Farnaby's PFRPG Spellbook

[Kelrugem]

I'm working on updating Farnaby's Spell List.

This will consist of the following items being done in Phases.

Phase 1 - Should be completed in a few days.
- Add all spells for all levels from 'Archives of Nethy's'. This includes any new 1st - 4th level spells since Farnaby's last update and all 5th - 9th level spells. Initial the new spells that have been added will not have Actions on them.
- Update Spell Level information for all existing 1st - 4th level spells.
- Update the Spell Lists for all Spells and all Classes

Phase 2 - This will probably take a few months. As each level is updated I will release a new version.
- Add Actions for all newly added 1st-4th level spells. I will not be touching the spells that have already been added by Farnaby.

Phase 3 - This will probably take a few months. As each level is updated I will release a new version.
- Add Actions for all the 5th - 9th level spells that were added.

I have a question for those who have been around longer than I have.

Do you think it would be better to update Farnaby's mod and just add new version information?
Or would it be better to create a new forked version of Farnaby's mod, thus keeping 2 separate mods (Farnaby's original mod and an updated forked copy of Farnaby's mod)?

Initially, I was just going to update the original mod but then I started to think about the fact that there will be some differences from his original mod. Mainly the fact that before phases 2 and 3 are complete there will be spells without Actions, which is really what made Farnaby's mod different than the other spell mods.

I have some suggestion if you want: I wrote some extension, save versus tags (you can view it also at the link in my signature). It adds automatically new information to spells in form of tags, but only when the spell/action does not come from exported modules like Farnaby's, i.e. spells with custom actions are ignored by the parser. That leads to that my automatic parser will not work for such modules and then one needs to add the tags manually sadly.

But when you create the spells while having this extension then all the tags will be automatically added when coming from the SRD modules for example (I think you just drag&drop a spell from an SRD module and then edit that when you do the actions method? Then the tags will be automatically created) So, no extra work, but the created module would contain tags, too (and the module will be still usable for users who do not use the extension, so, really no disadvantage here ) Hence, would be really cool when you would have that extension turned on while you create these spells

EDIT: That should work for all your phases; when you create custom actions then probably by drag&dropping some spell of the SRD => Custom tags. When you create the spells as text-only directly in the spells' windowlist then the parser will also look onto them when they're dragged and dropped to some sheet, I guess (for that method you would not even need the extension)

[darrenan]

The current Farnaby's module is still under 1MB. I don't know what the guidance for module sizes are, but I would try to keep it all in one module if possible. If you complete all the spells, they are going to take up a certain amount of memory. Whether that is in one module or many, the effect is the same. Breaking it up into multiple modules gives flexibility to only load what you need I suppose, but in practice I tend to need all levels of level N and less, where N depends on which book in an AP I'm preparing. Once you get to book 6 you're typically using almost all of the levels to add to NPCs.

I agree that it is less useful to add spells without actions. I use Farnaby's because every spell in there has the correct actions associated with it. If that becomes a 'maybe' proposition, that just adds confusion about which module I should be using and means I now need to load additional modules. I currently keep three different spell modules loaded, although I could probably get away with two. If we could get that down to one, then the memory usage of that one becomes less of an issue.

Also, I second Kelrugem's suggestion in the previous post. I use his IFTAG functionality extensively, and if all the spells in Farnaby's also had all the appropriate tags applied that would be super! You may have noticed that the last copy of Farnaby's I uploaded does have a few types of tags applied, but you need to have one of Kelrugem's extensions loaded to see them (or just look for <othertags> in the raw XML). For example:

    <unwittingally>
      <actions>
        <id-00001>
          <atkmod type="number">0</atkmod>
          <clcmod type="number">0</clcmod>
          <savedcmod type="number">0</savedcmod>
          <savetype type="string">will</savetype>
          <srnotallowed type="number">0</srnotallowed>
          <type type="string">cast</type>
          <stype type="string">spell</stype>
          <school type="string">enchantment</school>
          <othertags type="string">charm;mind-affecting</othertags>
        </id-00001>
      </actions>

[darrenan]

@Kelrugem: I still think your extensions should not be checking for <actions> to determine whether to add tags or not, but rather, check specifically for any cast actions without <othertags>. It's a little extra logic, but shouldn't be too hard I think. That would mean it could always be added no matter what source the spell is coming from. And simplifies the work that @dllewell needs to do.

[Kelrugem]

@Kelrugem: I still think your extensions should not be checking for <actions> to determine whether to add tags or not, but rather, check specifically for any cast actions without <othertags>. It's a little extra logic, but shouldn't be too hard I think. That would mean it could always be added no matter what source the spell is coming from. And simplifies the work that @dllewell needs to do.

Yeah, that is right I didn't forget your advice on this (thanks again ). I simply had no time yet to code again, but I really should add this the next time when I code, I think

(about the extra work: I think one only needs to activate the extension, I didn't ask for extra work; I hope it didn't sound like that But when I added your request and advice then it is indeed not important anymore whether one had the extension while creating the module )

[tahl_liadon]

.
one thing i would say about the "extension coupling" idea: it would prob be better to keep the new spells module independent like current farnaby's.

as much as i might be useful, i'm not sure it's wise to tie it to another extension. it should be a simple thing like all the other "core" modules -- simple for everyone to just download and use. things can get messy down the road when there's such dependencies.

[Kelrugem]

.
one thing i would say about the "extension coupling" idea: it would prob be better to keep the new spells module independent like current farnaby's.

as much as i might be useful, i'm not sure it's wise to tie it to another extension. it should be a simple thing like all the other "core" modules -- simple for everyone to just download and use. things can get messy down the road when there's such dependencies.

Yes, therefore darrenan and I said that the info about the tags would not disturb anything when loaded in a campaign without the extension

The additional information of tags would just be added as separate component in the xml which gets simply ignored when not using the extension Thence, the tags become visible when the extension is loaded, but is invisible otherwise and nothing disturbed Otherwise I would not have suggested that because I am on your side when it is about that (so, I would not suggest adding separate effects using IFTAG for example )

[dllewell]

Based on the answers so far I think the best bet is to create a fork of the original module. It sounds like the way I am going to be implementing this in phases would make if different enough from Farnaby's current module that a forked version of the module would be best. Once I am fully complete with the updates, and all spells have actions, I can then rename it back to Farnaby's Spellbook.

@Kelrugem:
Based on the way I am coding this I don't think I can use your extension.

If I'm understanding your process correctly I would need to create the spell in Fantasy Grounds and when I drag and drop it to the sheet it would add the tags?
Let me know if I am not understanding correctly.

But that is not the way I am creating the module. I'm not adding new spells into Fantasy Grounds and then exporting the module.
I'm modifying the XML file directly to add new spells. To be more specific I'm generating XML from data stored in a database and using that to create the XML file.

Having said that if you can let me know the logic for getting the <othertags> I might be able to program that into my process that generates the XML data.

Full Spell List - @darrenan and tahl_liadon
I understand what you are saying about mixing spells with actions and spells without actions. Which is the primary reason why I think it's best to fork the module at this stage.

Ironically, the reason I'm doing this is that, as darrenan talked about, I'm trying to only have to use 1 Spell Module. By creating a module that has every single spell in it and updating them with Actions as I go I can accomplish this goal.

If I keep this module to only Spells that have Actions then I have to use 2 Spell modules. This one that has Spell with Actions for 1st - 4th level spells. And another module that has spells from 5th - 9th level as well as the 1st - 4th level spells that don't have Actions added to them yet.

Unless I'm missing it, I don't think there is any Spell Module that currently has all the spells? The only other Spell Module I'm seeing is the 'Complete Paizo Spells' by trenloe. And it appears that it was last updated on September 2015 which means it's missing quite a few new spells. It states that it has 2036 spells, while the one I'm working on has 3024 spells.

If there is another Spell Module that does have all the most current spells, please point me to it.

Again, once this is all complete (all spells have been updated with actions) I can rename the forked version back to 'Farnaby's Spellbook' and just have that 1 version.

[Kelrugem]

Based on the answers so far I think the best bet is to create a fork of the original module. It sounds like the way I am going to be implementing this in phases would make if different enough from Farnaby's current module that a forked version of the module would be best. Once I am fully complete with the updates, and all spells have actions, I can then rename it back to Farnaby's Spellbook.

@Kelrugem:
Based on the way I am coding this I don't think I can use your extension.

If I'm understanding your process correctly I would need to create the spell in Fantasy Grounds and when I drag and drop it to the sheet it would add the tags?
Let me know if I am not understanding correctly.

But that is not the way I am creating the module. I'm not adding new spells into Fantasy Grounds and then exporting the module.
I'm modifying the XML file directly to add new spells. To be more specific I'm generating XML from data stored in a database and using that to create the XML file.

Having said that if you can let me know the logic for getting the <othertags> I might be able to program that into my process that generates the XML data.

Full Spell List - @darrenan and tahl_liadon
I understand what you are saying about mixing spells with actions and spells without actions. Which is the primary reason why I think it's best to fork the module at this stage.

Ironically, the reason I'm doing this is that, as darrenan talked about, I'm trying to only have to use 1 Spell Module. By creating a module that has every single spell in it and updating them with Actions as I go I can accomplish this goal.

If I keep this module to only Spells that have Actions then I have to use 2 Spell modules. This one that has Spell with Actions for 1st - 4th level spells. And another module that has spells from 5th - 9th level as well as the 1st - 4th level spells that don't have Actions added to them yet.

Unless I'm missing it, I don't think there is any Spell Module that currently has all the spells? The only other Spell Module I'm seeing is the 'Complete Paizo Spells' by trenloe. And it appears that it was last updated on September 2015 which means it's missing quite a few new spells. It states that it has 2036 spells, while the one I'm working on has 3024 spells.

If there is another Spell Module that does have all the most current spells, please point me to it.

Again, once this is all complete (all spells have been updated with actions) I can rename the forked version back to 'Farnaby's Spellbook' and just have that 1 version.

Aah, okay, I see Yeah, then loading the extension won't work, one would need to add the tags then; there are some tags for it like othertags and I get these tag informations from the school entry for example. But I'd say ignore these tags then (otherwise you would just have more work to do and then I would feel bad for that) When I have time coding again then I try to change my extension in such a way that the parsing of tags also happens with such modules

[dllewell]

I've forked a new version of the Module. You can find it at https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...FRPG-Spellbook

I'm working on adding actions for all the spells but it's going to take a while for that to be completely done.