanar) did not appear alongside the creature's type (assuming it is encountered on the Material Plane - maybe a bad assumption on my part?)
- there was no note that attacks from the creature's natural weapons count as magic weapons for the purpose of bypassing DR (perhaps because this is assumed for any creature with DR x/magic?)
- the creature's rake attacks are included in a 2nd Full Attack entry for when Pounce is used (which is better than the statblock I wrote up), but there is no separate explanation entry for Rake down with the other special abilities/attacks like Pounce, Darkvision, etc. - might be nice to have that there since it can use Rake in a graple as well as in a pounce IIRC and DM's may forget this.
- near the bottom in that same section with the special attacks/abilities, it has both a "Darkvision(Ex): 60 ft." entry and a "Darkvision(Ex): Darkvision up to 60ft." entry, which seems redundant - probably comes from having DV60 in both the base creature and the template?
- The version your application generated had fewer skill points than mine. Mine has the same skill bonuses as the base griffon from the SRD, and I don't see anything in the template that would change this. Actually, I just checked and the base griffon in your application has the same too-low skill modifiers as well.
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
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.
...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
...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.