Bestiarys from the Adventure Paths

[Paris.Crenshaw]

That's probably wise. I don't think it's tough for us to add one critter in on our own.

Thanks for volunteering!

[Unseelie]

Any thoughts as to things like standards for unique IDs and such? I generally do ru* instead of r* for user entered races, for instance.

For that matter, how to handle sources & Product ID when the critters came from another book? My thoughts would be something along the lines of user content, Legacy of Fire Bestiary, and then the proper adventure path. It would be easy enough create another source for the original book but that might be better handled via Product ID.

Setting some standards for such things ahead of time might avoid some headaches.

[Paris.Crenshaw]

True. Especially when dealing with Sources.

I try to keep all of the data from a source in the same file. I had planned on creating a .user file with a name like "Rise_of_the_Runelords_Bestiary.user".

In that file, I would actually just use the same prefixes used in the rest of Hero Lab (ra, x, w, etc.).

For source, I'd just put them in User and in the Adventure Path source that's already in the program. Having "bestiary" in the user file and portfolio name might be helpful, but I wouldn't want to have to click both "Rise of the Runelords" and "Rise of the Runelords Bestiary" for sources in the configuration menu.

But I might be in the minority on that. I'm willing to do whatever the majority of the group prefers.

[ValaraukarU]

I have created most of the Curse of the Crimson Throne monsters for use in my own game. I have a user file and a stock portfolio. It is currently integrated in with most of the NPCs and creatures from the adventure path including some from other sources including bestiary 2 since I don't have HL dataset for.

I am willing to share my work with the community. I can try to pull out only the stuff for the bestiary entries that are not included in other data sets and put it in a separate user file and a stock file. I will need to take a few days to finish them up also as a few are missing and some require some additional content added.

[ShadowChemosh]

I have found it best to use a pair of extra letters when creating Unique IDs as this prevents me from ever running into a Duplicate Thing error when/if HL ever official added the same thing.

For example if I was to add the Dodge feat I would give a unique ID of fS2Dodge. As I know HL would give it a ID of fDodge. I do this for all the later community stuff I added and the original Player Companions I did.

I would also think you would want to simply Source mark your new stuff to the Adventure Path source that is already in HL.

[Paris.Crenshaw]

Thanks, ValaraukarU. I've added you to the list.

Thanks, also, for the advice, Shadow. That's a good point. It shouldn't be a problem for me to make those changes in my current RotRL data entry.

But I'm cringing at the thought of having to do that for everything else I've entered. Wish I'd thought of it, myself, and done it from the beginning.

[Paris.Crenshaw]

What if we just added a "u" to every the Unique ID to indicate it is a "user" entry.

So "ra" for racial abilities becomes "rau"; "r" for races become "ru"; etc.

[ValaraukarU]

Originally Posted by Paris.Crenshaw

Thanks, also, for the advice, Shadow. That's a good point. It shouldn't be a problem for me to make those changes in my current RotRL data entry.

But I'm cringing at the thought of having to do that for everything else I've entered. Wish I'd thought of it, myself, and done it from the beginning.

I agree but, I also don't want to go through and remap all the specials for mine to include additional characters. Originally I was going to include a VU (for ValaraukarU) on all mine but the limit in characters on ID length made me rethink it. So I entered 90% of it without special characters.

If I feel ambitious once all mine are in and separated into a different file I may go though and alter them all to include VU

[ShadowChemosh]

For those that don't know .user files are XML file. This means they are basically just text files. So you can open them up in your favorite text editor and do a find/replace on the Thing ID to change everything over at once.

[Paris.Crenshaw]

As one of "those that don't know" (or more accurately..."weren't paying close enough attention"), thanks for pointing that out, Shadow. That will make things MUCH easier.

I may be wrong, but I think the addition of the single letter "u" will force us to rework the name abbreviations in such a way that the guys at Lone Wolf aren't likely to duplicate our IDs.