Best way to modify an existing (official product) bestiary

[snupy]

As per title, I would like to add some effects to monsters in bestiaries I purchased (PFRPG if relevant). Of course I'd like the changes I make to be available in every campaign. What is the best way to go at this?

- I could duplicate the entire bestiary (actually, is that possible?), work on the duplicate, and only load the duplicate module instead of the original one. This way I would not have two entries for each monster in the bestiary, changes would not be overwritten by updates, but I would miss on updates on the original product.

- I could duplicate only the entries I am modifying in a separate module, load both the original module and the one with changes, but then I'd have two copies, original and modified, of the entries I change. Still, this seems the better way.

- I don't suppose there is any way to selectively hide records in a loaded module?

- I don't suppose there is any way to have a module which applies changes to records in an existing modules (like take the goblin record in module X and add to it these three spells) without creating a new record?

Anything else?

[Morenu]

There are extensions and mods for some of this.

On my phone so can’t link but spellbook extended and NPC … actions? And my bestiary accomplish much of this. I will come back with links when at computer later

[LordEntrails]

Without extensions:
#1 vs 2 you've laid it out. Depends on what you want more.
#3 No.
#4 you can't do with a module, but you can do it in a campaign and then copy the campaign when you start a new campaign. The changes are stored int he moduledb sub-folder, for each module. So you could just copy those files between campaigns.

[snupy]

There are extensions and mods for some of this.

On my phone so can’t link but spellbook extended and NPC … actions? And my bestiary accomplish much of this. I will come back with links when at computer later

Thanks Morenu, I am aware of those modules, no need to link them :) However I had not loaded your bestiary before and it looks very impressive!

But I don't think they solve my problem: there's bound to be some effect/spell/etc that you or the other developers missed or did not include for lack of time (and I am in no way complaining abut this). For example I think I managed to automate channel resistance once using a specific tag and I do not think any of the available modules does that. Now I wrote a couple of spells to automate some of the abilities of a trailgaunt (which is in bestiary 6 and again do not think any available module offers any automation for it). I’ll share it once I finish it so you can incorporate in your bestiary.

For now my changes live precariously with a specific NPC in a specific campaign, so I was wondering what is the best way to have them saved more robustly and available in any campaign.

[snupy]

Without extensions:
#1 vs 2 you've laid it out. Depends on what you want more.
#3 No.
#4 you can't do with a module, but you can do it in a campaign and then copy the campaign when you start a new campaign. The changes are stored in the moduledb sub-folder, for each module. So you could just copy those files between campaigns.

Thank you! Did not know about 4, that's interesting. Do you know if it goes in the giant db.xml file or in the file with the module name inside the moduledb folder? If it is the latter that would be quite handy. Although I imagine that if the modified module somehow gets updated the file listing the changes may not work it any more?

[Laerun]

In the past, some individuals have made a purely manually created, "effects and conditions" module to load up for most of the edge cases, and that is if the NPC features or traits can be automated as an effect. This way you can load that to cover the edge cases or any potential missing effects. Other effects would likely need to be programmed and hard-coded into the backend of Fantasy grounds, which essentially expands and changes the ruleset. Many community developers have done such things with extensions to get more out of the platform and to help ease their own games and shared through the Forge or the DM's Guild before the Forge was a thing.

As you discover more things that you can add to your NPCs, you can add to your work campaign module.
You can keep building in a work campaign and update your effects module and reexport when needed. As you play, you drag the required effects to the Combat tracker instead of having to modify all of the NPC records, and your player effects can also exist there too.
64284

[LordEntrails]

Thank you! Did not know about 4, that's interesting. Do you know if it goes in the giant db.xml file or in the file with the module name inside the moduledb folder? If it is the latter that would be quite handy. Although I imagine that if the modified module somehow gets updated the file listing the changes may not work it any more?
It goes in the moduledb folder. The folders and files should look exactly the same between the campaigns.

Correct, if a module is updated and you Revert Changes on the whole module you "lose" the changes in your moduledb. But you can also Revert changes 1 record at a time. The various library lists (NPC, SPells, Stories, etc) have a icon to show those that have been changed from the default module.

[snupy]

In the past, some individuals have made a purely manually created, "effects and conditions" module to load up for most of the edge cases, and that is if the NPC features or traits can be automated as an effect. This way you can load that to cover the edge cases or any potential missing effects. Other effects would likely need to be programmed and hard-coded into the backend of Fantasy grounds, which essentially expands and changes the ruleset. Many community developers have done such things with extensions to get more out of the platform and to help ease their own games and shared through the Forge or the DM's Guild before the Forge was a thing.

As you discover more things that you can add to your NPCs, you can add to your work campaign module.
You can keep building in a work campaign and update your effects module and reexport when needed. As you play, you drag the required effects to the Combat tracker instead of having to modify all of the NPC records, and your player effects can also exist there too.
64284

Thanks, yes I think I have that module or one providing similar features by Kel, it is handy. But sometimes I still need to write/modify/combine effects for specific situations (or tbh I just forget it is in the module and recreate it), if only to reflavour their names. It would be handy to have a place where to save them. If the effects panel in your picture had subdirectories that would be perfect, but without it easily gets unwieldy. The spells panel has subgroups, but forces you to encapsulate an effect as an action within a spell.

[snupy]

It goes in the moduledb folder. The folders and files should look exactly the same between the campaigns.

Correct, if a module is updated and you Revert Changes on the whole module you "lose" the changes in your moduledb. But you can also Revert changes 1 record at a time. The various library lists (NPC, SPells, Stories, etc) have a icon to show those that have been changed from the default module.

Oh very good that's better than I thought!