Level Up Gateway June Dev Update
This month we’ve taken huge steps towards bringing monsters to Gateway! We’re working on including official sources for monsters with source management settings and supporting custom creations with a monster builder. We’re not ready to release the monster update yet as we try out different displays for monster stats and build out more functionality, but we’re glad to hear feedback on the plan so far.
Monster Sheets
Monsters work a lot like characters under the hood but their information is presented in a much denser format so it’s faster to parse and so that it can be shown in smaller views.
The Score/Mod/Save table is a departure from more standard statblocks. This presentation doesn’t use much more space and gives you one place to look for a save, proficient or not.
We’re also experimenting with how we show spellcasting. We’re testing out showing more spell details instead of simply listing the names. This takes a little space but surfaces some important information like saving throws, damage and range as well as number of uses remaining when the sheet is used to track the monster in play.
Monsters with innate spellcasting show their spells in the column layout since these are often a few spells that complement other abilities. Monsters with spellcasting using slots have a larger space for their spells similar to how player character spells are displayed since these lists are often large and would clutter information in the column layout.
Content Sources
As we ramp up to include more and more Level Up content on Gateway we need to group content by source and make it possible to choose which sources a campaign uses. Monsters will be the first to use sources but eventually we plan for spells, maneuvers, origins, items. and classes to all come from sources.
Sources can be official content like Level Up books or other user campaigns for homebrew creations. When you create a custom monster, for example, in a campaign you may want to treat that campaign as a source for your next campaign or you may create a campaign purely as a repository for homebrew to use in other campaigns.
Monsters (and eventually more) from sources will appear alongside the content in the campaign.
Monster Builder
The Monster Builder is a wizard for creating new monsters. It’s similar to creating characters but instead of choosing features that affect character data, the monster builder lets you edit and override character data more directly by adding proficiencies, custom modifiers, custom actions, and more to the sheet. We also have a few import options that will convert some formats over to Gateway monsters.
More to Come
The Monster update is still a work in progress, and there’s more to be done on the builder and with managing content sources over the next month. We’re excited to get this into use as soon as we can!