Forum:Spell pages, combining editions

Forums: Helping Hand > Spell pages, combining editions

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Please take a look at User:Moviesign/Sandbox/Spell example 1 and tell me what you think of documenting spells this way. I think it looks better without the Table of Contents, but feel free to preview it both ways. Think this will work? Be accepted? Most recent info would be at the top, with older edition info preserved below. Love it or hate it, please comment.

—Moviesign (talk) 01:24, July 8, 2013 (UTC)

Hmm. I think the general, no-crunch description of a spell would be more-or-less the same in each edition, though I'm not familiar with many outside 3.x. A fireball is always a big ball of fire, after all. Some small differences could be handle with notes or alternating references. Dividing the page by edition would get a bit repetitive and lengthy. Meanwhile, the Realmslore for a spell will always be the same.

I think the only bit that will change much is the crunchy details in the infobox. Perhaps the Template:Spell infobox could be modified for multiple editions, as the Template:Person is?

— BadCatMan (talk) 02:36, July 8, 2013 (UTC)

I agree with BadCat... updating the Spell infoboxes like the Person infobox with editions would be very cool :)

Darkwynters (talk) 02:43, July 8, 2013 (UTC)

I was thinking of the players/DMs that are using a particular edition of D&D. Delineating them by edition would allow readers to see everything at a glance, without having to wade through explanations of discrepancies and notes. They would just scroll down to their preferred edition and done. History could be a common section at the bottom of the page. I agree it would be a bit repetitive but I don't think it would be very lengthy. If the descriptions were exactly the same, then we could say "see above" or "see below", but copying a paragraph is just as easy.

If we add editions to the template, then school, type, and level would need to be editionified. Mystra help us if they ever change a spell's descriptor. :-/

What do you think?

—Moviesign (talk) 03:12, July 8, 2013 (UTC)

I still think most spells would be more or less the same in flavour and description across editions, like your scatterspray example. The description is still applicable in each edition of the spell. Where there are significant variations, rather than making separate subpages, it may be better to make subsections to express the differences while still having the one article on the page. For example:

Scatterspray was an alteration or transmutation spell in general use throughout the Realms.

Effects

This spell caused a....

2nd edition

etc.

3rd edition

etc.

Broadly, I'm against split-pages or pages with two separate articles on it if we can help it.

If two spells are wholly different in nature between editions, such as disrupt undead in 2e and 3e (high-level spell to a cantrip; see devastate undead), then a separate page with disambiguation may be more appropriate. This is especially the case where 4e made major changes to how spells functioned.

— BadCatMan (talk) 07:21, July 8, 2013 (UTC)

Okay, I rearranged the sections, so please take another look and see what you think. Do you like having separate infoboxes or should we try to make one infobox work for all editions?

—Moviesign (talk) 14:52, July 8, 2013 (UTC)

I like the direction you are headed in (example 2). I would say even more could go in the general description (first one and half sentences from each edition section for examples with only the variances described in the edition sections.

--Ijkay (talk) 22:04, July 8, 2013 (UTC)

I like the concept, especially since 5th ed. is just around the corner but couldn't we accomplish this in the infobox rather than splitting the entire article? Most spells functioned similarly between editions. The differences were mostly mechanics (duration, damage, range, etc.) which we try to avoid and spell level. It would seem that we could place this information at the top of the article and leave the description generic without referring to edition.

Boo Too - "Go for the eyes!" (talk) 23:16, July 8, 2013 (UTC)

I also like example 2, but agree with IJ... there seems to be some duplication... hmmm... or take Boo's idea, which could be like the edition sections in the Person infobox... or the novel ones, like Darkwalker on Moonshae... Template:Book

-Darkwynters (talk) 23:25, July 8, 2013 (UTC)

Two more examples to look at. I reduced redundancy as per User:Ijkay's comment and I kludged the Spell template to be like the Person template.

• Example 1 — has the advantage of putting everything for each edition in one spot.
• Example 2 — combines the opening definition and breaks each section by edition.
• Example 3 — tries to minimize redundancy
• Example 4 — Combines all infoboxes into one (and I added an inventor and a descriptor for fun)

Please look again and let me know how you feel about the merits of these, and especially make suggestions at improvement, if possible.

—Moviesign (talk) 01:09, July 9, 2013 (UTC)

Great work so far, Movie... I love how you get ideas in your head and will stop at nothing to complete them... aka the gem pages :) Personally, I like example 4: 1) I like having one infobox... 2) I like the use of the sections, like effects, and history, over edition. I guess if there is only a small difference between editions, you could just use the Notes/Discrepancy section. Nice work :)

-Darkwynters (talk) 01:18, July 9, 2013 (UTC)

I prefer Example #4, and I love the multi-edition infobox. I still say the edition divisions are unnecessary, at least in the scatterspray case, but eh. It works for other spells that vary more.

My main philosophy in this is that, if we are being edition-neutral and crunch-free, then we shouldn't give much attention to the editions, and keep them minimal. Edition sections break the in-universe focus. (I'm also of the opinion that spellcasters in the setting shouldn't notice changes in the game rules, but FR has always been badly handled in this regard.)

One point: you say "a total weight limit of about 1,250 gp". Do you mean a cost limit or a weight value?

— BadCatMan (talk) 02:51, July 9, 2013 (UTC)

If we don't use edition divisions, then what? Use the Formerly: notation? Or did you mean in the text?

You can't really remain edition-neutral when they change things so drastically, especially spells, which are arguably the heart of the fantasy gaming genre. I really want to accommodate players from all editions, so I'm hoping this work on the template will facilitate creating useful pages that look nice and are easy for anyone to use. We should help readers bridge the gaps between editions, not pretend they don't exist, and I think our wiki is uniquely positioned to do that. About crunch, we should include just enough crunch so that our categories will be as good or better than the sourcebooks for quick reference and research. Once they find what they are looking for, the citations take them to the details. I feel if we don't do all of the above, and set an example for the next wave of editors, our wiki will become a relic. /rant

I meant as a weight value. I think the "50 gp ≡ 1 pound weight" conversion is still used, right? It makes it easy to compare treasure weight versus value and us old-timers got used to converting everything into gold-piece equivalents. If the dwarf says a gem-encrusted rock is worth at least 8,000 gp but weighs 150 lbs, which would you rather schlep out of the dungeon, the rock or 150 lbs of coins? (depends on the coins!)

—Moviesign (talk) 05:42, July 9, 2013 (UTC)

I like what you have done in example 4 as well. Only thing, isn't a spell descriptor a edition thing? I could easily be wrong as I haven't looked at edition differences in a long long time.

--Ijkay (talk) 15:39, July 9, 2013 (UTC)

Descriptors are optional in the template and apply to some but not all spells in editions 3 and higher, I believe. As long as they don't change a spell's descriptors between editions, it can go above the edition-specific sections when appropriate. If they do change them, then the template would have to be modified again to include descriptor3e, descriptor35, descriptor4e, etc.

—Moviesign (talk) 17:35, July 9, 2013 (UTC)

Movie: Again, I think most spells won't change much in general flavour and description between 1st/2nd/3rd/3.5 edition, and only 4th and maybe 5th will see the greatest changes. For most spells, a single description does the job for all versions, and for few, edition subsections would be preferable. Maybe scatterspray is a bad example? Disrupt undead in 2e and 3e saw major differences (likely unintentionally) and could have worked with edition subsections, except I found it rewritten as devastate undead instead.

I guess this is just a philosophical difference. I prefer a more unified article where possible.

As I said in the other thread, I'm fine with the basic crunch of levels and such for organisation purposes.

Yes, 3e uses 50 coins weigh 1 pound. But I find that weight in coins thing very confusing. The spell says 25 lbs, so why not say that?

— BadCatMan (talk) 12:33, July 10, 2013 (UTC)

Okay, there seems to be a consensus for the new spell template, so unless anyone objects, I will modify the official template and let people start using it. The main problem I see is that the at-will, daily, and encounter templates are currently all stand-alone, so I'd have to replicate the changes across all of those unless there is away to write them so they include the core changes from a single source. I will look into this before I make the change.

I can live with philosophical differences. If you want to rewrite scatterspray, go ahead :) I used the gold-piece equivalent because I didn't want to quote the source too closely, but if that bit of crunch is acceptible, it would make it less awkward.

—Moviesign (talk) 13:50, July 10, 2013 (UTC)

The new spell template, based on the design by User:Niirfa-sa and User:Fw190a8, is about done and I'm asking for comments on just the template. You can see it with every frickin' option turned on in Example 4, but be aware that 99% of these will not be as hideous. You can use the same template for at-will, daily, and encounter spells so that will eliminate some redundancy and make maintennance easier. I have not been able to find a way to parameterize the template to be used for Category:Disciplines, Category:Evocations, Category:Exploits, Category:Hexes, or Category:Prayers so this will have to be copied and customized for each of those categories, unless someone has a brilliant suggestion on how it can be done. How does it look? I'm also asking for suggestions on what spells would make good examples for the doc page of these templates. If you know 4th edition spells well (I know none), please comment. aTdHvAaNnKcSe!

—Moviesign (talk) 22:31, July 11, 2013 (UTC)

Rewrite it? Meh, I don't care that much. :)

I don't think weight values really count as crunch. The weight is something that actually occurs in the world, so it is fair to use.

Okay, the new template looks great, it's very organized. The length is understandable; 4e and likely 5e won't have so many classes (as I think all powers are specific to a class in 4e, and 5e isn't yet defined), so the class lists will shrink. Some queries:

• What is meant by 'Encounter spell' at the top? How is this controlled in the template?
• Can 'Descriptor' be moved to under the 3.x headings? 'Descriptor' is a 3e term, while 4e uses 'Keyword'. I think 2e uses 'Sphere', or is that only for divine spells? Additional entries for Keywords and Spheres could go under the 4th and 2nd edition sections. It strikes me we could use the existing set of descriptor labels, plus a few where needed, for all these spell types.
• Also, the plural would be better: 'Descriptors', 'Keywords', 'Spheres'. Some spells have multiple terms here.

I haven't been able to follow your coding work, but I'll try to get a chance to look at it and see if I have any ideas. First, what do you mean by the at-will, daily, and encounter templates being stand-alone, and parametrising for different 4e power types? What problem needs to be fixed here?

For an example spell, it should be something well known, core, fairly basic, and guaranteed to appear in every edition. It should also have types. Something like magic missile, fireball, or cure light wounds. Ideally, with a known (Realms) creator.

— BadCatMan (talk) 02:22, July 12, 2013 (UTC)

Ah, the "real world" criteria never occurred to me. I like it.

From what I've seen in 4th edition, classes are given various at-will spells, encounter spells, daily spells, and I just discovered a new one: "utility" spells. The heading at the very top is controlled by the type parameter in the template, which means I can now eliminate the stand-alone Template:Spell/encounter page and others like it (they are all nearly copies of each other with minor changes), because the new template generates these subtemplates based on the parameter. (They were designed by User:Niirfa-sa and User:Fw190a8 so I went with their format, just tweaking the colors to make them distinct and readable.)

Yes, if the terminology has changed in 4th edition, then I will make a descriptors3e and descriptors35 to show up in the appropriate subsections, and add keywords4e if that is more correct. I'll add spheres2e etc. too (ugh, I think they are called domains in 3.x). I fiddled with Template:Desc recently also; we can reuse them for keywords and add more if necessary. (This will all be explained in the documentation of the template, when I write it.) Do we want to make descriptors for spheres too? There are a lot of them and it might clutter the infobox, but they would automatically put the spell in the sphere's category.

I was hoping for a grand unified template that could be used for any of the powers listed above, but alas, I can't find a way to do it without creating a monster. I may try it just for fun, but if it gets too convoluted, it will be nearly impossible to maintain. Right now, I have reduced the number of nearly-identical templates from about 18–19 to 6, but getting from 6 to 1 may not be worth the effort.

—Moviesign (talk) 05:47, July 12, 2013 (UTC)

At last, the {{Spell}} template is about ready for prime time. Please take a look at it, especially the documentation, and give feedback on anything you find. Are the instructions clear? Does it need more examples? Does it do what we want/need it to do? The {{Prayer}} template is now a pass-through to this one, and the others (Hexes, Exploits, etc.) can be done the same way in Grand Unified Template fashion, if feasible.

—Moviesign (talk) 06:06, July 14, 2013 (UTC)

Excellent work, Movie :) Please check out Karsus's avatar, where I used your infobox... one question... why does it say reversible twice?

Darkwynters (talk) 16:07, July 14, 2013 (UTC)

That was an edge case that I've been struggling with (if you left the reversible parameters off, it worked fine, but setting them to blank did not). I finally found an easy solution, so I think it's fixed now.

—Moviesign (talk) 16:36, July 14, 2013 (UTC)

Take a look at Cure light wounds with all the citations in the infobox. Love it? Hate it? Suggestions? The template generated the Category:Prayers, Category:Healing prayers, and Category:Daily prayers, the rest were added by hand (and probably need fixing). Is Category:1st level druid spells going to be split into Category:1st level druid (2e) spells, Category:1st level druid (3e) spells, etc.? Just curious. A cat-class table could be made for those too, if desired.

—Moviesign (talk) 04:02, July 15, 2013 (UTC)

Nice work, Movie... looks fantastic :) Ahhh, as for edition... let's see what other think!

Darkwynters (talk) 04:15, July 15, 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps further confusing matters, 4th edition also has Rituals, which are handled differently to spells and powers. (And they promised that edition would be simpler...)

Descriptors for 3rd and 3.5 edition spells should be unchanged, so these could be handled together with no change.

Given that Disciplines, Evocations, Exploits, Hexes, Prayers are, so far, unique to 4th edition, there might be no need to change these. We might do something for psionic powers, but that can wait and they don't have a big presence on the wiki that I've seen, so far. Things like Incarnum, Truenaming, Shadow Magic, and Sublime Way from the latter days of 3.5 didn't make any great inroads into FR, so we hardly need them (no FR-specific version, no real use in FR).

Excellent and very impressive work on the Spell template, Movie, with very thorough documentation. Some points:

• In the example, the "level3e" line extends over the example infobox in the Monobook skin. This isn't a problem in the Oasis skin, which inserts a slider (and Wikia no longer cares to cover Monobook, it seems).
• As I said, there should be little difference between 3e and 3.5. Does 3.5 need an extra spot in the infobox? It might simplify things to merge them.
• How accurate or future-proof is the 5th edition stuff? So far, it looks very like 4th edition. Have you been looking at the D&D Next playtests?
• Is a reversible cure light wounds an inflict light wounds? Can "reversible" be made to link to another spell?

As for references, the infobox probably only needs one per edition.

— BadCatMan (talk) 04:19, July 15, 2013 (UTC)

I've been ignoring rituals—they didn't look that similar to spells and will probably require a separate template, but if I'm wrong, then they can be absorbed by the Grand Unified Template. What I really need is a 4th edition expert to comment on this stuff to make sure I'm not limiting their options or inconveniencing them (or just plain getting it wrong). At this rate, I'm going to have to purchase a 4th ed. Player's Handbook (shudder).

I'm also not an expert on 3.x, so I'm willing to get rid of the *35 parameters IF (and this is a big if) they didn't change anything spell-related between 3rd and 3.5 that would require the extra subsection. I don't have the experience to make that call, but if you and/or other 3-3.5 players say it's okay, then I'll do it.

Your bullet points:

• I have broken the line in the doc file so it should no longer be a problem unless you shrink your screen way down.
• See above.
• I know nothing of 5th edition, I just copied the 4th edition parameters assuming they would be called the same thing. When it finally goes to press, the template will likely have to be updated.
• The reverse of "cure" was "cause". I know of no reverse spell that is given its own entry in the 1st and 2nd edition Player's Handbook spell descriptions—they are all defined in the same entry for the "positive" version. Therefore, I would rather do the same on the wiki and just create redirect pages for the names of the twins. Air breathing would redirect to Water breathing for example, and the first sentence of the description for water breathing could say something like "Water breathing, and its reverse, air breathing were...".

I could remove a couple of the citations, but I did find 10 of them for Cure Light. The problem is getting the citation next to the fact being cited, especially in a class table, without causing confusion.

—Moviesign (talk) 05:32, July 15, 2013 (UTC)

We already have a {{Ritual}} template, and they seem different enough from spells to require a separate template. But many share names and mimic the spells or feats of previous editions, so there's a benefit to including them on the same page (such as raise dead the spell and raise dead the ritual. I think merging it with {{spell}} will make that template even more unwieldy. Maybe {{Ritual}} can just be placed after {{spell}}, or in a 4e section.

Given that and what you've taught me about reversible spells, I can see the need for separate edition sections now.

I can't recall any particular 3e/3.5 spells that changed anything we'd need to worry about in the infobox. Mechanics and dice may change, but level, school, and subtypes tend to stay the same. For the few that do, a note or two entries stuffed in a line (e.g., "Level: 1[1], 2[2]") will be enough. But eh, we can leave it as it is and see how it turns out in practice. Or maybe note that the "35" lines only need to be used if there's a difference from the "3e" lines.

Maybe the 5th edition lines can be left out for now, or marked as placeholders until it comes along?

— BadCatMan (talk) 11:18, July 15, 2013 (UTC)

I started checking some old spells I'd worked on to update them (Quimby's enchanting gourmet, fog cloud), but noticed that the "school" line no longer works, as you've changed it to "schools". Do you want to change it back, Movie, or should I fire up the bot? :)

— BadCatMan (talk) 13:31, July 16, 2013 (UTC)

That was silly of me to rename an already existing parameter. "Descriptor" also got plualized. Hmm... How reliable is the bot at discriminating "school", "schools", "schools3e" etc.? I can just change those two back and go re-edit the spells I've touched so far. Which would you prefer? the edition-specific params are all plural, but they are all new.

—Moviesign (talk) 14:02, July 16, 2013 (UTC)

I think I can get it to locate "| school" and change it to "| schools". However, if some spells already have "schools", they might be changed to "schoolss".

However, I don't think any spell has more than one school, so "schools" may be unnecessary in the first place. I can see "descriptors" making more sense, as many spells have multiple descriptors, but we can live without that. If you want to change, I can run the bot over "descriptor" while you change back "school"?

Any other changes I should make while the bot operates?

— BadCatMan (talk) 00:55, July 17, 2013 (UTC)

Schoolss is what I was afraid of. Okay, I will change schools back to school (but not tonight, it's getting late and I have to get up early). If you want to flex your bot on descriptor, please do. From what I've seen, you'll need to match "|descriptor", as well as "| descriptor" in the Spell template.

—Moviesign (talk) 04:31, July 17, 2013 (UTC)

Yeah. I'll run it later tonight. I always go through in manually for a bit to make sure it's doing the right thing and there are no surprises, before letting it go off on its own while check in from time to time.

I've started updating a few spells I've worked on: Quimby's enchanting gourmet, fog cloud,chill touch. Do they look okay to you? What categories should the template create for them? I tried them without categories, but didn't see any new ones appear.

— BadCatMan (talk) 12:52, July 18, 2013 (UTC)

Okay, the bot is working. I can get it to skip pages that already updated (skipping those with "descriptors"), and have told it the right order to check in to avoid the "descriptors" problem. I'm going to set it on automatic over Category:Spells. If you edit a spell page and edit clash, that's why. Feel free to watch it work, and check up on it. You can select "Show bots" to see its edits.

— BadCatMan (talk) 13:59, July 18, 2013 (UTC)

And 500-odd spells done! I'll try to find and fix any that weren't included in Category:Spells next time.

— BadCatMan (talk) 15:15, July 18, 2013 (UTC)

Excellent! I hope we won't need any more sweeping changes made, but it's nice to know the bot can handle it.

The {{Spell}} template creates Category:Spells for Fog cloud. For Cure light wounds it creates Category:Prayers, Category:Daily prayers and the {{Desc}} template adds Category:Healing prayers.

I think I could make a {{Spell class table}} that would add the following to the updated Fog cloud spell:

• Category:2nd level Druid (3e) spells
• Category:2nd level Sorcerer (3e) spells
• Category:2nd level Wizard (3e) spells
• Category:2nd level water domain spells
• Category:2nd level Arcanist (2e) spells
• Category:2nd level Wizard (2e) spells
• Category:2nd level Illusionist (1e) spells

Or whatever format you would like the categories to be listed in. However, I'm not sure you could still put references inside the table. I'd have to play with string functions to see if they can discriminate between a class link and a reference. Hmm...same goes true for the proposed {{Cat-class table}}.

—Moviesign (talk) 05:34, July 19, 2013 (UTC)

No, when I remove categories from fog cloud, it doesn't gain any new ones.

I think cure light wounds and so on should also go in Spells, as it was a spell in all editions up to 4th.

— BadCatMan (talk) 08:02, July 19, 2013 (UTC)

Okay, bot is done. All Spell templates should include "descriptors" bar a few you've already worked on and one of mind 2e spells. I also put all spells in the Spells category.

— BadCatMan (talk) 14:29, July 19, 2013 (UTC)

I have fixed the category problem. It was similar to the "reversible" problem, but in reverse. Now you have to explicitly turn off category generation with the value "true"—nothing else will do. The template cannot handle special cases, like a Prayer that also needs to be in Spells. It just takes the info you give it. However, I can make it also put every use of the {{Spell}} template in Category:Spells if you like. You may have fixed the current batch, but new Prayers, etc. will not automatically be put in Category:Spells. The question is, if this template is also going to apply to Exploits, Hexes, Disciplines, etc., is it okay for those to be put in Category:Spells also?

edit: meh, I can put logic in to only categorize the ones that should be

—Moviesign (talk) 15:27, July 19, 2013 (UTC)

Some Prayers in 4e will have been spells in previous editions, so some spells are Prayers, but not all Prayers are spells. So Prayers shouldn't automatically be categorised as spells, unless the 1e, 2e, or 3e entries are also filled.

I'd say Exploits, being primarily martial tricks, shouldn't count as spells at some. They may have some overlap with Tome of Battle maneuvers and stances, but these should all be treated separately, if at all. Similarly Disciplines will overlap with psionic powers in the various editions. These should also be treated separately from spells.

Finally, Evocations will overlap with the natural spells, and so will need to be accounted for like Prayers and 4e Spells, and some will count as spells.

Hexes I've not heard of, but I'm not too familiar with 4e edition anyway.

And all of them overlap with various feats and class features, but those are usually too crunchy for the wiki.

— BadCatMan (talk) 04:47, July 20, 2013 (UTC)

I will make the addition of Category:Spells conditional upon the existence of the 1e, 2e, and 3e sections. All the rest sound like special cases, which puts the burden of classification on the author. Thanks for your reasoning; it helps.

—Moviesign (talk) 05:11, July 20, 2013 (UTC)