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As you may have heard in Know Direction 47, I'm currently working on a complete revision of Perram's Spellbook, and I need your guys help. I want to make this the best spell cards available, PERIOD.
The goals:
- Better Looking Cards (Example Below)
- Save Cards as PDF Files, to help resolve printing issues.
- Using Inspirations from CCG and Board Game cards to make reading the cards easier and more compact. Using Symbols, etc...
- Still having the cards be customizeable ! Important to include the option for both large and small text for users who are unable to read small text.
- A cheat list option, instead of cards. Basically like a reference table of the basic stats without the full text description.
- Ability to enter your caster stats in, and have the spell display modified numerical info like range and save DC based on level, stat, bonuses, etc...
So please chime in with your requests and suggestions!
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A sharper border might look better, rather than the faded one you have there. See the newer MtG card borders for an example of excellent design.
On thing I did not care for about the old cards (mind you i use the crap out of them, THANK YOU!!) is that a lot of the time it prints a spell on 2 cards when all the text would have fit on to one of them.
Beyond that what would really help is with the custom cards allow us to leave fields blank. or with no header (as in I can fill in the first line with "Power attack")
I like to use the custom card generator for item cards, or quick refrence for feats.
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On thing I did not care for about the old cards (mind you i use the crap out of them, THANK YOU!!) is that a lot of the time it prints a spell on 2 cards when all the text would have fit on to one of them.
Beyond that what would really help is with the custom cards allow us to leave fields blank. or with no header (as in I can fill in the first line with "Power attack")
I like to use the custom card generator for item cards, or quick refrence for feats.
That is indeed one of my top goals to fix, making it more accurate at predicting the number of cards needed. There will still be some cards that are forced to split, but this time I hope to push the text to the very last pixel I can.
PDF function would be great. Ihave printed them out ar home but I'm out of ink. I can't access the internet for this site at work so without saving the spells at home I have no way of printing them out. A save to pdf will solve this. Fantastic cards btw REALLY useful.
Add the option for a spell checker list, a simple list of all spells available to a divine caster for that level with just the short description. It would give a player the option to easily scan all available spells without having to shuffle through the cards.
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Add the option for a spell checker list, a simple list of all spells available to a divine caster for that level with just the short description. It would give a player the option to easily scan all available spells without having to shuffle through the cards.
Also already on the list of things to do. I can tell by how often this is suggested that it is a much wanted feature!
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Ones you can edit before printing. In our group we often let caster customize spells. Like Magic Missle might get changed to fire bolts for one caster and acid bolts for another.
I know you can create your own, but it would be handy if we made minor changes to a spell that we could just have a option to tweak that one spell before printing. This is my biggest wish.
A ability to select the order of the cards when printed. Such as alphabetically, by level, by school, or any combination of the three. For those of us that want to print the cards out and then not cut the pages up.
Adding in 3pp spells, so you could pick them by publisher, book, or individual spell would also be a nice feature.
Other than the things it already does and those mentioned above that's all i can think of at the moment I would like to see.
I like the new format, I use Perram's Spellbook a great deal to print and laminate spell-cards for my players, it makes life much easier for them.
Perram, I've listened to you on Know Direction for a long time and I've often heard you mention your spell cards. What I've never understood is precisely how they're used at the game table. Can you enlighten me?
What I mean to ask is, how does having spell cards in front of you improve on looking up the same spells in a book or on an iPad?
Not everyone has an iPad, and there are a lot of books and they're very heavy.
Perram, I've listened to you on Know Direction for a long time and I've often heard you mention your spell cards. What I've never understood is precisely how they're used at the game table. Can you enlighten me?
What I mean to ask is, how does having spell cards in front of you improve on looking up the same spells in a book or on an iPad?
I have a lot of players only one of whom has an android phone with a spell app. The biggest problem us that most do not know the rules that well, so we kept stopping to look up spells which slowed things down. I used Perram's Spellbook to print spell-cards of every spell they knew, and they then used these instead. Very useful if they were prepared casters and spontaneous alike, they pull the card, read it, decide if it;s what they want to do and then do it (or not) and the rules are at their fingertips - it really sped things up.
Perram, I've listened to you on Know Direction for a long time and I've often heard you mention your spell cards. What I've never understood is precisely how they're used at the game table. Can you enlighten me?
What I mean to ask is, how does having spell cards in front of you improve on looking up the same spells in a book or on an iPad?
Organization and ease of access. Essentially the spell cards is the text from the book, but it is REMOVED from the book. The book is large, takes time to flip through, gets passed around, needs significant amounts of space to open (i dont know about you but between a map, minis, dice, character sheets, snacks etc, my gaming table gets crowded).
Having them on cards means they are always at easy hand. You can flip through a handful of index cards alot faster then you can a book the size of the core rules. Add to that the fact that a character may have spells in multiple books.
If you want to understand the benefit, you can experiment with some index cards or even just a couple cut/folded pieces of paper.
Take 3 books, any 3 books, they dont have to be gaming books. Pick 10 pages from within these books and pick a paragraph. Write down the contents of that paragraph on an index card with a reference to the original page. Something like 'The 3 musketeers Page 43 paragraph 2 - [content of paragraph]. Do this on 10 index card sized pieces of paper or index cards if you have them handy.
Then take 10 other pages from those same books. Make a list of the 10 paragraphs on a separate sheet of paper, page 102 paragraph 3. (try to have the paragraphs be similar in size)
Now get a stopwatch (maybe someone to help). pick 3 random paragraphs from each list. For the first one, find the 3 cards with the paragraph it has on them and read them aloud.
For the second, go to your list, find the pagenumber, find it in the book, and read it from there.
Time how long each process takes. Baring some kind of special skill at flipping through books, the first method will happen ALOT faster.
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Perram, I've listened to you on Know Direction for a long time and I've often heard you mention your spell cards. What I've never understood is precisely how they're used at the game table. Can you enlighten me?
What I mean to ask is, how does having spell cards in front of you improve on looking up the same spells in a book or on an iPad?
Besides being quick reference at the table(Their primary purpose), they also serve a few practical purposes:
1) When you cast a spell with an ongoing effect, playing the card in front of you, or on the game mat where everyone can see it helps everyone remember what it does and who it affects.
2) For prepared casters, it makes it extremely easy to see what spells you have prepared, which you have cast, and which ones are still available.
A color code or symbol for each school would be nice. Probably color because a symbol would take up needed space.
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Looks nice, though still hoping for them to be fill-able after being made. So spells can be tweaked with out making whole new cards.
I do agree a school symbol would be nice. Especially if you could have the option to pick the Sin runes for the schools as well. Though not sure if that is currently allowed by Paizo.
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A color code or symbol for each school would be nice. Probably color because a symbol would take up needed space.
Yup yup, the schools will be color coded. I'll use the same colors that the current app uses: http://www.theGM.org/
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Looks nice, though still hoping for them to be fill-able after being made. So spells can be tweaked with out making whole new cards.
I do agree a school symbol would be nice. Especially if you could have the option to pick the Sin runes for the schools as well. Though not sure if that is currently allowed by Paizo.
Well, I'm not sure I could use the sin runes... And divination doesn't have one. :)
The form fill able thing I'm just not sure I can do. I'll look into it... but it may be out of my reach.
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Looks nice, though still hoping for them to be fill-able after being made. So spells can be tweaked with out making whole new cards.
I do agree a school symbol would be nice. Especially if you could have the option to pick the Sin runes for the schools as well. Though not sure if that is currently allowed by Paizo.
Well, I'm not sure I could use the sin runes... And divination doesn't have one. :)
The form fill able thing I'm just not sure I can do. I'll look into it... but it may be out of my reach.
True you would have to use the default on for Div, and it doesn't hurt to ask. Worst thing is Paizo says no.
Understandable I know that is a reach but it is my biggest wish.
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As someone who has used the 1st cards a couple of times in limited action and just started up a cleric and have printed a couple of sets of the cards, let me thank you for your hard work. These are great.
Your new format looks awesome.
I have an odd request. Can you make the backgrounds an option without any text whatsoever. What I would like to do is print up just backgrounds, glue them to the back of the printed cards so they look decent. Then I'll laminate them.
Thanks for the consideration and thanks for these awesome cards!
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As someone who has used the 1st cards a couple of times in limited action and just started up a cleric and have printed a couple of sets of the cards, let me thank you for your hard work. These are great.
Your new format looks awesome.
I have an odd request. Can you make the backgrounds an option without any text whatsoever. What I would like to do is print up just backgrounds, glue them to the back of the printed cards so they look decent. Then I'll laminate them.
Thanks for the consideration and thanks for these awesome cards!
I'll do better than that, I'll make a downloadable PDF of background art you can use for that very purpose.
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I may have to revert a bit though... while I love the new layout too... I just realized that some cards will need a lot of extra room, so I wont be able to predict or force them into the fields I've set up. For example:
Chill Metal has a Target of:
metal equipment of one creature per two levels, no two of which can be more than 30 ft. apart; or 25 lbs. of metal/level, none of which can be more than 30 ft. away from any of the rest
How about spell icons for the schools? I concepted some. Is anyone here good at vector art? These should be fairly evident which they refer to, although I'm mildly unhappy with transmutation and universal is a bit vague.
Interested. Dot.
Here is another draft of what they could look like...
I like this too.
I also have a 3.5 spell list in excel with the info for you if you need it. it has every class spell list with the exception of the PFRPG spells. May be a good starter base for what you need.
Have you thought of doing a Kickstarter project to fund actual printed card packs? I'm am sure this would get ALOT of support. You could then list this on the Paizo site as an actual PFRPG 3PP Product.
You could have 2 spells per card(front & back) and for the longer spells 1 spell per card for a total of about 40+ spells per 52 card deck including one with the SRD info and PFSRD info.