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I have created a random item generator for GMs to use to determine what items are available at a given settlement. It's pretty basic right now, and quite plain-looking, but I thought I'd ask the boards here for some feedback. (I hope this is the right forum!)
It's available at my website: Pathfinder Settlement Item Generator
Current Features/Notes:
- Generates items for the standard settlement sizes
- Uses tables in the Core Rulebook (and/or Gamemastery Guide) for settlements and item types
- Includes all items in Ultimate Equipment (all 71 tables!)
- Uses a 50/50 ratio for determining lesser/greater when transitioning from the CRB to UE, since UE added the lesser/greater levels.
- Ensures that weapon and armor special properties are compatible with the item, e.g. it won't make keen warhammers.
- Handily provides the item price.
Planned Features:
- Automatically reroll items that fall under a settlement's base value
- Add means to reroll single items generated for a settlement
- Roll individual items
- Roll treasure hoards
- Pretty up the page a little
- Random size, material, and magical nature (glow, runes, etc).
Known Issues:
- Fails to provide a price for "other" items (e.g. "other weapon", where a GM would be expected to choose something -- the page cannot, of course, predict what it would be, but a GM should be able to select something and add the prices together)
- Does not check to make sure weapons and armor do not have redundant properties, e.g. Resist Fire 10 and Resist Fire 5
- Possibly some other things; it was a command line tool before I switched it to a web thing.
- I'm not sure if I made the adjustments to the price of the Amulet of Mighty Fists mentioned in the recent Paizo Blog post. I think I did.
- Update: sometimes generates "Wondrous Item: (Wrists);" This is high on my priority list.
Looking forward to criticism and feature requests! Though please not too critical... I'm not a web programmer, just dabbling. This page may also change dramatically as I work on it, and uptime is not guaranteed if I'm making major changes.
(And Paizo people, please let me know if I am adequately attributing the OGL, and Paizo trademarks. I read up on the policies, but I could easily have made a mistake.)
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You should probably put the required Pathfinder Compatibility License declarations as outlined here on your website.
Other than that, looks good! I love GM-friendly websites like these. ^_^
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Let's see:
- I don't want the URL to be misconstrued as a title, so I've changed it to "pf_items.html" (which is also simpler, and reflects non-settlement usage to be added in the future). Because I cannot edit my original post, I've made an HTTP redirect to go from the old name, to the new.
- I've made sure to set the HTML title property as well.
- Just to be comprehensive, I'll rename my publicly hosted version control repository title (I have not announced where it is, but it does have public visibility, so it's possible for someone to stumble into it).
- I'm not actually using the logo but I went ahead anyway and added the declarations associated with using the logo.
- I'll soon begin the application progress. On that note, should I declare that the compatibility license is pending, rather than assumed to be in effect?
Thanks, Liz!
Update: I'm confused about something, Liz -- I was on the page you linked, and at the bottom, there was a check box stating agreement, and a submit application button. I checked the box and clicked the button, but I was not asked for further information. Did anything happen? Since I'm logged in for posting on the boards, did my account get posted to some sort of list, and someone from Paizo will contact me, or did something go wrong with the form, and I need to take some kind of action? Should I mail a copy of my product, or wait for instructions?
Some tech details:
Github: pf_items
Front-end is HTML and JavaScript, with jQuery to communicate with the back-end, which is written in Python. Uses an SQLite database for looking up roll results. It also runs as a command line program if you download the code, but that functionality is broken right now.
Update:
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I love the generator, this will serve me quite well in my upcoming game. I have a question before I set about making use of this however. I see that you are implementing all of the items from the CRB and Ultimate Equipment but what other books are you including? The reason i ask is I have a gunslinger in the party and I don't want to be generating shop inventories that will overlook the nifties for this class.
Awesome! One idea: a field for the base value of a settlement. Some settlements have base values that are different than the baseline.
- Gauss
RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32
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Very nice! I've totally bookmarked this.
Interesting that you reroll items below the base value. I always assumed that items below the base value were legit - as any item below the base value only has a 75% chance to be available, I always treated low cost rolled items as definitely available. Any chance of adding a toggle to disable the reroll?
Still a great tool. Thanks a lot for creating it.
Very cool, bookmarked and dotting this thread. Thanks for creating and putting this out!
ryric, the reroll is part of the rules.
The number and types of magic items available in a community depend upon its size. Each community has a base value associated with it (see Table 15–1). There is a 75% chance that any item of that value or lower can be found for sale with little effort in that community. In addition, the community has a number of other items for sale. These items are randomly determined and are broken down by category (minor, medium, or major). After determining the number of items available in each category, refer to Table 15–2 to determine the type of each item (potion, scroll, ring, weapon, etc.) before moving on to the individual charts to determine the exact item. Reroll any items that fall below the community’s base value.
- Gauss
Cool, just popped in and saw responses! Some of those responses need responses, so:
Joshua: The items are only from UE. The CRB's involvement is limited to attaching the UE item tables to settlements. I'm going under the assumption that UE is a superset of the items in CRB.
Gauss: Non-standard base values is my next goal. I've sort of been lazy recently, but I'll make some sort of fix to it, hopefully soon. It's not quite trivial, though. Riddleport, for example, would break the generator. Well, not "break", as I have safeguards, but no meaningful will be generated, as it will reroll only 1000 times or so before it gives up. I can't imagine doing this with actual dice!
ryric: As Gauss said, yes, that's per the standard. It's quite unfortunate, as it's a headache for me. A better alternative would be similar to how treasure hoards are rolled to eliminate rerolling, but for the moment, I support "RAW as much as possible" as my primary design goal, with any deviations (in the future) as options. Perhaps "don't reroll" can be an option. I rather like it, and it seems approrpriate for really small settlements, so, it's now a considered feature.
Glad to see it has picked up some interest. Thanks for the praise, folks! It encourages me to keep working on it.
Update time!
There is now an experimental "Custom Settlement" generator. Type in a base value, and some numbers representing how many of each different "strength" (e.g. greater medium) of item you want. It doesn't use the "RAW" method, since that method is computationally impractical for this sort of generation. But, if my programming is right, it will achieve statistically similar results. At present, it "feels" a bit "off" to me, so I'm going to continue to refine the method I use. And I'm definitely gonna try to pretty up the page, and include nicer instructions and such.
Semi-technical description follows.
A lot of work went into this! I discussed the problem earlier, in that if the base value were just under the price of the absolute most expensive item, you would roll and reroll, and so on, and possibly not get that item by pure chance. And you'd never get an item if the base value were higher.
...Not unless you knew all the possible items and their odds of being generated, that is.
So I decided to enumerate every possible item that could be rolled from these tables, and how often those items would get generated. Basically if you need to roll 4 times to get a piece of armor, the result is a series of, "What does 1, 1, 1, 1 get me? Got it. Now 1, 1, 1, 2? Same thing. 1, 1, 1, 3?" And so on. It's more complicated than that, since you might need to roll one or two more times for special properties, but you get the idea. The result is a database with all the possible combinations of lesser/greater, minor/medium/major, and armor/weapon/potion/etc, and how many times that item can be generated using the tables.
So what does all this mean? When you ask for "a lesser minor item worth no less than 750 gp", I first select a type randomly, and let's say I pick "potion". I then pull a list of all potions that are lesser minor, and worth 750 gp or more. I then pick randomly from that list, based on the relative frequency of those items. No matter how many items there are, only one random number is needed to pick one, or I know immediately if there are no possible matches. Now let's say there indeed aren't any matches. I then try another item type, until I run out of types, or I find an item.
Awesome! I went a-Googling hoping for something like this, and it took me to this thread, and I am delighted by the generator. You rock, Stazamos.
@Patrick: Thanks for the kind words!
And everyone else as well, actually. Forgive me for not expressing how much I appreciate the reception of my work, earlier.
Update time!
I've added a generator for creature loot and treasure hoards. I was mainly focused on getting functionality implemented as fast as possible, so the user interface is a little rough around the edges, and I'll be refining it in the coming days. Consider it a beta release.
Comments, praise, criticism, and feature requests are welcome!
nice
Awesome!
Thanks for the praise! I've been crummy about working on it (Has it really been over half a year? Where does the time go?), but it's been on my mind lately, so I hope to get on it again, particularly with respect to usability. Seeing comments on here really helps with motivation.
An animal table is an interesting idea... Not sure how I'd work it in exactly, as I haven't looked at Animal Archive in a while, but it sounds fun.
Awesome tool - good work.
I noticed two things:
1) The price for the Amulet of Mighty Fists was errata'd to 4000, 16000, 36000, 64000, 100000. It appears your calculator has the old prices still.
2) What is "Other Shield"? I saw this on the same list as a tower shield - is it light or heavy, steel or wood? Just curious.
Thanks!
To address your questions:
1. Drat, I thought I updated the amulet. Thanks for the notice, I'll check on that.
2. "Other shield" is the Ultimate Equipment entry that basically means the GM has to come up with something of their own choosing (e.g. maybe something rare that's not in the random tables). There are similar entries for weapons, at least, and maybe other categories. It kind of defeats the purpose of rolling, which is what the tables are for, but that is what UE has, so that is what I use, since I want to be as standard-conforming as possible. That said, I am considering making an option to have the generator reroll that type of result, or just rely on the ability I plan to add in the future to reroll single items.
Kurohyou, don't apologise for necro-ing this, I would never have found it otherwise.
Stazamos, thank you.
I'm back! I'm late to these questions (I mainly came here to announce I've resumed work on the generator), but I'll answer anyway:
Source books: The Core Rulebook is used to determine budgets for settlements. Ultimate Equipment is used for everything else.
I do not include items from any other books, but if this is something people want, I can see about adding it in. I'm open to suggestions on how this would integrate with the UE rules. I have a few ideas, but want to hear opinions and suggestions.
The "I don't care, just pick whatever" thing is definitely on my to-do list, and one of the first things I'm going to do (after checking on some potential defects, which have highest priority). The generator is... "usable" in a minimum sense, and that needs to change.
After that:
I want to improve the usability of the treasure lot selector. For example, the total is not conveniently located. When the budget is large, there are too many lots to select from. (Even with a "pick for me" button, I still want to support manual treasure selection).
I also want to include a summary where all the items of similar type have been grouped together, such as all weapons together, all coins totaled up, and so on. I'll keep the raw list, but make it a collapsed, out-of-the-way thing.
In addition to the summary, I'm thinking of adding a "player list" and a "GM list", where the magic items are not identified in the player list, but are in the GM list.
And because it could be interesting: total weight of the hoard, and maybe a volume estimate, such as "cartloads"? That's low on my list, though.
Thanks for all the thanks, guys!
(Side note: I don't get why people are so against thread necroing. I mean, there are cases where the thread should stay dead, but in my opinion it's not a hard rule one should apply indiscriminately.)
Edit: I have not forgotten about correcting the prices a previous poster listed -- I have made the corrections on my test setup, but they are not yet live. That's one of my highest priorities.
Update!
Fixed pricing on Amulet of Mighty Fists
The Reset quantities button now works.
You can now auto-select a random allotment of treasure by clicking Randomize. You still have to click Generate after doing so. At least one treasure type has to be picked, as it only draws from the types you've selected. An error message appears next to the Randomize button if you didn't pick any, or if the types you've selected have no offerings below your budget.
Note: depending on the creature type or treasure types you've selected, the minimum lot value could be such that the randomizer paints itself into a corner and cannot fill out the budget fully. If this is the case, click Randomize again, or manually edit the selections yourself. Or just roll with it, since it's probably not worth worrying about (e.g. 50 gp in a 10,000 gp budget).
For anyone who's interested, here's how it works: All the lots from the selected treasure types are gathered up, and sorted by price. Weights are assigned to each item, where the weight is a power of two, with lower powers going to lower-cost lots. Lots where the price is the same get the same weight. The weights are summed up, and number is pseudorandomly selected from that range, resulting in one of the lots being selected. The lot value is noted, and all lots which are now over the remaining budget are removed. The process repeats.
Essentially, what this means is that higher-cost lots are likely to be selected first, and this is desirable because selecting a lower-cost lot first can make the higher ones ineligible if the leftover budget is too small, making it further likely more items with a lower lot cost will be selected. I don't have statistical analysis, but it should be a "good" spread of items.
I have a few other weighting algorithms in mind for different distributions of items, but they are not available yet.
In the treasure generator, I changed the creature types list. I separated out "None (or custom)" to "None" and "Custom", and added an "All" type. The selection in the list changes to None, Custom, or All if you check or clear the check boxes for the treasure types, as appropriate. Unless you have Outsider picked, since that's a type that needs user-tailoring.
Thanks for all your work on this. This is exactly what I was looking for! Development isn't always fun, but it is appreciated!
Is this still up? I just keep getting a 404 error
Sorry about that! Got some maintenance going. Long story short, I switched hosting services, and the new host, while better in most respects, does not support the version of Python I was using, so I have to work on the code.
Expanding on that long story, in the interest of full disclosure, my site was hit by malware, back in November or December. I took the site down and because my hosting service did not address my ticket to do some actions only root could do, I decided to move to a host with better service.
In setting up the new site, I used only content from my copy of the site on my computer -- nothing from the old site at all, no settings transfers even. I now subscribe to Sucuri, which scans for malware and software vulnerabilities regularly, and who offers a "firewall" type thing which should help out as well. The downside is the aforementioned Python version issue.
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Is this still up? I just keep getting a 404 errorSorry about that! Got some maintenance going. Long story short, I switched hosting services, and the new host, while better in most respects, does not support the version of Python I was using, so I have to work on the code.
Expanding on that long story, in the interest of full disclosure, my site was hit by malware, back in November or December. I took the site down and because my hosting service did not address my ticket to do some actions only root could do, I decided to move to a host with better service.
In setting up the new site, I used only content from my copy of the site on my computer -- nothing from the old site at all, no settings transfers even. I now subscribe to Sucuri, which scans for malware and software vulnerabilities regularly, and who offers a "firewall" type thing which should help out as well. The downside is the aforementioned Python version issue.
Is it your intention then to host the item generator on the new site?
Is it your intention then to host the item generator on the new site?
That's the plan. Worked on it a couple nights ago, didn't quite finish, but it should be soon.
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It's back online! Sorry for the delay.
Hmm... the company firewall says it's a malware site.
is the link in the first post still the right one?
It's still the correct link. I was hit by malware last year, which I have resolved since then, but some monitoring sites have not unflagged my site's status. I'll have to contact that company to ask them to re-check and update. Would you mind telling me the name of the service?
I tried accessing the site today. Avast Free Antivirus has still flagged it as dangerous and denied me access.
Thanks for the information. What I do is send an email to the company, and they do a rescan, and update their database if they find it checks out. Took about 1-2 weeks with Sophos, I think. (There are at least a couple dozen different scanners/databases, and I did a bunch already, but I need to look for more lists, I guess.)