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Dimers
2012-03-29, 10:31 PM
My 3.5 DM is a seriously overworked guy, but dedicated to his game -- it's been running twelve real-time years, and he's not about to stop it now. In those years, the average character level has been rising steadily. That has been making it harder and harder for him to present the group with appropriate challenges. He's got lots of ideas, but not a lot of time to fill out those ideas with hit dice and numbers and spells.

So we're looking for a software tool to help him move quickly through the process. Due to a special ability of one party member, we need the tool to be able to save and load creature info sheets. It should also simplify the process of data entry, and ideally, it would help pick spells, offer appropriate equipment or at least make equipment easy to record, that sort of thing.

Having this tool also work for NPCs would be great!

It doesn't have to be 3.5-specific, as long as it's flexible enough to accomodate or include 3.5. In fact, it doesn't have to be one program. If you want to tell me "I have an easy time just using a spreadsheet program and a master spell list site www.exampleURL.com", that's great. We want lots of input.

If the program isn't free, it should at least be a fairly low one-time cost. I'll happily buy it to keep a good DM sane and functional, but I'm not gonna pay over and over again.

Thanks for any help, folks. :smallsmile:

Grinner
2012-03-29, 10:54 PM
Monsters are built like PCs, so PCGen (http://pcgen.sourceforge.net/01_overview.php) *should* work. That said, I don't know your DM's creative process, but it's an option at least.

Dimers
2012-03-29, 11:13 PM
Thanks for the quick reply. I don't think that's what we're looking for, because most monsters don't have "races" or "classes", just HD. It might be possible to shoehorn them in as a custom class or some such, but that sounds like more work, not less.

That's on the right track, though. PCGen would allow the DM to save all the info for different monsters in different planned encounters. We just need to make the creation process simpler.

Averis Vol
2012-03-30, 04:16 AM
this (http://www.monsteradvancer.com/) something like what your looking for? its a monster advancer i found on enworld and though i haven't used it myself it seems to be exactly what your looking for. hope it helps.

Dimers
2012-03-30, 01:49 PM
Thanks for the tip, Averis Vol!

Anybody else have something useful?

johnroth
2012-03-30, 02:28 PM
I don't have another tip, but I would like to state that Monster Advancer is an awesome tool. I've used it a lot and I love it.

Dimers
2012-03-30, 02:47 PM
I don't have another tip, but I would like to state that Monster Advancer is an awesome tool. I've used it a lot and I love it.

Thanks for the feedback. Good to know.

Beleriphon
2012-03-30, 07:00 PM
If you can find it E-Tools would work. I still have a copy of it kicking around somewhere, but its publisher is dead so I don't know how much luck you'd find getting a copy without resorting to just scouring the internet.

Dimers
2012-03-30, 10:27 PM
If you can find it E-Tools would work. I still have a copy of it kicking around somewhere, but its publisher is dead so I don't know how much luck you'd find getting a copy without resorting to just scouring the internet.

"Resorting to scouring the internet," I found a copy free for download from http://crocko.com/1702753568.html ... version 1.5.666, a pretty inclusive one for 2006, updated by the Code Monkey team. So if anyone else wants a copy, yes, it can still be found.

Still welcoming suggestions! I already poked my head into e-Tools just to make sure it worked before posting the website in my response, but I won't be trying out most of these for a few more days. I want to offer my GM the best I can.