I rewrote the 5e Player's Handbook Index

[copperdogma]

So, my friends and I hate the 5e PHB index. It sucks. So I rewrote it.

Google search for: dnd-phb-5e-index

(I'm new and I can't post links yet.)

Feel free to post suggestions, updates, etc here, as a github pull request, or however you want and I'll try to incorporate it.

The longer version:

Why?

My buddies and I play D&D. We have since first edition. And as much respect as we have for the creators of each edition, the index of the Fifth Edition Player's Handbook is just terrible. What do I mean? Take this example, where we want to look up listening at a door:

- Look up listening. We find:
- listening. See Wisdom: Perception
- See also conditions
- Okay.. let's try conditions. We look that up and get:
- conditions, 290-292
- Well that.. might be it. We look that up in the book and find three pages of conditions. The closest to listening in there is the Deafened condition. Well that's not it.
- Back to the index for listening. Let's try Wisdom: Perception:
- Wisdom, 12, 178
- Animal Handling, 178
- checks, 178
- Insight, 178
- Medicine, 178
- Perception, 178
- Survival, 178
- So we look up Perception, 178: Ah! That's it!

So to find the page we wanted we needed to look up the index, look up a page, read three pages before realizing that wasn't what we want, go back to the index, then back to another page.

What it the index was better? What if the listening section looked like this:

- listening
- defeaned, 290
- Perception (Wisdom), 178

There! Now it shows us both things we may be looking for with a single page number.

Even more annoying are entries like this (it's on three lines because that's the way it wraps in the narrow index columns):

Destructive Wrath (cleric). See

under Channel Divinity cleric

options

Wouldn't this be better?

Destructive Wrath (cleric), 62

Just tell me what page it's on! Don't make me look up something else AND take two extra lines to do it!

Anyway, we were annoyed enough that I decided to fix it.


Enjoy!



-=Cam

[WickerNipple]

Heh I've considered doing this a couple dozen times. Their index is a tragedy.

[Cybren]

Nice! A lot of the stuff in the 5E books is kind of infuriating: like not having chapter numbers listed on each page

[copperdogma]

Nice! A lot of the stuff in the 5E books is kind of infuriating: like not having chapter numbers listed on each page

Definitely! There's a lot I wish I could rewrite in the book itself, but I doubt anyone will print THOSE updates off one-by-one and slot them into their book;)

[Vogonjeltz]

So, my friends and I hate the 5e PHB index. It sucks. So I rewrote it.

Google search for: dnd-phb-5e-index

(I'm new and I can't post links yet.)

Feel free to post suggestions, updates, etc here, as a github pull request, or however you want and I'll try to incorporate it.

The longer version:

Why?

My buddies and I play D&D. We have since first edition. And as much respect as we have for the creators of each edition, the index of the Fifth Edition Player's Handbook is just terrible. What do I mean? Take this example, where we want to look up listening at a door:

- Look up listening. We find:
- listening. See Wisdom: Perception
- See also conditions
- Okay.. let's try conditions. We look that up and get:
- conditions, 290-292
- Well that.. might be it. We look that up in the book and find three pages of conditions. The closest to listening in there is the Deafened condition. Well that's not it.
- Back to the index for listening. Let's try Wisdom: Perception:
- Wisdom, 12, 178
- Animal Handling, 178
- checks, 178
- Insight, 178
- Medicine, 178
- Perception, 178
- Survival, 178
- So we look up Perception, 178: Ah! That's it!

So to find the page we wanted we needed to look up the index, look up a page, read three pages before realizing that wasn't what we want, go back to the index, then back to another page.

What it the index was better? What if the listening section looked like this:

- listening
- defeaned, 290
- Perception (Wisdom), 178

There! Now it shows us both things we may be looking for with a single page number.

Even more annoying are entries like this (it's on three lines because that's the way it wraps in the narrow index columns):

Destructive Wrath (cleric). See

under Channel Divinity cleric

options

Wouldn't this be better?

Destructive Wrath (cleric), 62

Just tell me what page it's on! Don't make me look up something else AND take two extra lines to do it!

Anyway, we were annoyed enough that I decided to fix it.


Enjoy!



-=Cam

Cam, if it works for you, if you find it easier this way, that's probably the most important thing.

That being said, the problem you've encountered isn't the way the index is laid out (it is set up alphabetically and to demonstrate relationships between various key words/concepts), it's that you counterintuitively chose the conditions section instead of the perception section in the first place.

Also of note, the term Listening doesn't occur in the text, only its synonym, Hearing. So it would be misleading to actually give a page number under listening as the term never occurs, this could lead to frustration.

[copperdogma]

Cam, if it works for you, if you find it easier this way, that's probably the most important thing.

That being said, the problem you've encountered isn't the way the index is laid out (it is set up alphabetically and to demonstrate relationships between various key words/concepts), it's that you counterintuitively chose the conditions section instead of the perception section in the first place.

Also of note, the term Listening doesn't occur in the text, only its synonym, Hearing. So it would be misleading to actually give a page number under listening as the term never occurs, this could lead to frustration.

Yeah someone else mentioned that, too;) Granted it isn't a stellar example. The point remains, though! The index sucked. I think I de-sucked it a bit.

[Theodoxus]

Well done! This was my primary criticism of the book when it came out. The fact that a lot of the time, there is actually more text devoted to describing where else in the index to look, than to simply give the page number instead, drives me crazy.

The only thing that comes close, is the fact that the page numbers are written so lightly, using an offset of the same color the pages were printed on, that giving me a page number is nearly meaningless ;)

Thank god there's an OCR PDF floating around out there. Being able to search for a term is so much faster in game than trying to thumb through the book based on a poopy index and unreadable numbers.

[RobD]

Thank you so, so much, you beautiful person!
Hated the index from day 1, and this is much appreciated!

[ruy343]

You're referring to this (https://github.com/copperdogma/dnd-phb-5e-index), right? Looks great!

[hymer]

You're referring to this (https://github.com/copperdogma/dnd-phb-5e-index), right? Looks great!

If it's as good as people in here seem to think, it should go in Daishain's 'useful tools' thread.
I agree that the index sends you looking to other places in the index far too often. Well done, I'm sure! :smallsmile:

Edit: Come to think of it, I'll just tell him myself.

[Nod_Hero]

Every time we try to look something up during a game, it takes several page flips.
Thanks for doing this.