Happy new year everyone! We are starting the year off at Roll20 with the community preview release of our Pathfinder Second Edition Remaster Character Sheet within Roll20 Characters. This sheet will utilize our new Sheet infrastructure – Beacon SDK – which is what powers our current Marvel Character Sheet & Builder as well as the newly released Candela Obscura Character Sheet. Given this version of the sheet is not fully feature complete, it won’t be available just yet within the VTT, but don’t worry, it’ll come soon!
With the new sheet, you’ll see a number of improvements and some new functionality, as well as completely redesigned architecture and user experience. However, this is only a preview version, so there is much more to come over the next few months. With that said, we’d like to ask for your help to share where the sheet goes next; there is a new feedback form here (that you can also access from within “Tips & Tricks” on Roll20 Characters) where we’d love to see your suggestions, feature requests, and candid feedback on what you want, including what you like (and don’t like) about it. Remember, it’s a preview, there will be features missing here that the original Pathfinder Second Edition sheet already has; we’re hoping you can utilize Roll20 Characters to play around with the new sheet in your browser, without the need to disrupt your existing/ongoing campaigns.
What is Beacon?
To put it simply, Beacon is a re-imagining of how character sheets will integrate with the Virtual Tabletop and Roll20 Characters. It will provide Sheet Authors an unprecedented degree of control and flexibility over their character sheets, including how the data for a character is stored and interacted with. The current working build of Beacon adds features such as sheet-to-sheet communication and updateable roll templates. In addition, we have plans to iterate from here, adding features that will allow sheets to interact with the Virtual Tabletop in ways previously limited to Mod Scripts, and even more!
Not only this, but the entire thing has been re-written to increase performance. From the layer communicating character data back and forth between the VTT/Roll20 Characters and the sheet, to interacting with the sheets themselves, everything should be a snappier, smoother, and more delightful experience.
To get a little noodly with the details: The Beacon SDK acts as a middleman between the Virtual Tabletop or Roll20 Characters and any other web application. This means you could write a character sheet in any modern front-end web technology that can consume a javascript SDK, and then integrate it into the Roll20 ecosystem. This means, whether you’re a Vue, React, Svelte, Solid, or Angular developer, you’ll be able to write a sheet in your preferred SPA framework. Heck, you could write the sheet in vanilla javascript, and it would work just fine! And we do mean you when we say that, the Beacon SDK will be opened up for Community Sheet development later in 2024! More to come on those plans later on, but be on the lookout.
The New Pathfinder Second Edition Remaster Sheet
The new sheet has been redesigned from the ground up to make for a better user experience and allow for us to continue to build out new functionality over time. We’ve learned a lot from the feedback we’ve received on the forums for our existing sheet over the past few years, so starting with a clean slate has given us the opportunity to rethink the architecture of the sheet in a way that will provide you with the flexibility that you all desire.
We also know that customization is important to the community, so the sheet is built on a system that allows you to add modifiers to stats without losing insight into the base values. This means that every field on your sheet is automatically calculated from relevant bonuses, while also taking into account a hidden bonus adjusted whenever you make a manual edit. For example, if our calculations say your AC is 16, but you say it’s 18, we create a +2 bonus behind the scenes. We do the math, but you always get the final say.
With this community preview, you’ll see a similar reimagining across the organization of the sheet itself; we’ve rethought the overall structure, with more sensible grouping of information, to make for smoother gameplay: this includes breaking out the sheet into tabs that better reflect the different modes of play you’ll need: Encounter, Inventory, Skills, Feats, Spells, and Roleplay.
Our focus for this first public iteration of the sheet has been on Encounters, so you’ll now have all of the most critical information for combat available in one tab. We’ve also reengineered how we handle conditions, and we have added in easy-to-navigate sections for strikes, actions, reactions, and free actions to make combat a breeze. We’ve also pulled out key aspects into left navigation to help you quickly find the most critical parts of your character, like AC, Saving Throws, and Resistances & Weaknesses.
The other tabs will allow for tracking of key information, but you’ll see large overhauls of those sections as we work through the rest of the sheet!
To summarize, here are the key standout features for the community preview:
- More time to play – Powerful new software allows bonuses and penalties to apply seamlessly across the sheet, no matter where they originate from. Raised a Shield while afflicted with Clumsy? Your AC automatically takes both into account. We do the math, so you can focus more on your game!
- More control – We’ve updated the sheet to allow you to add modifiers to stats without losing insight into the base values. If you override your current Stealth of 16 to be 18, we create a +2 bonus behind the scenes. We track all updates and give you override capabilities so that you always get the final say.
- Smoother gameplay – We’ve reimagined sheet structure with more intuitive grouping of information. Modes of play are organized into tabs, and rolls include visual breakdowns of everything that affects them. We help you stay immersed in your game!
What’s Next?
As mentioned, this is only the first of many more releases for Pathfinder Second Edition, and we want your feedback to help us with our roadmap. We would love for you to start taking a look at the sheet and submit your requests for features via the feedback form, as this will help us organize everything and make sure we are getting to the most important things sooner.
In the meantime, here are some of the key features we currently have in our queue (which may change depending on the feedback you provide us):
- Spells Automation: You’ll be able to learn, prepare and cast spells, roll for effect, and effects will propagate to the rest of your sheet. We’re also aiming to support multiple spell sources like rituals, innate, archetypes, etc.
- Custom Conditions Handling: You’ll have the ability to add toggleable custom conditions to the sheet, allowing you to simulate effects like Barbarian Rage or homebrew any set of bonuses and penalties as a single condition, applying or removing them at the click of a button.
- NPC Sheet: We’ll give you a dedicated NPC sheets with all of the power and automation of the new PC sheet, including support for conditions applied to the NPC.
- Character Builder: You’ll be able to build a character from start to finish with a guided character builder.
- Traits Handling: You’ll be able to easily reference trait definitions, and key traits (agile, finesse, etc) will automatically affect rolls and relevant parts of the sheet.
- Drag & Drop: We will support dragging various elements directly onto your sheet from the compendium (feats, weapons, spells, etc.)
- Improved Feats: You’ll easily be able to see actions, strikes, other feats, etc. that are granted by your current feats, make relevant choices, and toggle a wide variety of bonuses on and off across your sheet.
- Mobile Friendly: We’ll improve usability of the sheet on mobile, so you can play on-the-go.
- Rolling back your level: We’ll make sure you can roll a character back to an earlier level without manually removing the feats, attribute boosts, and other character creation choices that were made along the way.
We’ve also thought about how we’ll make the transition to the new sheet as seamless as possible for you when the time comes. This means you’ll quickly be able to port over existing characters from the old sheet into the new without the hassle of having to rebuild them. You’ll also be able to continue to use legacy Pathfinder Second Edition content as well as Remaster content within the same games seamlessly.
Don’t worry though, the need to switch over won’t come until the new sheet reaches parity with the old. Until then, we’ll continue to support both sheets in parallel!
Happy gaming!