Has anyone made stock files for Summon Monster & Nature's Ally?

[Unseelie]

I know I can import the critters from the Bestiary, but I'm wondering if anyone's made stock files for import for all of the various Summon Monster & Nature's Ally spells?

If not, would anyone else find that useful?

[thedarkelf007]

It would be useful

Though you would need a celestial and a fiendish version for summon monster

[chiefweasel]

Hey Unseelie, I am a bit confused, how would what you are asking for be diffferent from pulling the creatures from the stock files?

[bodrin]

Why not just use the standard bestiary entry and add the celestial or fiendish template?

[ShadowChemosh]

Yes level 1 and 2 are in the Community Player Pack download. I have not had time yet to do the rest yet. If you wish to do them and send them to me I would be happy to include them.

Originally Posted by bodrin

Why not just use the standard bestiary entry and add the celestial or fiendish template?

That is what I have done but its nice during combat for a player to simply select pre-made ones all done then have to make it up on the fly.

[Mathias]

The benefit would be the convenience - instead of finding a dire rat in the correct miscellaneous monsters file and then adding the Augment Summoning adjustment, and then adding the fiendish template, you can go to "Summon Monster I (w/Augment Summoning)", and pull in "Rat, Dire (Fiendish)".

Our problem with doing that (other than the time to compile it all) is the amount of size it would take up in the download - most of the monsters need to be duplicated 4x to handle all 4 alignment templates, and then they all need to be duplicated 2x, so that you can have augment and non-augmented versions of each.

[Unseelie]

Mathias pretty much nailed it, convenience. With everything I have installed, well, there's a ton of stock files I can import from. Being able to go to the right file for Summon Monster III and import a Blink Dog (Celestial) would save me time. Even more so if it's a critter like a Celestial Bison, where I inevitably forget that it's in the Bestiary under Herd Animal and load the wrong file.

I certainly can see the size concern, but I was thinking about this more as something that people could download if they like, not part of Hero Lab or the Bestiary package. That said, even a base file with just the unmodified critters that I could then apply the appropriate templates to would still help some. I've pretty much convinced myself that it's a time savings for myself. I just wasn't sure if it would be of any interest to others.

Also, and I'll file this as an enhancement request, but it would be nice if there was text entry search field in the import dialog. Some of these stock import files are long...

[Unseelie]

Originally Posted by ShadowChemosh

Yes level 1 and 2 are in the Community Player Pack download. I have not had time yet to do the rest yet. If you wish to do them and send them to me I would be happy to include them.


That is what I have done but its nice during combat for a player to simply select pre-made ones all done then have to make it up on the fly.

Ah, that would explain why I didn't see them then... I have the Bestiary loaded instead of the Player Pack. Since I'm the GM and running the tactical console, it's more useful to me than my players.

I'll look at what you have, and see about working on the others in the same format.

[ShadowChemosh]

I do agree with Mathias size is killing me for things like the Community Bestiary as the .stock files are really big. All told the Community Bestiary is 1,000% bigger than the whole Pathfinder.hl download.

Pathfinder.hl is almost a 100 megs. All the .por files together currently total over a gig for the Community Bestiary!

[Unseelie]

Originally Posted by ShadowChemosh

I do agree with Mathias size is killing me for things like the Community Bestiary as the .stock files are really big. All told the Community Bestiary is 1,000% bigger than the whole Pathfinder.hl download.

Pathfinder.hl is almost a 100 megs. All the .por files together currently total over a gig for the Community Bestiary!

Maybe just the base critters then, because as others pointed out, applying Celestial, Fiendish, and Augmented templates doesn't take too long. For me, it's more about finding the correct miscellaneous file, and then said file not being as long to search through.