Monsters Table Generator

[Patroclus]

Soon, the most of us, we’ll have more miniatures in our collection and I find very useful to have a handy generator to produce matrixes for custom monsters.


As you can see on the picture bellow, the program is separated to three sections.


The first section is the monsters you want to use in your quest. You should write the name of each monster, the maximum number of the same monster you can find on a single encounter and finally the difficulty for encountering one monster of this type. There is no need to write them from the easiest to the hardest. Also, If your heroes are champions try to reduce the difficulty of every monster.

When you press the “Generate” button the textbox of the second section will get filled with the results, and the section three will get the image of the exporting file (the program exports a file “New Matrix.png” in the application folder). It is possible to change some values on the textbox and press the “ReDraw” button to see the changes.

The default values are from a matrix of Advanced Hero Quest. The results are exactly the same because I’ve tried to “translate” and keep the same logic.

Tell me your thoughts before I share this program. For example, the “maximum number per encounter” can be disabled and can be filled automatically by changing the difficulty tracking. If the monster is easy the number could be 4, if the monster is hard it could be 1, etc… But I leave it for more flexibility. You can change my mind.

link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/y7rk974oxnmnbi8/Monsters%20Table%20Generator.zip?dl=0

[Patroclus]

Ok, I guess this weekend I will share this program. If you have any other ideas for other small programs let me know.

[Patroclus]

Put some wandering monsters when your friends delay or you feel that your quest it’s easy for them. Always patrols have fun.

[gravaillon]

very usefull 'little" tool ! Works for hq and ahq too ! Thanks a lot for sharing !
Can you add a button : print the matrices on A4?
What about making also matrices for special room, quests rooms...etc ? Is it possible to choose?
Anyway, thanks again ! ^^ I will certainly use it !

[Patroclus]

Thanks grav! I want to create more tools to make the life of DM easier. This one is very useful if you have a scenario in your mind and you want to use some minis but you don’t want to spend time trying to find the combinations of the encounters. You just give the difficulty value of each monster and it does the calculations for you. The basic rule is that you can’t find different type of monsters in the same encounter (for example goblins with undead). The second rule is that the more difficult monsters always lead the smaller (you won’t see one skeleton as the leader of 3 mummies). It is not a very complicated process but when you want to have a monster table with the less of thinking it is a must.

About the printing, I think it’s not a good idea to spend a page for just a matrix. If you want to use it in a quest, even if you want to make a DM screen with tables, it is better to open a word doc and copy paste the image inside. Then you can resize it and add more tables or texts. So I think it is better to keep it simple…

About tables for rooms or other things, yes it’s a nice idea. Of course I can’t put many calculations for them because it doesn’t have to do any combinations, but a tracking from common to rare value could be nice (for example when the treasures are more than 40 items, it could be almost impossible to share possibilities on paper). Also, I am thinking about a free text editor (for the copy-paste), and of course an import/export option to save your work.

[torilen]

I don't have a lot of time right now - I quick-read everything except your last
post patroclus - but, damn, this looks awesome to me.
I am definitely going to try to remember to come and check this out later this
evening or tomorrow.

By the by - I have a roll generator myself - I used MS Excel...it has a random
number generator now. I use it for rolling the dice for HQ. Its probably not
perfect (no computer-generated random number thingy is) - but it could help
a lot when you get into the larger numbers of dice...you know, more than 5 or
6 for a single roll.

I think it might be up here...not sure. If not...I'll post it under the projects
section, as well...to go along with this.
Maybe drathe can tell us...is my roll generator up here?

[Daedalus]

What is a Chaos? Is it a Chaos Warrior? If so, why does a Mummy come up as more dangerous and worth more gold coins on your sample table?

[Patroclus]

Wow, my mistake… It’s because I’ve placed the difficulty tracker exactly the same for both monsters, so the program randomly have to choose one to be first. If I lower one point the mummy, it will be fixed.

I will do the correction of the default values in the newer version, with also the option to make treasure tables (or rooms, hazards, etc).

[cynthialee]

I just use the monster cards and pull a monster from the deck sight unseen. Adds an element of the unknown.

[Patroclus]

That’s not bad, but you’ll have the same possibility to draw an ogre and the same to draw a skeleton. At the other hand the D12 dices are also beautiful and it’s not a taboo to use more dices, no one will complain…

The difference is that if you want to make three quests for the weekend, for an undead campaign, and you don’t have time to draw tables and calculate the encounters. This tool will help you a lot. For example take a look to the picture bellow… I’ve put the monsters that I want to use and I change the difficulty trackers, and it’s done.

If the chaos wizards have one random chaos spell it is ok, but if the necromancer has all his spells you have to do changes. It is far more difficult than the 1 chaos and 4 skeletons, so try to use the text editor and put him last with the treasure of 100 gold coins. And press the “ReDraw” button.

But even if you don’t want to use this as a wandering monster table, you can use it as an index to design your map. For example you can place 12 rooms with each encounter of the matrix.

Also, you may have more minis, and you want to use them in your games. It is a nice way to add them by using this program. There is more than one reason to use it.