Pathfinder Reference Document: Now 20% Cooler with Indexes

Thursday, November 24, 2011

The new PRD has been out for a while now, but a new feature may have gone unnoticed by some. Recently, we've added a set of indices to the PRD (look toward the bottom of the menu on the left-hand side of the page). These indices were originally created as mobile content so that anyone trying to look up a single reference on their phones would have an easier time doing it. It quickly became obvious that we should also give the people on their desktops and iPads similar capabilities. We had all of the data right there, but we just needed to apply it a little differently. At first we only offered feats and spells, but eventually we were able to add magic items and spell lists. Each addition has been a little more complicated than the last.

The first two, feats and spells, are alphabetical indices with filters that allow the user to sort data by book. Originally, this was the only data really available to us and was sufficient for those lists, but the magic item index gave us reason to develop that a little further. Knowing that people often like to browse through the magic item index looking for a particular type of item—such hunting for a new suit of armor or filling in an empty ring slot—we created our index filters for that page with this in mind.

After that, most of our requests for these types of indices came in two forms: spell lists and monsters. And though we've not yet created a monster index, this is certainly something we’re considering for the future. Spell lists, however, have been tackled, and you can now pick from any class and then filter spells by book and spell level. This has become a valuable resource and probably useful for a lot of people, especially those not as familiar with spells in the more recent books, like Ultimate Magic and Ultimate Combat, but who would like to give them a try.

The indices are still evolving, and we appreciate all of your feedback and hope that everyone gets a lot of use out of them!

Lissa Guillet
Assistant Software Developer

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Tags: Pathfinder Reference Document Pathfinder Roleplaying Game
Grand Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook Subscriber

I know they have been out for a couple days (weeks?) I know because I've been using them and LOVING THEM! Especially the Spell List index. If I could ask one thing, the feat index, it really could use a preview of the feat, maybe on mouse over, or something? The individual feat pages are enormous and take a while to load, and then jump to the anchor link.


6 people marked this as a favorite.

Do... I hint a Pony Reference in that '20% Cooler?'. O.o

I would hope so..


I was just wishing Paizo would something like this yesterday. It's like they are inside of my brain.


Ahhh. Nice.

A small feature request / idea:

All spells share certain traits. For example: they are abjuration spells. Or they are 3rd level abjuration spells. Or they are all 2rd level cleric spells.

I guess your spell lists come from a spell database of some sort. What would be awesome is if there would be navigatable dynamic lists that could be reached from the spell page itself. If the spells are indeed from a database, that would be a piece of cake to add.

I tried to do it for myself on my private PRD page by parsing PCGen source files, but well... Paizo's PRD is much better, errata are in there, and well. It's paizo.com ;)

Thanks!

Henk

Scarab Sages

Awesome! Thanks!

Liberty's Edge

Love it. :) Keep up the good, work ladies and gentlemen.

Would be great to have a feature as henkslaaf said that lets us sort by school as well as by level and class and book as you already have.

Dark Archive

henkslaaf wrote:

Ahhh. Nice.

A small feature request / idea:

All spells share certain traits. For example: they are abjuration spells. Or they are 3rd level abjuration spells. Or they are all 2rd level cleric spells.

I guess your spell lists come from a spell database of some sort. What would be awesome is if there would be navigatable dynamic lists that could be reached from the spell page itself. If the spells are indeed from a database, that would be a piece of cake to add.

I tried to do it for myself on my private PRD page by parsing PCGen source files, but well... Paizo's PRD is much better, errata are in there, and well. It's paizo.com ;)

Thanks!

Henk

the spell DB on d20pfsrd allows you to sort on all kins of stuff and you can create your own list and it is kept up to date with the latest spells and errata!!!


Thanks Paizo! :D


I've been using the indexes and find them very handy.

Shadow Lodge

I've been using the indices a lot on my iPad and it's been very, very useful both when playing and when GMing. Also echoing henkslaaf above, an eventual list filter to say, sort by school, and also by descriptor (such as all language-dependent arcane spells) would be excellent.
After monsters, I'd also like to request equipment, please!


I also want to echo the comments that the new PRD is very slick, purdy, and the indexes very handy.

Might I add an additional request? Being able to filter the magic items by slot, price, and even CL, would be exceedingly useful.

Grand Lodge RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

2 people marked this as a favorite.
Thomas Writeworth wrote:

Do... I hint a Pony Reference in that '20% Cooler?'. O.o

I would hope so..

I caught that too.

LISSA GUILLET IS BEST PONY!


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Seriously Paizo, your attention to the customer is what makes me continue to buy your products. (plus the quality has been fantastic) As a business model, I think that you have hit upon something special and I look forward to gaming with you for many years to come.

Bravo!

Edit: And I just dug into the changes...holy crap that is great!

Grand Lodge

Awesome! You guys rock, as usual! :)

Scarab Sages

Cool, now bundle it up, add search and sell it in the App Store :)

I know there is something similar already, but I would buy it if there was a paizo version.

The Exchange Contributor, RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16

It would be awesome if you could use it on the iPad/ *droid when there is no internet connection.

Silver Crusade

Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Dennis Baker wrote:
It would be awesome if you could use it on the iPad/ *droid when there is no internet connection.

I played around with ways to make that happen, but the ipad has limits to the amount it will store and that limit is somewhere between 5 and 15 megs. If I rememeber correctly it will ask for more but the entirety of the prd is about 60+ megs I think. It was also a little confusing and required a lot more attention when we updated things so we decided there were way too many disadvantages. It is all just html and javascript though. Not a lot going on server side there, so you might be able to find a solution.

As to other indexes, I don't want to say that we'll never do them, but I will say if we do them, they most likely won't be done anytime soon. We didn't really create a database for these so it's somewhat less easy than you might think. Also, specifically with school, subschools, and descriptors, that list is really big and I don't want to cause a lot of clutter. I've toyed with the idea of color-coding various schools or adding a colored icon to the side for each entry, but much more than that and we've got a giant page full of things you can filter by before you even start looking at spells.


Wow, this is a HUGE improvement to the spell lists, great job! As others have said, the main addition I'd like to see now would be the ability to filter on school or perhaps a toggle that un/groups the currently displayed list by school.

On a side note, I got even more excited when I saw Lissa's new avatar and immediately went to see if the Serpent's Skull avatars were finally available. Alas, maybe for Christmas? ;)

Keep up the great work!


The spell list index is extremely useful. I'd like at least a spell school filter, but what we have is already very, very useful and I thank you all for it.

Liberty's Edge

Excellent, thank you very much!


Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

This is a really awesome update. One thing i have noticed though, the racial feats are not in the feat index. Could they be added?


Notsonoble wrote:
This is a really awesome update. One thing i have noticed though, the racial feats are not in the feat index. Could they be added?

Nov 28, 2011, 03:29 pm


Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Dekalinder wrote:
Notsonoble wrote:
This is a really awesome update. One thing i have noticed though, the racial feats are not in the feat index. Could they be added?
Nov 28, 2011, 03:29 pm

??

Community & Digital Content Director

Notsonoble wrote:
This is a really awesome update. One thing i have noticed though, the racial feats are not in the feat index. Could they be added?

We're currently doing some work on the feat index, and likely these will be included. For future issues/suggestions for the PRD, please reference our reporting thread.


Notsonoble wrote:
Dekalinder wrote:
Notsonoble wrote:
This is a really awesome update. One thing i have noticed though, the racial feats are not in the feat index. Could they be added?
Nov 28, 2011, 03:29 pm
??

So you really didn't notice that you just necro-ed a thread from four years ago?

Sovereign Court

Ashram wrote:
Notsonoble wrote:
Dekalinder wrote:
Notsonoble wrote:
This is a really awesome update. One thing i have noticed though, the racial feats are not in the feat index. Could they be added?
Nov 28, 2011, 03:29 pm
??
So you really didn't notice that you just necro-ed a thread from four years ago?

To be fair, the indices have also been updated quite recently.

Dark Archive

This thread is in response to a blog post? Does that make it different?


Honestly, I don't see why people hate necromancy so much anyway. But it's hard for newbies to the board to know such things, so try to cut them some slack.


Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

I'd seen the recent blog post about updates on it, and came beack looking for it to check. I got the wrong blog post apparently.

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