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As a keen Summoner of Monsters, I wanted a handy way to reliably produce print-outs of the monsters that I most commonly summon, or even of all of them. Without wondering if the stats are accurate. The online ones that I've seen aren't, and can be messy showing multiple sets of stats to cover augment/un-augmented for the same creature.
I've built a tool at http://gregfarrell.org/pfs where you can pick from pre-populated lists of SM or SNA or create you own list for display/printing. Augment Summons can be applied if you wish, as can the SM summoning templates (Celestial, Fiendish, Entropic & Resolute).
There are example groups already on there containing SNA 1, SM1(Celestial), SM1 (Augment+Celestial).
I've started work on adding SM2 and SNA2. Most of the development is already done to support the differing monsters. So it's largely a data-entry exercise now.
The PFSS Calculates:
HP based on creature type, HD, toughness feat
AC based on size, dex, natural AC, armour AC and dodge AC. Shows touch, flat-footed components also.
Saves based on stats.
Initiative.
BAB based on creature type & HD
Melee to hit based on size, BAB, weapon finesse.
Melee damage, including 1.5x dmg for 2-handed weapons or for natural attacks where the creature only has 1 attack.
CMB: Using dex or str depending on creature size.
CMD: Includes option of bonus to CMD against specific attack types (eg trip)
Augment Summons - modifications when applied to a creature
Modifies creature Dex/Str
and thus modifies:
skills
melee to-hit (unless Weapon Finesse with Dex is better)
HP
Damage based on Str
special ability DCs or Damage
CMB/CMD
Summoning Templates (Celestial, Fiendish, Entropic, Resolute)
Energy resistances by HD
DR by HD
Changes to creature senses
SR by CR
The point of calculating all these items rather than just typing them in is that it makes dynamically applying templates/feats to them possible, as well as meaning that the maths is done for me and should be reliable across all monsters. Assuming I've implemented the maths properly, which I'm sure people will tell me if there's any problems.
There are probably more things that it calculates but these are the ones that I remember now.
I'm hoping that it'll be a handy tool for any class that wants to summon monsters. I know that I like to have print-outs of anything that I'm summoning, and with the correct templates applied.
I've spent some time in the past manually adjusting the stats of monsters I was likely to summon so that I could print them out. Your tool with complete lists for Summon Monster and Summon Nature's ally could be really helpful not just for printing but for use at the table via phone for those times when you need to summon something you didn't expect and therefore didn't print out.
If you could make a version of this which applies numerous templates such as advanced or giant to monsters from the various Bestiaries and generally produces correct results that would be really cool. I've gotten mixed results from automated monster template tools in the past, but I spot checked a few monsters with your webpage, and they actually looked correct.
Sometimes they'll host links to tools like these on various sites like d20pfsrd.com, so once you get the tool completed maybe you could talk to the guys over there.
Thanks for the suggestion, Devilkiller.
I'm glad that your first glance suggests it's accurate. It will be, I've built army building tools for the Gruntz, Empire of the Dead and BattleGroup war-games before - accuracy is my #1 concern.
That said, I've only just reached the stage where I think it's genuinely useful for others and of non-embarrassing aesthetic quality, so I'm sure there are some innaccuracies in there. Those will get squashed quickly when either I find them or someone tells me about them.
As an aside, is your screen name based on a book by Alan Dean Foster? It has been a long time since I read his books, but your name brought them back to mind.
This is great! It's always useful to have more summon monster resources.
One thing I've wished for for some time is a summon monster tool that covers the monsters you can get using the 'summon good/neutral/evil monster' feats. Do you intend to cover those?
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I do intend to cover those as I use Summon Good myself, but it's pretty much a data-entry exercise now. That'll take a little while to do. Less time than it took to write the code in the first place but it's way, way less interesting so harder to do hours of it at a time!
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As an aside, SNA 2 and SM2 are now complete except that they're missing a couple of the variant elementals. I'll add those, maybe this evening if a baby sleeps instead of crying :)
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I've added the Summon Good monsters for SM 2.
Qu0zl wrote: I do intend to cover those as I use Summon Good myself, but it's pretty much a data-entry exercise now. That'll take a little while to do. Less time than it took to write the code in the first place but it's way, way less interesting so harder to do hours of it at a time!
Thanks very much for making the effort. For data entry, I recommend audio books. I used to do data entry as part of one of my old positions, and listening to a book made the time pass much quicker. :)
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I've added a font-slider on the list view. So you can shrink/grow the size of the outputed creature stat blocks.
Lets you fit a lot of them per page if your eye-sight is up to it.
Also added some more creatures to SM3.
Wow. Very nice! It will be nice to see once all of the Summoned Monsters are added in.
Qu0zl wrote: I've built a tool at LINK where you can pick from pre-populated lists of SM or SNA or create you own list for display/printing. Augment Summons can be applied if you wish, as can the SM summoning templates (Celestial, Fiendish, Entropic & Resolute). :D
Also: dot!
Could I be difficult and suggest Shadow template? Or is that a step too many?
Is the shadow template just for the Teifling shadow caller archetype? If it is, that'll be lower priority for me than the tonnes of remaining data entry work. Sorry!
This is great! Thanks alot!
dot and thanks a lot, good work!
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I've done some more work on the printing output support.
If you now set the font slider to the minimum and the number of columns to the max (5), you can fit all 57 (as of right now) creatures on 7 pages. With no splitting of any stat blocks across pages.
I doubt many people will use it that small but if you want to carry as many creatures as possible on as few pages as possible, it's an option. And layouts with larger font and more columns are nicer :)
I think I've found an error in Paizo's online stat block for the Hound Archon but I'd like to hear if anyone can explain why it's actually correct?
http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/monsters/archon.html#archon-hound
Damage for the bite, slam combo is given as
bite +8 (1d8+3), slam +8 (1d4+1)
The Hound Archon's Str is 15, so a +2 Str dmg bonus.
So it should be Bite +8 (1d8+2), Slam +8 (1d4+2), I believe. Which is what my website calculates it as.
Can anyone point out anything that I'm missing?
Devilkiller wrote: As an aside, is your screen name based on a book by Alan Dean Foster? It has been a long time since I read his books, but your name brought them back to mind. I was just trying to figure out why the name looked familiar. =)
I hate Mephits - there's so many of them!
The PRD Satyr entry has an incorrect CMD - http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/monsters/satyr.html#satyr
It's left out the Dodge feat bonus to CMD. Which they do add in some other monster's stat block - can't remember which.
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Summon Monster and Summon Nature's Ally 1 through 4 now finished.
That should cover about 90% of actual Pathfinder play! My head is melted from adding them and GM'ing tonight so no more getting added for a day or two.
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Qu0zl wrote: I think I've found an error in Paizo's online stat block for the Hound Archon but I'd like to hear if anyone can explain why it's actually correct?
hound archon
Damage for the bite, slam combo is given as
bite +8 (1d8+3), slam +8 (1d4+1)
The Hound Archon's Str is 15, so a +2 Str dmg bonus.
So it should be Bite +8 (1d8+2), Slam +8 (1d4+2), I believe. Which is what my website calculates it as.
Can anyone point out anything that I'm missing?
Hm. I think it's because of what they're doing with the natural attacks, found here.
Quote: Natural Attacks Most creatures possess one or more natural attacks (attacks made without a weapon). These attacks fall into one of two categories, primary and secondary attacks. Primary attacks are made using the creature's full base attack bonus and add the creature's full Strength bonus on damage rolls. Secondary attacks are made using the creature's base attack bonus –5 and add only 1/2 the creature's Strength bonus on damage rolls. If a creature has only one natural attack, it is always made using the creature's full base attack bonus and adds 1-1/2 the creature's Strength bonus on damage rolls. This increase does not apply if the creature has multiple attacks but only takes one. If a creature has only one type of attack, but has multiple attacks per round, that attack is treated as a primary attack, regardless of its type. Table: Natural Attacks by Size lists some of the most common types of natural attacks and their classifications.
Some creatures treat one or more of their attacks differently, such as dragons, which always receive 1-1/2 times their Strength bonus on damage rolls with their bite attack. These exceptions are noted in the creature's description.
Creatures with natural attacks and attacks made with weapons can use both as part of a full attack action (although often a creature must forgo one natural attack for each weapon clutched in that limb, be it a claw, tentacle, or slam). Such creatures attack with their weapons normally but treat all of their natural attacks as secondary attacks during that attack, regardless of the attack's original type.
My belief is that they're calculating the bite with 1.5x the STR mod (as a primary attack damage), while the slam is calculated as 1/2 STR mod as a secondary attack. The last paragraph explains why the second attack only as a +2 damage - though that looks like it's own error (as it should be +1, as a secondary attack, unless it just gets an extra "+1 to damage" from nowhere). Point in fact, the bite attack is more powerful (1d8) than standard for their size (1d6). That makes it confusing - either they're treating the slam as lower damage for some reason (applying a secondary attack-like only half-strength without the requisite -5 to attack) or there's an error there, as you said. Not really sure which is correct.
Ask somewhere? Sorry I couldn't have been more help.
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Thanks Tacticslion. Like you said it can't be a secondary attack as it has the same to-hit as the primary attack. So something is wrong, either in the to-hit or the damage calc
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Summon Good feat level 3 options now added and I've added a handy list that combines Summon Monster 3 & Summon Good 3 http://gregfarrell.org/pfs/list/code/SM3SG/
there's already one for SM2 + SG2 at http://gregfarrell.org/pfs/list/code/SM2SG/
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Qu0zl wrote: Summon Good feat level 3 options now added and I've added a handy list that combines Summon Monster 3 & Summon Good 3 summon M/G 3
there's already one for SM2 + SG2 at summon M/G 2
Links added.
Just for the record, I do this for ease of those with phones, or devices or whatever that don'e like "highlight + copy/paste" stuff.
If you're curious, you can make links yourself by taking [ url = www.wikipedia.org ]this leads to wikipedia[ / url ], and removing the extra spaces to make this leads to wikipedia.
:)
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thanks Tacticslion, I apprecicate that.
Summon Good level 4 monsters added and here's a handy link to a list of
Summon Good 4 & Summon Monster 4
SM4+SG4
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Pathfinder Battles Case Subscriber
Bookmarking for future use. As the GM for my group, I look forward to when the Fiendish template works with this resource!
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The Fiendish template has worked since the start, as far as I know anyway. Did you miss it or did you find a bug?
[edit]Thanks for mentioning that - I just double checked and realised that I broke the Fiendish template support 8 hours ago when I was doing some more development. It's working again now.[/edit]
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I've got most of Summon Monster 5 done. Just missing the elementals, Wooly Rhinocerous and the Xill.
SM5
I'll hopefully fill those in Tuesday.
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I think you're right about the Hound Archon. Barring some clarifcation to the contrary a Bite and Slam should both be primary natural attacks except when used in conjunction with manufactured weapons. In fact, the Bite attack listed along with the Greatsword is wrong too. It should be just 1d8+1 instead of 1d8+2 since it is being used as a secondary weapon there. I use these adjusted stats when one of my PCs summons a hound archon, which is often enough that I made a mini for it.
I wonder if somebody at d20pfsrd might not already have the monsters in a database format. There's something which looks a lot like that here
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Thanks for the link, Devilkiller - that DB is pretty impressive. My sympathy to whoever had to type all that in!
Unfortunately it doesn't have all the information I need, still it's an impressive job by whoever did that :)
What is missing? Maybe it could be derived or added.
Really nice! Thank you very much!
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Devilkiller, some minor things like what components of armour are due to shields, AC, natural etc. The main thing is the special abilities - it takes a lot more time to add the special ability descriptions - making sure that they dynamically change DCs, dmg (using correct of 1x Str mod, 1.5x str mod, 0.5x str mod), etc correctly for augment summons.
Adding a beat-stick with no special abilities only takes me 5 minutes, it's the more complicated ones that take time.
That said, I've got 101 of them added now :) Almost got SM5 and SNA5 finished - just need the elementals.
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The site now has cool mobile phone icons (thanks to a forum member - http://lorcblog.blogspot.com/ ) , so you can now add the PFSS to your mobile devices home-page/desktop and it'll look pretty.
Which is cool :)
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SM5 and SNA5 completed.
I think I'll try and fill out some more of the lower level summon good and summon neutral next. I'm trying to do things in order of how much they'll actually get used - so I think the really high level summons and anything added by Summon Evil are fairly unusual.
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Dude, this is absolutely the best find I've seen for Pathfinder in a long time.
That being said, you might want to consider doing Summon Evil for the GM side of things. Just because a player is unlikely to use it, the GM might because of the adventure. Also, it would be cool if this got completed all the way to SM9 and SNA9 for home games.
Playing a high level Summoner myself at a home game, it's annoying to have to write the monster up and then remember it, where I could go to the site, click a couple buttons on my tablet and print via bluetooth.
Can't speak for others, but I think a few might agree with me on this.
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Good point on GMs and Summon Evil, Targus.
I do intend to go all the way through SM9 and SNA9, and to add Summon Evil as well. Just it'll take a while. I'm getting through them reasonably quickly now as I've invested the time in making it fairly easy to add creatures, but I'm time limited.
I'll get there :)
If you have a few favourite summons then let me know and I'll skip ahead and add them in early.
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SM6 and SNA6 finished.
126 summonable monsters added and counting :)
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SM7 and SNA7 finished.
142 monsters and counting.
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SM8 and SNA8 finished.
I'm happy to see that the summon lists get smaller at the very high levels - so there's less for my to add per list :)
The higher level stuff has more special abilities though, so I'm sure it is still a big effort - thanks
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SM9 and SNA9 are done. Finally!
I'm a bit confused on SNA9 - it has Pixie (w/irresistible dance and sleep arrows). Is that just the basic CR 4 Pixie with irresistible dance added on?
If so, is it 1/day and DC 19? Why does it only mention Sleep arrows? Should it lose the Charm and Memory Loss arrows? I guess it should. It's strange because the Summon Good Pixie gets all 3 arrow types, and a CR 4 beast with a low DC casting of a single level 8 spell seems a bit weak for SNA9?
Can anyone confirm these?
I'll be very happy to have these finished. There's still the Summon Good, Neutral and Evil ones to go.
I personally really appreciate your efforts! I will be taking it for a test run this weekend.
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