The Bad: It's currently almost useless (personally I ses no relevant use for it)
It will let you preview monsters, help you add up xp and produce a list of monsters. "Yay"
Why not show the combat stats of the selected monsters *together* in a saveable/printable format so the user can print it and have all the combat info on one page? I have just gotten the subscription and this lacking feature really disapoints me. It would be SO easy...
Another useful thing to do would be to add a "Level up" button and a "Level down" producing the results of levelling according to the DMG guidelines.
And for "Build a Monster": The DMG recommends reskinning and modifying existing monsters. Why is that not possible?
It would be SO easy to make the tools useful.
Disclaimer: I have only tried the toold for the first time. If I have missed something, please let me know I will be very thankful. If not, well someone please get it done...
An ounce of change here would produce pounds of function.
It would be much more convenient if the Encounter Builder simply included the monster stat blocks. As it is right now, I open up two browser tabs - one for the Encounter Builder and one for Compendium. I flip back and forth, printing monster pages as I build the encounter. Awkward and time consuming.
Little expert tip on that: If you click the little eye icon next to the monster's name, it automatically pulls up the stat block from the Compendium in another tab. It was the last little feature update they made to it before it stopped being developed.
It appears that the encounter builder tool is going to be superseded by a more powerful one in the Campaign tools.
More powerful - most likely.
Needing a fixed Installation - most likely.
For those of us who happen to be away from their own PCs often or have Macs/other operating systems, this is actually bad news. Good tools like that should be online, not a standalone .net application...
:D Anyway, the builder has many monsters not found in the MM1 and with MM2 I suppose it will soon have many more. So it can be used for finding suitable monsters. While it would have been really convenient (and easy to implement?) to be able to print all the stats at once, the current version *can* be used. I think I may use it by printing monster stats to a PDF and then copying the stat block into Word. It will be a bit cumbersome but as Orcboss says the text version is really unhandy.
Next: Waiting for the Campaign Builder. Where to find news about progress?
Granted, its not perfect. My system breaks down if I need to level up or down a monster and a levelled up or down version isn't in the system. Then I take the base version, cut and paste it into a word document, modify accordingly and that page goes into my encounter "packet". Traps also have to be typed in by hand.
Still, despite its imperfections, I find the encounter builder incredibly useful.
I hope they do get an update. The encounter builder is fairly useful, but printing the combat blocks for the monsters you choose would greatly increase the functionality. Sure, I can (and have) copy and paste them to some other document and mess with the (crappy to work with) format.
An ounce of change here would produce pounds of function.
I don't know what browser you are working with but you should only have to copy and paste if you want to edit the info. In both Firefox and IE there should be a print icon on the window that is opened up to show the monster stats (actually on any page the browser is opened to, since its a browser feature and not an encounter builder thing). If you just hit that it will print out just fine (it doesn't show the colored background or any of that)
I don't know what browser you are working with but you should only have to copy and paste if you want to edit the info.
Or if I want to put all the monsters I'm using on the same page of the Word doc I'm using to make my notes for the encounter. I'd like to be able to alt-tab between ScreenMonkey and Word or Acrobat instead of having extra paper lying around my small, cluttered desk.
Little expert tip on that: If you click the little eye icon next to the monster's name, it automatically pulls up the stat block from the Compendium in another tab. It was the last little feature update they made to it before it stopped being developed.
That is really helpful to know, I just signed up for D&DI and was frustrated with that part as well, but I do believe when I click on Display & Print that it show indeed...Display what everything is and print them :P
Does anyone know WHEN the "new" campaign tools will be coming out? Is this something that has been talked about for a while with nothing being actually shown?
Or if I want to put all the monsters I'm using on the same page of the Word doc I'm using to make my notes for the encounter. I'd like to be able to alt-tab between ScreenMonkey and Word or Acrobat instead of having extra paper lying around my small, cluttered desk.
How do you pull that off, short of using teeny tiny font. I have tried to do that in the past but each monster takes up enough space that I can usually at best get a monster and a half per page (Unless the second one is a minion, they usually fit) and I don't like my monsters to break over multiple pages so I usually ended up with one monster per page anyway, same as if I printed it out directly.
How do you pull that off, short of using teeny tiny font.
Depends on if you consider 10 - 12pt fonts to be teeny tiny, I guess. It still ends up being larger type than the typical D&D book. The font isn't that bad, but the headers (name, role, xp, etc.) don't copy well. Its fixable, just annoying. Other than that, most critters will fit at least two to a page in two columns.
Does anyone know WHEN the "new" campaign tools will be coming out? Is this something that has been talked about for a while with nothing being actually shown?
Alas no. It appears they're currently collecting suggestions on the forum to determine which features are most desired, but we haven't gotten any word about the timing. My entirely unsupported estimate (based loosely on the time it took to get CB out) is that we'll at least see some level of beta test before the end of the year, but there are some people on the forums who would consider that extremely optimistic. But no one knows for sure.
WotC has apparently decided that it is better not to give any estimates at all until they are absolutely certain of the dates. They really screwed up badly on that count last summer, and it appears they will never live down the broken implied promise of having the VTT available on release day.
Alas no. It appears they're currently collecting suggestions on the forum to determine which features are most desired, but we haven't gotten any word about the timing.
Just a note. WotC is not collecting info from the forums.
I started that thread on my own volition to provide a place for people to discuss ideas that they liked/didn't like. I have no control whether WOtC reads the thread or not. They have also given me no indication if the ideas presented in the thread are new to them or not.
Just a note. WotC is not collecting info from the forums.
I started that thread on my own volition to provide a place for people to discuss ideas that they liked/didn't like. I have no control whether WOtC reads the thread or not. They have also given me no indication if the ideas presented in the thread are new to them or not.
I stand corrected. I knew you start these directed discussions on your own. What I should have said is that a lot of us are loudly voicing our hopes and dreams for these tools in the directed discussion thread. We don't know where they are in the development process or exactly what the Campaign Tools will include, though we've gotten a few hints of the latter from Trevor.