Hi guys
As an update to anyone who is interested, the first working version of this generator is now complete.
Here is a quick summary of what it will do :
- You have 2 pages to view, a selection page and a report page
- The selection page allows you to pick your budget, determine how many parcels you want and from which of the 9 categories (as per the Ultimate Equipment)
Example : You can pick 3 x 10,000gp parcel of Coins, 2 x 5,000gp parcel of weapons and 1 x 50,000 gp parcel of Art..
NOTE : At present there is no method to mix/match your quantity of parcel and the parcel selection, so you can't have 2 x 10,000gp Coins and 1 x 5,000gp Coins and 3 x 500gp coins.. although if this is really important to you, you can always run the generator a couple of times for that purpose, picking out the important bits
- You will also be able to see the budget for your party per encounter using the APL and slow/medium/fast progression factors, so a APL of 5 and pace of medium is a GP budget of 1550 per encounter
- You will see a sum comparing the APL vs the total of the parcels you have selected. This way you can tune them as you see fit (so if overbudget by 10,000, simple move your coins from 2 x 10,000 to 1 x 10,000 or something similar
- You get a big button to press and it crunches it all out for you
- The reporting page feeds you parcels in the following format
[Parcel Category]
[Parcel Number]
[Item name] (including features of that item and its price)
[Total Parcel Value]
You can thus have multiple parcel categories, multiple parcel numbers and multiple items within those parcels
- I have used simple formatting (bold for category headers, italics for the items) and everything is fed into the first column of the report worksheet
- Each time you run the program, it wipes the previous results starting fresh, so as to keep things neat
- Printing is done simply enough, just like you would print any spreadsheet page
- I have stress tested the program as much as I can but mistakes may arise, if you choose to use it then please bear this in mind and of course feedback any problems
Here is a list of some features this sheet has a few others I have seen don't
> Wands and Staffs have charges which which will be randomized on creation
- Items will have the chance to be cursed or intelligent. Cursed items will either have a specific curse (detailed in the item description) or be replaced for a worthless cursed item (much less likely) - Intelligent items are simply flagged as so, if you want to build intelligence into the item you have to do that manually since its not a process of generating it with random tables, you have to choose
> Wep / Armor has a 5% chance of being made of a special material
(A lot of coding went into this because each special material has a certain number of restrictions and adjusting values, what it can and can't be put on etc... )
If the item is magic, the extra value of it (such as Mithral, gold etc) is built into the value of the item as it normally is, otherwise it ends up bloating the cost considerablly.
However if you are picking a lesser minor armor/shield and it rolls for a specific armor and then gives you a Masterwork item made from special materials, THAT item will have a cost associated with it according to the special materials involved.
This has the pottential to create more expensive items than you might want to use, for game balancing purposes then please ignore these items if the special materials bump the cost too high
> I have added a few more weapons into the list of available ones (no firearms) as there is a gap in the ultimate equipment book for weapon generation that misses about 30% of the d100... so it needed filling in
> I have made sure that weapon/armor specific traits are restricted as required.. so no vorpal bows, no keen hammers etc
> I have built in the liklihood items will be small, medium or large. Some people ignore this but i think that if you have a setting with halflings and ogres, its unrealistic that they all use medium weapons. You can ignore this if you want (you simply get a S, M or L tag against the item)
For cost purposes, it does alter the cost of any Masterwork Item you generate as the base cost and weight of it goes up, so things like Darkwood and Mithral which alter price based on weight, this will come into effect
> Wondrous items are tagged so you know what slot they go in
> I havent included weight, school of magic and such onto magic items but you do get Caster Level and Spell level on potions, wands, scrolls
> You also get a nice drop down view that you can look at what the different descriptions of the parcels are. No big benefit here other than to help you decide between perhaps coins and art maybe
> I havent done anything dramatic about making sure that parcels meet the budget amount you set. No rounding over or complicated moving of leftover values from parcel to parcel... I thought about doing that but then it would serve to be too far removed than the corebook and table concept. Sometimes you will get low value parcels, sometimes over value ones and you always have the option of re-rolling
> The descriptions of items are right out of the book, any spelling mistakes or incorrect syntax is something I can change but its not a massive issue since the item reads the same no matter if it is spell protection, lesser or lesser spell protection
> Overall the program I created should give you an accurate representation of what would happen if you went into the Ultimate Campaign book.. might go something like this
You roll on Parcel F, Combatant Gear with 20,000gp value
Gives you : Lesser medium armor, greater minor weapon, greater minor wondrous item, two greater medium potions
First you need your armor
- First we need to see if it is cursed, intelligent or just normal (its just normal)
- Next we need to see if its made of any special material, not this time so thats fine
- Need to roll for what type it is (Splint Mail)
- Need to roll on the lesser medium table to see what we get (+1 bonus with 2x +1 abilties)
- Need to roll on the +1 abilities table now (Brawling & Balanced), we also need to know what the value of those special abilities are.. so its just 2 x +1s
- Then we need to add our regular +1 to those to get a +3 value, check the table and its worth 9,000gp
So we have a +1 Brawling & Balanced Splint Mail with a value of 9,000gp
Next is our greater minor weapon
- We roll for the type (get a dagger)
- We get a +2 Dagger for 2000gp, simple one (for once)
Next is our greater minor wondrous item
- First we check if there is a clue to function, is it intelligent, is it cursed.. just regular
- Next, what slot is it.. we check and we get (Belt)
- We get a (Belt of fallen heroes) worth 21,000 gp
Next is our potions
- We first need to roll to find out what the spell level/caster level is (both are 2nd SL, 3rd CL)
- Next, is it common or uncommon (its uncommon and common)
- For the 2nd lvl uncommon we get Arcane Lock worth 300gp
- For the 2nd lvl common we get Darkvision worth 300gp
So many rolls, so many options and thats just one parcel and a fairly low level selection.
Once you get higher in the table, you get MORE items over different tables and on weapons/armor the many different special abilities can really make your head spin
I think that is about it... If you have any design feedback, depending on the ease of the request and benefit, I would be willing to make changes
The program doesnt take too long to run either, as long as you aren't asking it to run 100 quantities of every parcel selecting the highest tier for each, it will typically return a result in seconds, otherwise big requests will take minutes but should be stable whilst it runs
The report page can be edited as much as you feel you want to, so you can copy/paste/cut from it before printing etc.. The program doesn't care about that page since it wipes it each run.
The main selection page is different, it has only a few editable fields and really are the only ones you need to worry about making changes too.
So if you are interested in getting a copy of the excel spreadsheet that the generator runs on, please PM me to make the request.
All that I ask in co-operation for its use is that you share honest feedback with me, make any valuable suggestions you can and please share any experiences you have with it (including the impact it has on your group or game(s))
One thing I am aware of is that I built this for myself, i am hoping if anyone does come to use it that they may provide usefull suggestions that will improve the program
