The more I look at and use your generator the more I think the Holy Grail is on its way. You have a lot of ease-of-use features right -- a lot. Add 5 levels of druid with a drop box? Generate 5 CR 5 monsters to pick from for a random encounter, including "vampire gelatinous cube" and an aranea pre-advanced in hit dice? Wow. You could actually run off of this thing someday.
That's an interesting factoid about the allip and undead hit dice. I always thought "1 HD = 1 CR", but now I'm starting to remember a table in the MM that says different.
I am gonna make more suggestions, as per the thread title. I don't know when you will find time to do it all, but I don't know when you found the time to do what you've done already. So...
When you include advanced monsters in the random generator, maybe explain that. Not "aranea CR 5," but "aranea, advanced 2 HD." I know araneas aren't CR 5, so I was confused, and I am used to using unadvanced monsters. Eventually I think the random generator should have checkboxes:
x Include basic monsters
x Include monsters advanced by Hit Dice
x Include monsters advanced by character class
x Include monsters with templates (vampire, etc)
green slime's idea is cool too, though hard to implement -- imagine a random generator for forest encounters that could give you a pack of wolves,
and an elf druid master! I guess a shortcut version to what he wants would be to let you generate by creature type. You want forest encounters, generate animals and elves. You want crypt encounters, generate undead and oozes. That way you, the programmer, doesn't have to categorize every monster into whatever type of environment. The DMG has tables for that anyway.
I suggest making the picture logos at the top of each screen (which look nice) into links that take you back to the main page. In particular, there's no way to get from
here to the main page.
There is a place on the display screen that now shows how many stat points the creature should have gained from advancement.
In the results to the advancer, the line that says "Stat Points Gained From Advancement: 2" should be directly under the Abilities line, not separated from it by Feats and skill points.
keep in mind that in the main application that the table that shows the stats can be clicked on and every stat can be edited manually so the stats are always up to you.
I don't see how. In Firefox, that table on the left of the screen has only one clickable thing, the button that says "reset gnome stats." (I am using gnome for everything because it's a PC race. I wish you would include "human" so I could generate "generic fighters." Human's not in the SRD, but how about "elf" at least, so I don't have a size bonus messing up the AC calculation?
Oh, I see, you can edit the stats "in the table." That's weird. Never seen an app that works like that, and the rest of the stuff in the table you obviously can't edit, so I never guessed. I'm actually not sure what the purpose of the box with "reset gnome stats" is -- all the information in it about the stats and stuff is already in the table. If the only reason is to show the changes to the base stats, maybe you should just let people change stats in the second screen instead, with dropdown boxes, and get rid of that box.
The fact that you can pick a feat progression for a Ghoul doesn't scream "awesome" to me, just "eventually handy if I use this enough." But when I actually tried it, picked the feat "Ability Focus" and it popped up "what kind? fever, paralysis, or stench?" and then it actually included that feat in the DC in the ghoul statblock I generated, and told me about it? That was entirely awesome. You should call attention to your work there by calling it "pick feats to include in statblock" or something.
"Advance Monster" is a good name for a button, but somehow it gets me thinking that I should be doing this: "Choose a monster to advance on this screen. Then click the button." But that's not how your thing works. You need to have your feats and stuff picked
before you click the button, and you can't go back and adjust them after (not as easily as you can change your fighter level, anyway... I get a little confused by your whole 2-screen interface thing because they don't have the same visual design, so they don't appear to be connected parts of one monster design process.) So maybe you should a) move the button to the bottom center instead of top center and/or b) name it "Final step: add levels and hit dice." "Finish monster" would keep that simplicity which is important.
Like I said, your generator shows a huge amount of promise and a whole lot of work must have gone into it. I sent you $15 with PayPal just because I have this image of the Holy Grail. It's funny because I have DMGenie, which probably has just as much work in, but I never paid for it after the 60 days because it was already a finished product.
