MonsterCalc Development - IH Revised CR calculater (NEED YOUR HELP!)

Hey guys,

I opened this thread because this particular project may be too much for me to handle by myself. I'm writing this utility in XHTML, CSS and JavaScript. If you know any of those three, you can help. If you don't know any of those things, you can still help, by pointing out bugs/errors/cool ideas, etc.

MonsterCalc is going to be a monster generator that also calculates the CR rating based on the Revised CR rules from Immortals Handbook. The current incarnation is based on version 4 available here as a free download. I am told that version 5 is available to beta testers and version 6 is in development. I have decided not to go with version 5 for the time being so that the maximum number of people can have access to this utility. I will upgrade it to new versions when they are released to the general public.

MonsterCalc is going to have three milestones:
1) MonsterCalc must be able to calculate CR's for any possible kind of monster that can be built from the monster building rules in the Monster Manual. These CR's must fully implement the IH Revised CR rules. Testing will involve running MonsterCalc against monsters in the Monster Manual and verifying that the derived CR's match those in the IH Revised CR Rules, Appendix One. When the correct CR's are generated for every monster in the MM, I can move on the milestone 2.

2) MonsterCalc will eventually be able to generate monster stat-blocks WotC-style. This will involve taking the statistics entered to interpolating the CR and calculating derived stats (saves, attacks, damage, DC's etc.) from them. This stat-block should be in human-readable format. The goal here (though not as rigid as the first milestone) is that MonsterCalc will generate stats-blocks identicle to those in the SRD if those monsters are stated out in MonsterCalc.

3) Saving/loading of monsters will be needed. A big plus would be importing/exporting in PCGen format, so generated monsters are immediately useable.

Probably along the way, I'm going to have to address design issues. Right now MonsterCalc is very ugly and utterly unuseable. It will have to adopt a nicer UI if it's going to be useful.

Attached is a very-very-very-pre-alpha. It is not functional, and I need help getting it functional. Just open the HTML file in any XHTML/CSS compliant browser with JavaScript turned on.

IMPLEMENTED:
- Calculating CR adjustments (CRA) for
* Character Level
* Size
* Type
* Subtype
* Humanoid Race
* Hit Dice
* Speed
* Armor Class
ADDED 3/9/04
* Attacks
* Equipment
-Total CR calculation
UPDATED 3/10/04
ADDED 3/11/04
- Total CR now includes all fields except sub-type.

My current need before I can test the CR rules with goblinoids (the simplest monsters) is doing attacks (page 5 of the IH Appendix One). I don't know how I should do attacks at all!

I was thinking perhaps having a large number of "attack" drop-downs with multipliers (a maralith can attack 9 times in a full attack). The multiplier is the number of times in a full attack that monster can attack. Another drop-down specifies that it is a primary or iterative attack.

However, in some monster descriptions, weapons are included in the bonuses. How should I handle this? Will I have to code in weapons and such? If anybody wants to do a mock-up of a goo dinterface for this, that would be great.

EDIT: Added basic support for two weapons. I'm sure it doens't work right yet, but it's a UI introduction. Also added in totaling of CR ratings, so now I can test against simple goblinoids. Early tests show it's SO close and yet not exact, so I still got some tweaking to do.

Hi Halivar mate!

Well it looks good so far, although there is no calculate button as yet so its difficult to see it its all working.

First things first.

In v5. Under Type:
Undead (Intelligent) = +1.6
Undead (Mindless) = -0.6

As for attacks, you need to know the number of attacks (a figure you can type in yourself) for each base damage figure (a list of the dice). You also have to be able to differetiate between iterative and non-iterative attacks.

eg. Marilith
x6 @ 2d8 =
x3 @ 2d8 (iterative) =
x1 @ 4d8 =

So you need # of (same) attacks, and an 'iterative' button.

You probably also need about 5 rows for this, for things like dragons with multiple different attacks.

Upper_Krust said:

there is no calculate button as yet so its difficult to see it its all working.

Click to expand...

In the latest version (I really ought to number these), at the bottom should be a "Challenge Rating" field that auto-updates when you change stats.

Upper_Krust said:

So you need # of (same) attacks, and an 'iterative' button.

You probably also need about 5 rows for this, for things like dragons with multiple different attacks.

Click to expand...

That's exactly what I was going to do. I put in just two for now to see if if the interface was good enough. BTW, the "Primary/Secondary" was supposed to denote the difference between an iterative/non-iterative attack. I'll make that plainer.

Thanks for the input, UK!

Havilar, you may have noticed (or not) that I put in a call for programmers to bid on this project for me. So, I am also working on something.

Here is the advice I gave to my programmer on FULL ATTACK:

The user defines each attack based on a number of pulldowns for each attack.

But first, at the top, there is a check box, No Attack Forms. If this box is checked, the CR adjustment is -1.0, and it turns off the other entries. You're done with full attack, move on.

However, for each attack you want to define:

Pulldown 1: Primary, Multiattack (BAB-2), Secondary (BAB-5)
Pulldown 2: Type of attack (bite, etc.)
Pulldown 3: Normal/Oversized/Dominant
Pulldown 4: Type of Damage Die (1's, d2, d3, etc.)
User Entered Integer: # of damage dice

So for example, I might enter attack form #1:
Primary Bite Normal [# damage dice][damage die type]

The # of damage dice, and the damage die type, should default to the "design parameter" defined by the Size. However, the user can change these values (either by changing the number of dice, or a pulldown for the damage die type: 1's, d2's, d3's, d4's, d6's, d8's, d10's).

Notice that in my model, rather than require the GM to calculate average damage, I convert to a more user friendly model where you select the die types. So instead of making the user average the damage from a d6, I simply make sure that each d6 they choose costs them (x3.5). More user-friendly.

As UK suggests, I think if you had, maybe 6-8 of these, that would cover almost any creature, though the "killer app" would just have a button for "New Attack" that adds an iterative attack.

Wulf

Good thoughts, Wulf. I agree that a "Add New Attack" would be killer. Unfortunately, I don't know how to do it in JavaScript, so instead I put 5 lines as per UK's suggestion. I also agree with you on how to set up attacks, as that's how I've implemented it. Having the GM input average damage is useless for Milestone 2, where I will need the actual dice anyhow.

As an aside, I've just uploaded a new version of MonsterCalc with "goblinoid" added as a nother humanoid race type (in addition to the player races listed in v4 of the IH Appendix), so I can get that 0.2 CR bump for darkvision and the 0.55 hit-dice CRA.

Right now I should have everything I need to calculate CR's for goblins, hobgoblins and orcs. I want to get these CR calculations correct before I move on. Right now I'm 0.06 CR off on goblins (which are listed as 0.985 in IH, but 0.925 by MonsterCalc).

EDIT: Sorcica has pointed out that I'm not counting the goblin's bonus skill points. Sooo... next up: skill points!