#charactermancer

[roll20]

Starfinder meets Roll20 Charactermancer

Pro subscribers!

The Charactermancer has traveled the stars and met-- Starfinder!

That’s right, the Roll20 Charactermancer is now integrated with the Starfinder Core Rulebook and Alien Archive live on the Dev server. 

No matter your familiarity with the system, you can build a character in mere minutes, right in your Starfinder game! Have you ever wanted to try out Starfinder or are you already an avid fan?  Try it out now on the Dev Server!

Starfinder Core Rulebook, Starfinder Alien Archive © 2019, Paizo Inc. All Rights Reserved. Paizo, Paizo Inc., the Paizo golem logo, Pathfinder, the Pathfinder logo, and Pathfinder Society are registered trademarks of Paizo Inc.

[roll20]

2019 Updates Upon Us!

Consistently we’ve seen a rush of new players coming to Roll20 at the start of each year-- getting into tabletop gaming seems to be a resolution for more people every winter.

Anticipating this influx of new folks, we laid a lot of groundwork in the latter half of 2018 to be able to make the Roll20 Virtual Tabletop its all-time best. In addition to our typical measures of prepping for increased server loads, we’ve done more update planning than any other year thus far to help kick off a new season of gaming.

This is our most in-depth roadmap release ever-- LOTS of information ahead, so put your reading glasses on…

First on the resolutions list: Charactermancer Levels Up will deploy next week on January 8 to our live servers. The first version of this enhancement will be seen via our Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition sheet, allowing players to level up your characters, guiding you through all the possible skills, spells, feats, and even multiclass options.

If only all New Year’s goal-tracking was so easy. :) Reminder that Pro Users can test these features right now on the Development Server.

Soon after Charactermancer Levels Up, we’re going to release the long-awaited Xanathar’s Guide to Everything, a D&D Compendium that will be fully compatible with Charactermancer. It has over twenty-five new subclasses for you to try out, along with traps, magic items, and more to up the danger level in your campaign.

Please also note that we’re additionally working towards opening the creation tools of the Charactermancer for community submissions. Sheet creators, please keep an eye out on the Character Sheets & Compendium forum.

Speaking of the forums, we’re moving ahead with several improvements to our forums in the month of January. In addition to measures that should yield both faster response times and better information, we have a new system we’ll be unveiling soon that will help clarify both the community and development team’s voices on the Suggestions & Ideas Forum. Stay tuned for this, and the announcement of the next Community Roundtable later in the month.

On the subject specifically of Suggestions, many requests over the past two years have been related to improving graphics in Roll20. Last year we kicked off the process of improving our tabletop rendering with “A Measured Update.”  This year we’ll be launching the Get a New Look update, which will significantly improve Advanced Fog of War and add moving images such as gifs. Portions of this update are already on the Development Server for testing, and we expect the full update to ship to the live production server at the end of January. Get a New Look sets up an additional storm of possibilities we’ll be unveiling later in Q1.

From sights to sounds, in early February we’ll be launching Bring Your Own Beat, an audio-focused update that will allow you to upload your own music directly to Roll20, alongside improvements to the audio dashboard. We also anticipate an update to our Voice & Video WebRTC services, making for improved chat in games. Again, much of this is already on the Development Server for testing

That’s the big-picture preview of how we’re kicking off the year! We’ve done a lot to prepare all of this, and are really excited to start sharing.

[roll20]

Charactermancer Levels Up: Go Beyond Level 1

We've got an ambitious series of Roll20 Resolutions planned for this month! If you haven't seen it yet, check out the full roadmap here.

When we launched the Roll20 Charactermancer in June of last year, we sought to get new characters forged and adventuring in mere seconds:

BUT as anyone who’s played roleplaying games knows, character-shaping decisions don’t stop at creation! As such, we’re very pleased to push out today’s update: Charactermancer Levels Up!

At launch, this is tool is compatible with the 5E System Reference Document, along with the Marketplace purchases for the Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook and Guildmasters’ Guide to Ravnica, with more functionality-- including the impending launch of Xanathar's Guide to Everything-- coming as soon as possible.

We are also working towards other roleplaying game systems and opening up the Charactermancer to Character Sheet creators-- keep your eyes on the appropriate forum for more information on this.

For the full technical information and best practices in utilizing today’s release, please visit our Release Notes.

Stay tuned for our next feature update at the end of January-- Get a New Look-- along with all of the other New Year’s Resolutions teased thus far on our Q1 roadmap. 

[roll20]

Pathfinder: Bestiary and Charactermancer Now Live!

It’s not often that you’ll find yourself celebrating the appearance of EVERY ENEMY ALL AT ONCE in a Pathfinder game, but today’s your day: Paizo’s Pathfinder RPG Bestiary has now released on Roll20! Creating encounters for your party just got easier than ever thanks to the drag n’ drop Compendium, which puts every stat and action for all your favorite foes right on your table, with rolls at the click of a mouse.

Don’t have a party yet? No problem: we’ve also just released a Pathfinder version of the Roll20 Charactermancer, which will help you and your friends quickly build level 1 characters from scratch.The Charactermancer will be available automatically in any game that uses the Official Pathfinder Character Sheet by Roll20. It’s never been easier to start a new Pathfinder game!

Grab the Pathfinder RPG Bestiary for $39.99 and you’ll soon be the proud owner of:

More than 400 creatures with associated token art, including monstrous variants

Each creature is set up with one-click actions, integrated feats and spells

Bonus Pathfinder RPG Bestiary Token Pack, consisting of all the token art to use however you’d like

Option to share the book around the virtual table with Compendium Sharing <https://wiki.roll20.net/Compendium_Sharing>

Extensive searchable rules for creating and advancing effective and balanced monsters

More than a dozen feats tailored especially for monsters

More than a dozen different wandering monster encounter tables

 ... and much, much more!

© 2018. Pathfinder, their respective logos, the Paizo golem, all Paizo titles, the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game rules, and Paizo’s character names and distinctive likenesses are property and copyright of Paizo, Inc. in the United States and other countries.

[roll20]

Meet the Charactermancer: Roll20’s New Step-by-Step Character Creation and Modification Tool

After much teasing, we’re excited to fully reveal our newest addition to Roll20: the Charactermancer! The Charactermancer will guide you step-by-step through the process of creating a character, helping you choose your class, stats, spells, and more. For Pro users, it is available for testing RIGHT NOW on the Development Server, so get in there and test that Charactermancer magic! We’d love to hear your feedback and our developers have created a forum thread where you can share that here (Pro users only).

The Charactermancer will be utilizing content from specific Roll20 official licensing partners. The version currently available for testing can build Level 1 D&D characters from scratch or in conjunction with Compendium data (including purchases), and we will be adding more features along the road! Keep an eye out for more officially supported systems and new functionality in the future, too. ;) Once you’ve built your character, you can add or edit spells, equipment, and more from the Compendium like always, and your character will be ready to adventure right away since the Charactermancer will build them right inside your Roll20 game.

We’ve wanted to add this sort of tool to Roll20 for years, and it’s important to us that we do it right. Our Lead Developer, Steve Koontz, talks about the history of the Charactermancer tool here on the Pro forum (Pro users only) and why we believe that now is the time for us to deliver this new feature and make it amazing for all of you. That’s right: ALL of you. Roll20 remains committed to making basic features available for free on our virtual tabletop, and the Charactermancer will join our suite of free tools when it launches. Additionally, OGL rules will continue to be available for free for supported systems, and we will be talking more about the gears that turn this magic wheel in future weeks so that Pro users can build and share their own custom Charactermancers in time.

While the Charactermancer is in beta on the Development Server, please help us via feedback (Pro users only) as we will be actively adjusting features and adding polish for a public launch. And if you aren’t a Pro subscriber, please be patient as we prepare for the launch of the Charactermancer to everyone in the near future!

[roll20]

Roll20 Charactermancer: Pathfinder Version Now on Dev Server!

The magic of the Charactermancer is coming to Pathfinder! Rolling new characters is easy with this simple, step-by-step guide through the entire process. This tool is currently in beta for Pro users on the Dev Server and will launch to all users after we finish testing it!

You may have met the Charactermancer before, but let us refresh your memory: it is a character building and modification tool that integrates directly with the Roll20 virtual tabletop. It will walk you through the rules of character creation for your chosen system (in this case, Pathfinder!), then put the finished character sheet right inside your Roll20 game so you can start your new adventure right away.

Pro users can try out our new Pathfinder edition of the Charactermancer starting today: it’s available right now on the Dev Server! If you’re a Pro user, please give it a look and give us your feedback on the Pro forum. We’d love to hear from you as we work to make it even better.

Once we’ve squashed the bugs and tweaked the features, we’ll launch this Charactermancer to all Roll20 users as a free tool for your Pathfinder games! Keep an eye out for that announcement here on our blog or follow us on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+ for more news as it happens.

[roll20]

June 26 Update is Live: Charactermancer, Compendium Sharing, and More!

Charactermancer

Today’s update to Roll20 makes it easier than ever to join tabletop games thanks to our brand new, built-it character creation and modification tool. Meet the Charactermancer! As shown in this video, it will guide you through the rules of your chosen system to create and edit your character in minutes. And since it integrates with our fully-featured virtual tabletop, you’ll be ready to start your adventure as soon as you’re done!

The Charactermancer walks you through how to build a character!

Roll20 remains committed to providing you with a system agnostic platform for your tabletop games, and the Charactermancer is no exception. It is powerful enough and flexible enough to support any system, and we will soon be adding more. In fact, here’s a sneak preview of a certain system that is in the works...

Sneak Preview! Official support for this system (and more) will be added Soon™.

Starting right away today, however, you can use the Charactermancer in your own games to make a first level Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition character! The SRD rules have already been integrated and will continue to be available to all users for free, as always. Additional features (like the ability to level up your characters) are also in the works!

If you want more than the SRD, you can also purchase supplemental rules through the Roll20 Marketplace. We will be adding future support for Volo’s Guide to Monsters and Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes, and the Charactermancer already supports the entire D&D Player’s Handbook. Oh, hang on: did we not mention that yet?

THE DUNGEONS & DRAGONS PLAYER’S HANDBOOK IS NOW AVAILABLE ON ROLL20!

We had a lot to say, so we made a separate blog post about that. We recommend you read it! The Player’s Handbook is available at a special launch price of $19.99 USD until July 5 at 10 A.M. PDT, after which it will return to its regular $29.99 USD forever so… act fast. ;)

Compendium Sharing

Want to share your rulebooks around the virtual table here on Roll20? Well, now you can thanks to a brand new feature called Compendium Sharing! Go into your Game Settings and turn on “Share my compendium with players” to give all your players automatic access to all the rules, items, spells, and more for any Roll20 Compendium you’ve purchased in the ruleset of your choice.

Share your purchased Compendiums with other players in your games! See sharing rules below.

The number of games where you can share compendiums, and the number of players you can share with, is based on your subscription level. We want to make sure licensed content here is safe from being exploited beyond the intended personal use, so we have set the following limits:

Free Users: Free users may purchase any compendium. They may only share their purchased compendiums with one active game that contains no more than themselves plus 5 players (6 total).

Plus Subscribers: Roll20 Plus subscribers may purchase any compendium. They may share their purchased compendiums with three active games that contain no more than themselves plus 10 players each (11 total per game).

Pro Subscribers: Roll20 Pro subscribers may purchase any compendium. They may share their purchased compendiums with five active games that contain no more than themselves plus 15 players each (16 total per game).

And more!

We went under the hood and made a bunch of useability improvements for this update to make your life on Roll20 easier. We also added a new mechanic to our dice rolls, to help support more systems in this wide, wide world of tabletop design! These updates include:

Character Vault Update: Increased usability for Roll20’s Character Vault, which allows users to transfer their favorite characters easily between games.

Wiki Repaint: Updated design for the Roll20.net Wiki which helps players learn about the tools and features of Roll20.

Text Editor Improvement: Enhanced, reliable editing features for forum posts and in-game text windows such as Handouts and Character Bios. Note: See our update about the text editor here. 

New Dice Matching Mechanic: New logic for the QuantumRoll dice engine supports dice matching mechanics (explained further in our earlier blog post).

All of these updates are live RIGHT NOW, so go hop into your games and try them out today!

[roll20]

Charactermancer Development Blog 3

First, because I know you’re waiting with great anticipation, the Charactermancer Update is going to go live to Roll20 users a week from today on June 26th. 

Today we pushed live to the Development Server another set of Charactermancer improvements for Pro users to test in the last week. Included among these improvements were:

Casting Ability in Stat selector: Your casting ability, as well as recommended stats from your class choice, now appear in the stats bar in the Abilities tab.

Going back and forth in top navigation: You can now bounce around in the top navigation. 

Validation in the review slide: The review page now shows your choices and highlights if you are missing any required information. You cannot apply changes until you have filled in all required information. 

Store race/subrace and class/subclass in character sheet: Subrace and Subclass are stored as attributes in the 5e OGL sheet. This is a future-looking addition for the charactermancer.

Several of these changes were requests from this feedback period, so thank you for participating in this testing phase. If you’re a Pro subscriber and would like some more information on other bug-related fixes to the Charactermancer, see here.

Now for the fun part... WAIT, that’s NOT ALL...

Alongside the deployment of the Charactermancer next Tuesday, June 26th, we’ll have a whole host of improvements going live. These include:

Compendium Sharing in Game Settings. Compendium content that the game creator has purchased is now more easily shared among participants in a game. This means beyond the existing unlimited drag-and-drop functionality that existed in Compendium sharing thus far, players will be able to more quickly utilize Compendium data in tools like the Charactermancer. In order to ensure licensed content here is safe from being exploited beyond intended personal use with this new feature, we are setting the following limits:

Free Users. Free users may purchase any compendium. They may only share their purchased compendiums with one active game that contains no more than themselves plus 5 players (6 total).

Plus Subscribers. Roll20 Plus subscribers may purchase any compendium. They may share their purchased compendiums with three active games that contain no more than themselves plus 10 players each (11 total per game).

Pro Subscribers. Roll20 Pro subscribers may purchase any compendium. They may share their purchased compendiums with five active games that contain no more than themselves plus 15 players each (16 total per game).  

Improved WYSIWYG text editor. We’ve significantly overhauled our text editor for things such as character sheets and the forums, knocking out a bunch of pesky bugs that caused issue.

Wiki Repaint. the Roll20 help documentation on our Wiki will be brought into design standards with the rest of the website.

Character Vault Update. Alongside the Charactermancer, we’re making several changes to the Character Vault user interface for increased simplicity of use alongside better display of character information.

Dice Matching Mechanic. A new die mechanic will go live Tuesday. There are two versions: `!m` and `!mt` `!m` will show matches visually but not change results of the roll. I.e.: rolling a `2d6m` will give you the result of the 2d6 added together. `!mt` will return the number of matches. So, `2d6mt` will either return 0 matches or 1 match. Both can take 2 arguments: the number of matches required and/or the result the match needs to be. ie `5d6mt3>4` will show the number of matches if there are 3 of them AND the matching numbers 4 or greater.

So yeah, Tuesday is gonna be pretty cool.