New Campaign Tools Info: The Monster Tool

[Fallen Seraph]

From Wizard's Forum: Campaign Tools - Monster Tool - Wizards Community

We’ve had a bit of time for the idea of Campaign Tools to settle in and I’ve heard and been involved in a lot of great conversations about what these tools could/should be. I wanted to take a few moments to give us all a better idea of where we are with this.

Of these Campaign Tools, the first that we’ll be releasing is what I’m going to refer to as the Monster Tool. We should expect the name to change by release. I don’t have dates, screenshots or beta keys to give away, but I’ve had the chance to play around with the tool recently and I really wanted to share some of what I saw.

To hit some highlights, here’s what this Monster Tool will be able to do:

• Search through and display monsters that appear in any of our books or magazines.
• Edit monsters so they fit into your planned encounter/campaign.
• Create, display, and print your own unique monsters in the official formatting style you see in our printed D&D material.

“But Trevor,” you ask, “You already have an Encounter Builder that helps me with my monsters. Why is this any better?”

Simply put, the Monster Builder has a lot of features that the Encounter Builder doesn’t have. Besides the ability to easily create your own monster, one example of these new features is the ability to grab an existing attack/power from one monster and drop it into another. For a more colorful analogy, this monster builder tool would be eating its cornflakes, and not even notice that the Encounter builder had landed in its milk.

I've only had a little time to play around with this tool and I already find myself wishing I had it to manage my current campaigns. I believe the Monster Builder will change the way we put together encounters in much the same way that the Character Builder dramatically improved how easy and fun it is to make characters.

That’s all I’ve got for now, but I hope to have more information for you next time. If we’re lucky, that next time will include screen shots and some more features about the Monster Tool. Thanks again for all the great feedback concerning D&D Insider and the Campaign tools, and I’ll talk with you soon!

This is something I was hoping would be in the Campaign Tools. Quite cool. I especially like the dragging of abilities around. One big thing I am wondering is if it will be able to tell difficulty. Like you combine so many abilities together it will say it averages out around a Level 10 monster. I imagine that be next to impossible to do, but be cool.

 

[mevers]

This is great news, I was hoping for something like this.

I hope by "edit monsters" they mean I can automatically add or subtract levels from an existing monster to bring it to where I want it for the encounter.

I hope they go one step further, and actually make it an encounter builder, so I can easily build an encounter, then easily print out a nicely formatted stat block(s) for the entire encounter.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

More info:

The new tool is a client program very similar to D&D Character Builder. It is designed to contain the monster builder to start and be easily added to.
For example the graphics and UI elements can be used for any tool we include with this application. It also updates monthly in the same fashion as the D&D Character Builder.

You can level up and down monsters with the touch of a button and it does the math for you as per the DMG/DMG 2. Some things don't work out perfectly, like a monster's damage doesn't always fall into the chart in the DMG but things like attack bonus, hit points, defenses, etc it is all automatic.

This answered my question:

Well a monster's level determines his stats and the attack bonus for his powers. His level isn't affected by him having a bunch of powers, so if you think he is harder than a normal monster of his level because he has more powers then you can just increase his experience point value.

Everything about a monster is easily editable so this shouldn't be a problem.

This is sounding like great. It sounds like it could really speed up monster building.

 

[avin]

Cooooooooool! That's what I need.

 

[Hjorimir]

I want my gold egg laying goose and I want it now!

 

[Rechan]

It's funny. One thing I'd really like to see is just the Big List of Monster Powers. Perhaps breaking it down by role or level, but just a list of all different kinds of Aura powers, Minor action powers, etc etc. So you could just build your monster by selecting from list A, B, and F.

 

[Ktulu]

want. Want now. This will change everything about how fast I can put an encounter together.... Must have.

 

[Kzach]

Given how very amateurish/beta the current Encounter and Monster builders are, even if they stuff this up and it's a total piece of crap, it'll still be way better than what we've got.

 

[deadsmurf]

Given how very amateurish/beta the current Encounter and Monster builders are, even if they stuff this up and it's a total piece of crap, it'll still be way better than what we've got.

This is true, and I still use the monster builder all the time, since its still easier than looking stuff up in the book

I'm totally looking forward to the tool.

 

[malraux]

Given how very amateurish/beta the current Encounter and Monster builders are, even if they stuff this up and it's a total piece of crap, it'll still be way better than what we've got.

In fairness, they were pretty open about the fact that the current MB and EB were done as a personal side project, not as an official tool; they just turned out to be really really popular in spite of being minor tools.

The only thing I'm somewhat disappointed on is that this is not a web app, which means [insert mac users getting left out rant here]. Though I understand the choice as they can probably reuse a lot of the CB code.