Advanced Bestiary - Green Ronin

[ShadowChemosh]

Nice this seems to be picking up.

For those that plan to be doing allot of work for this project I would recommend we get you setup for DropBox. We have a Pathfinder folder setup and it worked out really well for the d20 project.

If you just have a single creature or two you wish to add you can just attach the .user file to a post in this thread.

DropBox is 100% free and is a cloud based software that is as easy to use as copy/pasting your .user files to the new DropBox folder on your computer. Anything put into the folder is synced back to the cloud and then to everyone's computers that is shared on the Pathfinder folder. Plus it provides 30days of backup also so if your computer crashes we won't be losing your work.

So for those interested send me a PM with your email address and I will send off the invite to the Shared folder. Then simply follow the very simple setup with includes downloading a very small piece of software. Once setup then everything currently in the Community Project folder will get synced to your computer.

Thanks

[ShadowChemosh]

I have added a new .user file to the DropBox called PFRPG_Bestiary_Tags.user. This file once added to your HeroLab\data\pathfinder folder will add a new "Product Identity For..." tag called "Hero Lab Community". I would like to ask that others use this so that the new stuff you are creating gets marked to the Community. This will allow us to easily identify Things as the data set grows.

Also after going through the RotRL data set I wanted to bring up a few Standards that will also help.

1) When you make a new "Racial Special" you should ProductID it to the Community but DO NOT Source mark it. This way others can use something you created for another monster.

2) We really should not be re-creating NEW Universal Rules like Grab and Constrict. We should decide either a) people will need at least B1 official data set or we could b) make up our own Universal Rules in a single location first so that we can use those. I am open for opinions here but just want to stress that making up Grab 500 times for each monster is sort of a waste of time where someone could instead being doing something more important. So thoughts here?

3) Races should still be Source marked to the correct book which hopefully we use from the .1st files.

Thanks and happy holidays!

I updated the PFRPG_Sources 2011.12.28.zip on d20pfsrd with the new Product ID tags.

[huntercc]

I agree, kind of annoying to have to re-create things like Grab multiple times for multiple creatures. Problem seems to be each copy that already exists has race-specific information in the descriptions.

If I understand you correctly, I like the idea of creating a "Universal" set of common items like Grab, etc.

I'm still recovering from the holidays, but I have received a few emails with data files (thanks to those who submitted them!) that I plan to combine into one working user file. I will add it to the dropbox folder when I get the chance.

[Mathias]

Originally Posted by huntercc

Problem seems to be each copy that already exists has race-specific information in the descriptions.

Are you looking at the newest creatures for your examples, or the oldest ones? Remember that we've refined the way we handle a lot of things in Hero Lab as we've proceeded, but we haven't had much time to update older material. For example, it looks like there are only 3 special versions of Grab in B2 and none in B3 - we've been switching over to the universal grab special except in a few cases that really need their own special.

[ShadowChemosh]

Originally Posted by Mathias

Are you looking at the newest creatures for your examples, or the oldest ones?

Think he is looking at the Community Created bestiary stuff for the AP's. There I am finding Grab a bunch of times as it includes the "Race" in the description.

Instead they could have just Bootstrapped the "Grab" generic ability, which hopefully is marked to B1, and saved themselves the time of creating the same ability again. Having the Race specific name in the text is not that important to what the ability does.

I am sort of leaning to the side that B1 is sort of Mandatory to using the "Community Created" bestiaries as I am not really for recreating the stuff LW already did.

@Mathias are the "Universal Monster Rules (ie grab, constrict)" usable if a person just has B1 or B2 or B3?

Thanks

[Mathias]

The goal when entering the Universal Monster Rules appendix from the Bestiary was that the generic version of every ability there should be available no matter what packages you own.

I've verified that raGrab, the generic version of Grab, is available without purchasing any packages.

[ShadowChemosh]

Originally Posted by Mathias

The goal when entering the Universal Monster Rules appendix from the Bestiary was that the generic version of every ability there should be available no matter what packages you own.

I've verified that raGrab, the generic version of Grab, is available without purchasing any packages.

Wow I was not expecting that actually. Totally cool then no reason at all to not use them then.

That is really nice that they are part of CORE.

[bodrin]

Originally Posted by ShadowChemosh

Stuff......

I am sort of leaning to the side that B1 is sort of Mandatory to using the "Community Created" bestiaries as I am not really for recreating the stuff LW already did. :

Totally agree with this comment although some universal abilities aren't in B1 they appear later!

I had to recreate capsize for the aspidochelene in the Council of thieves AP just because it referred to a Whale instead! Also IIRC capsize isn't in B1 it's in B2.

Edit... Capsize is a special ability not a universal monster rule, although IMO it ought to be!

[bodrin]

Dammit, capsize is in Bestiary 3 as a universal monster rule!

Ninja'd by myself!

[Mathias]

Originally Posted by bodrin

Totally agree with this comment although some universal abilities aren't in B1 they appear later!

We've tried to keep the UMRs up-to-date and find any new ones - for example, grab changed from defaulting to max = your size - 1 in B1 and max = your size in B2.

If there are any generic abilities that don't match their B3 versions, please report them as a bug so we can update the text/code.

Capsize appears to have been missed, so I'll put that on the to-do list.