Lone Wolf - Please stop auto-adding free packages

[Dami]

@Mathias - that makes more sense.
Yes, I have defaults set on my Pathfinder system copies. I opened a portfolio that I'd set up defaults on before, but hadn't used for months and had free packages activate. I've just opened the same system in HL and tried another "old" portfolio (only a month since using it) and at least 4 packages had activated on it.

[Duamatef]

Then is there a way to disable the free ones from showing up at all? Deleting, removing, whatever?

Even if my default and my portfolios are "correct", when I use the encounter builder or encounter libraries, they get turned back on because LW builds those with everything on.
And then suddenly I have to worry about turning them off again before saving anything.

[Mathias]

Dami, you mention an "old" portfolio as being only 1 month old, but our last update of Pathfinder was November 9th, so a little over a month ago, and the last update did not add any new free sources - all that release added were paid sources. So is this a portfolio that you had opened since the last update, edited the sources for it, and then opened it again within the last day or two, and sources had turned on again for it?


If that's what's happening, something is going wrong, and could you please find an old portfolio that should have several sources turned off, and open it, but don't save it over the old version - save it as a new file, and then send me both the old version and newly saved version, so that I can compare the sources in both cases.


I just tested creating a new portfolio, turning off every adventure path source, saving it, and then closing and re-opening it, and the adventure paths were still turned off, so the behavior you're describing (if I understand correctly what you're doing) is not what I'm encountering.

[Mathias]

What problems is this causing you, Duamatef, since you say you "...worry about turning them off..."? I thought the only issue would have been clutter in the various tables, from content you don't want to accidentally use.

[Duamatef]

Originally Posted by Mathias

What problems is this causing you, Duamatef, since you say you "...worry about turning them off..."? I thought the only issue would have been clutter in the various tables, from content you don't want to accidentally use.

That's the one. Once one of those is on, I have to worry about whether some spell is now showing as an option when it shouldn't be, some feat or .. etc.

If I'm building an encounter, for example, or modifying one, in a game that is "no third party", I have numerous times thought "Done", only to suddenly notice that some spell on an NPC isn't valid because those options are turned on because the imported creature or NPC has those features enabled, and it enables it for the whole encounter portfolio.

So each creature you add causes the settings to change away from the default.

As a GM/DM, I want to be able to open a portfolio and have it tell me "This includes things you don't have/allow" rather than the onus being on me to go and see if something changed my preferences without permission.

[Jamz]

I would have to give this a +1 as well.

For instance, I'm GM'ing RotRL and for #reasons I've limited my players to CORE book only (and 1 campaign setting book).

So when there is an update, there's a chance that my players are adding spells/feats/items that are illegal in my campaign.

As a side note, something as a wishlist for PFO, it would be great if there was a "campaign" option online that would let a GM set options/books/etc and other players could subscribe/link to and would lock in those settings for a given character...

[djc664]

If the user experience and overall management of the sources in each profile was not so painful, I don't think this would be as big of a problem. It would be nice to be able to lock source packages, compare other valid source lists from players, and manage more than one "default" option at a time.

Having to scroll through 20 tiny screen-fulls to get a bunch of random check-boxes through-out is a classic example of UI/UX design that did not appropriately consider scale effecting.

[Azhrei]

I agree that he UI needs work given the number of sources now available. There are multiple ways to attack this that I can see — use a "collapsible tree" structure with checkboxes at each level that turn on.off the sublevel items, or a search bar that filters sources based on text that is entered AND allows the word "new" to find sources that weren't there the last time the portfolio was saved, or use some type of "scrolling tabs" layout that can handle a large number of source groupings.

Personally, I like the tree approach best, particularly if it could be combined with the search filter...