Level Up Character Builder Update October

Hello folks! It’s been a while since we’ve had an update on the character builder project, and we felt it was time to let you know how things are progressing.

2023: Data Entry (Phase 1; complete but ongoing)

The last 6 months have been filled with a lot of ‘behind the scenes’ work, getting the architecture of the builder into a state usable long-term. A lot of that is making sure that various ‘elements’ of the game are in a data format that the builder can use, which is an enormous undertaking. That has been done, but as new content is published it will be a permanently ongoing process.

Here is our current projected timeline:

November 2023: Character Preview (Phase 2)

By the end of November we intend to have an example character on the tools site for you to see. It will just be a static example, and it won’t ‘do’ anything, but you will have a sense of what a character will look like. This sheet will use the ‘back-end’ data structure to fill out the details. 

Now this won’t be super fancy. It will be fairly plain-looking, but we hope it will be easy to read. Our goal is clarity and functionality.

January 2024: Static Sheet Available (Phase 2.5)

By the end of January we intend to have the static sheet above available for you to use. This means that you can enter your own characters.

Now, we need to reiterate that this is just the character sheet–you will be able to manually enter information, but it’s not the actual builder and it won’t calculate stuff or build a character. It’s like a web version of a fillable PDF. But it will store your character in a way that you can reference and share.

We’d also like to point out that characters made with the static sheet might not be transferable to the actual final builder version. This is because the static sheet allows you to enter any values, and doesn’t prevent you entering incorrect or custom values or data not formatted in a way the builder understands, which would give the builder conniptions! However, after the full builder is available, the static sheet will continue to be available for those who wish complete freedom to enter any values they want onto a character sheet.

Phase 3 & Beyond

Phase 3 is where the builder itself comes in. We don’t have a date yet, but this version will have a couple of heritages and a couple of classes. In Phase 4 we’ll invite you to test this version, and then Phase 5 will be where the rest of the classes, heritages, etc. get added.

This project is the biggest thing we’ve ever done, and we appreciate it’s taking time. For comparison, it is a ‘bigger’ project than making the actual core books was, and the team working on it is much smaller, but we are super excited about the progress and we believe–as we know many of you do–that it is an essential tool. For a tiny company like us, having an online tools suite like those of the big publishers is a rare thing, but a thing we were determined to do from the start. Even just the A5E.tools rules reference site is something we’re very proud of.

That’s all for now, folks. Keep an eye out in November for the static preview, and January for access to the static sheet.