Work in Progress Update

A long-deserved update on the state of things, but unfortunately with few shiny things to show for it. Work is progressing both on the 2024 version of the PDF as well as the Web-App, but neither are at a point that they are usable.

This is mostly thanks to my chaotic back-and-forth between the two and the resulting decision paralysis (ADD casts “Hold Person” – it is very effective). During the last several weeks, I found a good (hyper)focus sweet spot for working on the PDF character sheet and it is progressing well. At least, when I wasn’t bogged down by COVID, norovirus, or the RS virus, which the whole family here pretty much had back-to-back, fun (toddler) times!

Tomorrow I’m leaving for a week-long holiday, but I’ll pick the focus on the PDF back up when I get back.

 
As I’m now reviewing and transcribing every part of the new edition, it comes with the opportunity to do some minor but far-reaching changes that make stuff both more logical and less cluttered.

Some of the changes that have already been implemented in the 2024 version of the code:

• When you select a species on the 1st page that has a subrace (ancestry, lineage, or whatever the new PHB calls them), you will be prompted to select one of them and the text in the 1stt-page dropdown will be changed accordingly.

  • The `RaceSubList` will now be a true list of subraces and it is no longer possible to select just the parent `RaceList`.

• Ability score increases from races will be ignored.

  • A race can still add an ability score increase by making it part of an entry in the `features` object.

• Background features now add an origin feat. If it doesn’t have a fixed origin feat, you will be prompted to select one.

  • Other features can use this new `featsAdd` attribute as well, I’m looking at you “Human”.

• Feats now have a `type` and are ordered by their type in their drop-down boxes as well as in their line menus.

• So far, I have finished updating to the new edition: all the armour, weapons and other attacks, ammunition, adventuring gear, packs, tools, backgrounds, background features, races, and subraces.

If you want more details about the changes, please have a look at the dnd2024 branch on the GitHub repo.

 
Next up on the to-do list:

• Transcribing the rest: classes, subclasses, feats, spells, and magic items. These are still work in progress.

• Having a way for Wizards and High-elves to display all wizard cantrips on the spell sheet is still something that I want to implement, as I feel it is essential for the 2024 PDF sheets.

There is definitely still plenty to do!

I have put some (wasted) time in trying to update the lay-out of the sheet to incorporate the 2024 changes. Things like moving the Personality Traits/Ideals/Bonds/Flaws to the background page and changing “Race” to “Species”.

As a result, I found out that the PDFs are no longer consistently editable with Adobe Acrobat Pro without problems down the line. I’d have to roll back my Adobe Acrobat installation on a virtual machine to get this to work, but Adobe no longer provides installation files for older versions.

Considering you voted for me not spending too much time on this, I have abandoned changing the layouts of the PDFs at this time. This doesn’t make it undoable, just an uneven amount of time investment that doesn’t seems worth it.

Conclusion: another reason why the move to a web-app is for the better and why I’m happy the vote didn’t skew towards creating a PDF layout for the 2024 rules.

Although my hopes of being able to copy-paste the community work and call it a day didn’t really pan out, I’m still very grateful for everybody on Discord who helped transcribed the 2024 rules for the fan-made add-on script, spearheaded by PokéSimmer.

With that as a “first draft, my version is more like a “second pass” to iron out small issues and leftovers from the 2014 rules. This will (hopefully) result in fewer transcribing mistakes.

If you want to use the 2024 rules before my version is done, get the community 2024 rules add-on scripts on PokéSimmer GitHub here and please use this Discord thread for feedback.