EN World member
copperdogma has taken the time to rewrite the
D&D 5E Player's Handbook index. I must admit, in my 5E games we find some amusement in the way that no matter what you look up in the index, it always seems to tell you to see something else also in the index like a little case of follow-the-breadcrumbs (which we figure takes more space than just putting the page number there!) With that in mind, a fan-created alternative seems like a great idea, and you can download it as PDF or an MS-Word document and tuck it into your book. Check it out
right here.
[h=4]Original Post[/h]
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 too new to post links.)
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