Alternatives to DM Tools, and Other Free-floating Statblocks on the Web

[TaiLiu]

DM Tools (http://www.dmtools.org/) was a website that hosted NPC and monster statblocks. Its motto was "No prep time, no problem!" - and time is something that many of us run against, I imagine. Liz Courts, the owner of the website, has shut it down, and unfortunately, I'm still lacking in prep time. Does anyone have any suggested alternatives?

[Grod_The_Giant]

Have you tried using the Waybackmachine?

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Grod_The_Giant
Have you tried using the Waybackmachine?

It’s available on Wayback, but extremely clunky, and some features don’t seem to work at all.


Originally Posted by TaiLiu
Does anyone have any suggested alternatives?

My only suggestion would be the Published NPC Project (http://d20npcs.wikia.com/wiki/Published_NPC_Project), which is an index of NPCs from most of the 3.5 sourcebooks, listed by CR. It’s not perfect—Eberron is well-represented, but Forgotten Realms hardly at all—and these are just brief summaries with a page number, so you still need to reference a book. And, of course, not all published 3.5 NPCs are free of errors.

But it’s a start, and the only thing I know of right off.

.

[GilesTheCleric]

DM Tools (http://www.dmtools.org/) was a website that hosted NPC and monster statblocks. Its motto was "No prep time, no problem!" - and time is something that many of us run against, I imagine. Liz Courts, the owner of the website, has shut it down, and unfortunately, I'm still lacking in prep time. Does anyone have any suggested alternatives?

If you have the contact info for the site owner, you could request a mirror of the data or the site and either rehost it, or share it via Github or Drive or what-have-you, with permission.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by GilesTheCleric
If you have the contact info for the site owner....

She has links to all manner of social media on the site, so she should be easy to reach.

[zlefin]

Is there some shortage of NPC stat blocks?
i'd have thought by now there'd be plenty of NPC stat blocks around made by various people; especially given the existence of NPC generators that can endlessly provide more if the fixed ones aren't suitable.

[TaiLiu]

Thanks for responding, everyone!

Have you tried using the Waybackmachine?

It’s available on Wayback, but extremely clunky, and some features don’t seem to work at all.
Yeah, what Palanan said. It's working well so far, but I wanted to see if there're other options out there.

My only suggestion would be the Published NPC Project (http://d20npcs.wikia.com/wiki/Published_NPC_Project), which is an index of NPCs from most of the 3.5 sourcebooks, listed by CR. It’s not perfect—Eberron is well-represented, but Forgotten Realms hardly at all—and these are just brief summaries with a page number, so you still need to reference a book. And, of course, not all published 3.5 NPCs are free of errors.
Ah, that's a bit of a pain. I appreciate the resource, though.

If you have the contact info for the site owner, you could request a mirror of the data or the site and either rehost it, or share it via Github or Drive or what-have-you, with permission.

She has links to all manner of social media on the site, so she should be easy to reach.
True enough!

Is there some shortage of NPC stat blocks?
i'd have thought by now there'd be plenty of NPC stat blocks around made by various people; especially given the existence of NPC generators that can endlessly provide more if the fixed ones aren't suitable.
I'm sure that there are plenty of NPC statblocks everywhere. The problem is that they're diffuse, and so they're kind of hard to find. (And you have to flip open all the books, and...) And I've found the NPC generators too random for me. If you're referring to a concentrated source of NPC statblocks, though, let me know!

[zlefin]

I don't know of any for 3.5, only pathfinder.
so a bit of a nuisance to convert, but maybe useable enough.
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/npc-s/


what is it that makes most NPC generators too random?
I haven't looked at them beyond some minor glances.

[TaiLiu]

I don't know of any for 3.5, only pathfinder.
so a bit of a nuisance to convert, but maybe useable enough.
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/npc-s/
Oh, sweet! Thanks! Yeah, a lot of them will need conversion work, but this will be helpful if I ever run a Pathfinder game.

what is it that makes most NPC generators too random?
I haven't looked at them beyond some minor glances.
I'm only familiar with the Myth-Weavers one (https://www.myth-weavers.com/generate_npc.php?do=npcgen). Looking at it again, the stats mostly make sense, as do the feats. So I take back the "too random" comment. The problem is actually the gear: the NPC generator doesn't do that, and I've always found buying gear to be the most time-consuming part of writing up characters, whether they be PCs or NPCs.