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So, Eric, can you answer the following question for me: The three core rule books are supported in E-Tools. Is it possible to add feats from, say, Song and Silence, magic items and spells from Magic of Faerun, monsters from Oriental Adventures.... etc? Is it fully customizable that way?
 

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Eternalknight said:
So, Eric, can you answer the following question for me: The three core rule books are supported in E-Tools. Is it possible to add feats from, say, Song and Silence, magic items and spells from Magic of Faerun, monsters from Oriental Adventures.... etc? Is it fully customizable that way?

First, there is at least one area of the core rules that is not really supported by Etools -- and that is monster templates. There is no one-click templating, and that's definitely a weakness. You can "sort of" do it by opening an existing .rac file and tweaking it, that works pretty well except that some templates (notably Vampire) also change your type, and you can't do that when editing a .rac file. But I used it to make fiendish stirges of Xvim (two templates there) for my campaign, for instance, and that worked out fairly well.

Now to customizing: Some of the customizing is "fully functional" -- a new weapon, new armor, new spell, new language, new skill, for instance, will act just like a core one. But some of the customizing is "text only" in a sense. That's the case with feats. You can give the feat a name, determine some kinds of prerequisites, give it a description, categorize it (metamagic, etc. if necessary), but the feat will have no impact on your stats. So, for instance, I added the Dash feat from Song & Silence for my rogue character -- it appears on my list of feats but does not change my speed. There are just too many crazy things that a feat could do, I guess. The "text only" customizing includes feats, magic items (new magic weapons and armors and shields do have functional enhancement bonuses though), and domains (custom domains can be assigned to a god, and can have spells assigned, but domain abilities are "text only").

All is not lost, however. Let's take feats for example. There are a number of ways to "trick" Etools into calculating various bonuses and penalties associated with custom feats. If you have created a feat that improves initiative, saving throws, or armor class, you can manually adjust these stats on the Stats screen of the Character Generator for a character knowing the custom feat. If you have created a feat that improves one of the six attributes or grants bonus hit points, you can manually adjust that on the Adjust Stats screen. If you have created a feat that provides a bonus to a skill, "overspend" the necessary skill points on the Skills screen. All of these user-adjusted statistics will appear on the DM screen, so you'll need to be able to justify these adjustments to your DM. If your custom feat impacts some other facet of your character, you will need to make a note of it on your character sheet.
 

Thanks Eric. Just clarifying something: with your Dash example, is it possible to change a characters speed on the stats screen? I'm assuming not, but just want to clarify :)
 

Eternalknight said:
Thanks Eric. Just clarifying something: with your Dash example, is it possible to change a characters speed on the stats screen? I'm assuming not, but just want to clarify :)

No, speed is one of the few things on the stats screen you can't manually change. Not sure why...
 

Another question for you Eric (I'll quit bothering you in a minute): How would you rate E-Tools overall? I use many different sources in my games; would it be worth it to me? How much work would I have to do to get it to work for my campaigns?
 

It totally depends on the campaign. I seldom if ever use prestige classes, but I often use tweaked or advanced monsters as well as monsters with character classes. For me it is a must-have. If you find PC Gen's interface and output to be adequate, that program is superior in many ways, mostly in the amount of data from non-core sources included. Even then you might find E-Tools to be worth it for the monster-related stuff it can do alone. I mean, really, $30? It's not much to pay for a great deal of convenience.

For tomorrow's game I wanted to put together a fey'ri rogue/sorcerer/fighter/spur lord character. (Fey'ri are elf/tanar'ri tieflings, and Spur Lord is a prestige class from Lords of Darkness). It was a snap to put together the fey'ri race with the race generator. It was a snap to put together the rogue/sorcerer/fighter part. Then what I did was copy and paste the stat block from the stat block screen, and then in my word processor I added the hit dice, hit points, skill points, base attack bonus, special abilities and saving throws that came with the levels of Spur Lord. That part was not so convenient, but was still not bad at all to do. Certainly a lot easier than building the whole thing by hand. And for me easier than using PC Gen even if that race and PrC were already built in (which they might be, I don't know). Your mileage may vary. :)
 

Eric,

Thanks a lot for answering questions. It is really nice to hear concrete answers from someone who has actually *used* the program about it's functionality.

It is one thing to hear that you can advance or tweak a monster, it is another to hear *how* it can be done.

By the way is the NDA on the beta testers lifted or are you answering based on the Gen Con preview?
 


Eric, could you clarify one thing pleace: The customizing you talked about, was that what's possible INSIDE the program or did you do the customising in the data files using Access (I understand Access is used to contain the main data base ?)
 

Thanks for the answers, Eric! Personally, I do use PC Gen, and I find it a breeze... I will reserve judgement on E-Tools until I see it though. If customization is available, it may well be worth it, even with having to do a bit of work.
 

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