Just somthing I miss from spell lists

[artent]

One of the things I miss about 2nd edition D+D books was the way they organized the spell list...By Spell level and alphabetical within it, not just on a chart but with the full description.

I'd much prefer all spell lists to be organized like this, or at least if a separate document were provided with spells organized in this fashion(I might even consider paying a small amount of money for such a product).

Benefits:
-When you are browsing a spell list, you almost always do it for a specific level
-when searching for rules for a given spell, you generally know the spells level
-The spells level is one of its...if not it's most important quality

For example: I'm making a channeler and I'm trying to decide between Zot! and Breeze Strike, in order to compare these 2 spells, both of the same level and school I need to scroll between 20+ pages.  Pretty annoying.   

Currently I'm making my own text files organized like this, but it's still kind of a pain.

[samsimilian]

you don't have to scroll 20 pages, just use the bookmarks.
and there is a table where the spells are listed according to their lvl.
i guess the methode of spell listing is a matter of personal taste

[Deral]

In my experience with the shift between sort-by-level and sort-all-alphabetically that 2nd/3.0 went through is that sorting them all by level makes it easier to pick spells when you gain new ones, or to prepare spells when you have access to the full list, whereas the present way they're sorted makes it easier to access a spell's description during the game or to prepare spells from a list smaller than "all."

In general it seems that the first one makes it easier on the GM who needs to handle far more spell lists and the second makes it easier on the PCs, who only need to deal with their character's lists (unless, perhaps, you run a lot of one or two session games). I definitely see the benefit to both, but in general I prefer the present set up, I'd rather extra book-keeping be laid on me rather than my players, I'm used to it. Though, I suppose the nicest way would be to have them listed both ways, which is what you'll get by doing this, it's a little unreasonable to do in a released product like this, so more power to you.

By the way, in Adobe Acrobat (and reader) if you want to jump between two pages (more more if they're in sequential order), want to do it quick and don't want to be bothered scrolling through the bookmarks multiple times, just click the two bookmarks you want in order and use Alt-Left Arrow and Alt-Right Arrow to jump between the two- and don't forget you can select text and copy/paste it, it might be a quicker solution for you to just copy spells you're interested in into a text file so that they are next to one another.

[Gentry]

Currently I'm making my own text files organized like this.

I'd bet a dollar that once you're done you could get the Crafty boys to host that file someplace, for the benefit of those who like it the way you do.

[Crafty_Pat]

Currently I'm making my own text files organized like this.

I'd bet a dollar that once you're done you could get the Crafty boys to host that file someplace, for the benefit of those who like it the way you do.

So long as the file contained only spell names and levels without mechanics, we'd be happy to.

[MugMug]

Why don't the PDFs contain internal links? Is this just a "bang for the buck" decision?

Off the top of my head, spell tables are excellent candidates for this treatment, linking each spell name to its description later in the text. All of the "(see pg 215)" bits would also be good candidates for internal links.

Walter

[Crafty_Pat]

The PDFs have bookmarks that serve largely the same function (especially as you can keep the bookmark pane open while browsing). We tinkered with links early on but were a) unimpressed with their functionality, and b) extremely unhappy with the amount of time they take to build into a document.