Homebrew Level Up Roll20 Character Sheet is live!

[Morrus]

If you use Roll20, the beta Level Up character sheet is now live and available for use in 5E games. Please let us know if you run across an issues, and we'll get 'em fixed!

LevelUp5e - Roll20 Wiki

wiki.roll20.net

 

[niklinna]

I'm already pokin' around! Looks pretty comprehensive. Iniital comments & issues:

• Character sheet opens in NPC format, but the NPC button up top is not highlighted. (I hope these gigantic PC/NPC buttons are not visible to players; they chew up a lot of screen space for something that players will never even use.)
• Layout is busy & cluttered (see below), and many labels overlap & partially obscure the values.
• Many fields show a pop-up combo box for predefined options if you start typing. If you just click, it doesn't appear, but if you click a second time when the field is empty, the combo box appears, showing all predefined options. It isn't obvious that you need to click a second time to get that.
• Archetype combo-box list contains all archetypes for all classes, even if you have specified a class, and the archetypes are implicitly ordered by class first, then archetype name, without any indication which class each archetype goes with.
• Heritage combo-box list is not strictly alphabetical.
• Culture combo-box list is not strictly alphabetical: Heritage cultures are listed after the more generic ones. Add headers to the list if possible, showing there are categories of heritages.
• Tunnel Halfling culture is misspelled (missing final 'g').
• Choosing a predefined option for many things doesn't seem to fill anything in with the content for that option. Are the predefined options just conveniences, or is the intent to have choosing them fill in things from the rules?
• Some fields filled with random values when I clicked. That only happened once and I haven't been able to reproduce it, but I'll keep an eye out for it. [Edit: This was the Destiny subfields auto-filling when I chose a Destiny, but they didn't fill in until I clicked in a different field. If I pick a Destiny from the combo-box list, the subfields should fill in immediately.]

On visual design: Using black line borders for all these areas is really busy, especially when the border is a double line! Instead please use background shades/colors to distinguish boxed areas (be mindful of color blindness of course). Typeface distinctions can also be helpful in visual scanning. Right now sans serif & serif typefaces seem to be used randomly. If, for example, all labels are sans serif and all values are serif (or just visually distinct typeface families), it will be much easier for the user to scan for and find the information they want.

In several tables (notably equipment), column headings and line-item fields don't line up. Text in many fields would be better left-aligned rather than centered, which will help scanning lists of equipment and such. +Add and Modify buttons could be made much more compact by using a simple + and hamburger-menu icon instead of textual labels.

I'll keep pokin'!

 

[niklinna]

Spells being grouped as they are into distinct tables by level doesn't seem useful. I would much rather have one big table of all my spells, with a column for spell level and/or spell points, and buttons to sort the entire table by level, name, spell-point cost, and whatever else might be useful to sort by (class? recovery on short/long rest?). Known/slots/expended should be its own separate table. There should be a "cast" button for each spell that will automatically update the expended/points-used fields in that separate table.

 

[thelordofthemorning]

Hmm. First thing I noticed, either there isn't a separate button for rolling ability checks besides the button for saving throws, or there is and it isn't obvious, because I can't find it.

 

[niklinna]

More comments! As usual with this sort of thing, I'm not reporting on what you got right 'cause it doesn't need attention.

• Death Saves, Fatigue, & Strife check boxes are independent of one another. If you click, say, the third one, then the first three should fill in. (See the pretty nifty Blades in the Dark character sheet for a good example, in the Stress & XP trackers.)
• It would make sense to put Temp HP and Current HP in side-by-side fields (or Temp above Current), since those together in order are your "active" HP.
• Ability modifier & save values should have a + or - in front of them.
• Skills should show your effective values so you can judge likelihood of success.
• Skills should have a pop-up menu of abilities, defaulting to the, well, default, so you can change it for a given check without having to answer the prompt every single time. (See the pretty nifty Torg Eternity character sheet for a good example.)
• I'm torn about the presence of d20 icons to click in order to roll the save or ability check, when you could make the save/skill name clickable and save a little real estate. On the other hand, that is not obvious, but it's pretty easily discovered when the cursor changes to a hand. (Again see the Torg Eternity character sheet for an example. It does add a d20 icon for custom skills, since those labels are editable by default, a not-great visual compromise but most efficient in general; labels are bigger mouse targets for Fitz's law.)
• I entered "+3" in my attack bonus for a weapon, and the rolls all came out as zero. Entering a + or - is something many players are likely to do, so the field parser or die roll calculator should account for that.
• Features & Knacks (possibly more) are just big freeform text fields, with no means of tracking uses of abilities. Ideally these would be collections of line items with fields for "uses per (long|short) rest", "uses so far", name, description, and so one. (I hate to harp on it, but the Torg Eternity character sheet once again has several great examples of this under the Weapons & Powers section, which would also be great to have for the Character tab's Attacks & Spellcasting. It might even make sense to have all prepped/known spells in the Attacks & Spellcasting section.)

 

[thelordofthemorning]

One note is, to my understanding from the preview, Level Up has no default ability score for skills, the two were entirely disassociated. So that's probably why the pop up menu doesn't default to a particular one.

 

[Waller]

• Skills should have a pop-up menu of abilities, defaulting to the, well, default, so you can change it for a given check without having to answer the prompt every single time. (See the pretty nifty Torg Eternity character sheet for a good example.)

One note is, to my understanding from the preview, Level Up has no default ability score for skills, the two were entirely disassociated. So that's probably why the pop up menu doesn't default to a particular one.

Yeah, there is no deault in Level Up.

 

[niklinna]

One note is, to my understanding from the preview, Level Up has no default ability score for skills, the two were entirely disassociated. So that's probably why the pop up menu doesn't default to a particular one.

Even if there's no default, there will probably be one that's used most frequently, and the ability to set it for repeated use instead of having to answer a dialog prompt every single time you roll would be nice. There is the risk of rolling on the wrong ability if you don't remember to set it, of course, but the chat log should show the ability you rolled off so anybody could catch it.

 

[TheHand]

File under "Be Nice to Have..."

I tried importing NPCs using the "Transmogrifier" from a standard 5e game with the following results:

• Name and Ability scores do come through (str, dex, etc), but that's about it. It does not auto-calculate the bonus modifiers.
• Nothing else comes through. Even if I have to manually re-add specific abilities, it would be helpful to have Armor Class, Hit Points, and Speed also transfer over.

Spells:

• I'd like to be able to put in the descriptions of the spells, even if in a multi-line text-box format. It makes it easier to look up the game text in a session than having to find the page in a book.

Equipment:

• Just like with spells, I'd like to be able to put in full descriptions (more than just properties). I often use custom items with various amounts of flavor text.

Notes Section:

• I'd love either an additional button-tab for a "Notes" page or at least a text box under Backgrounds for additional notes. I guess "Verbosity" is my theme here.

Skills:

• An option to rename skills for Homebrew purposes would be really nifty, but that's a very frivolous request!

 

[Zaukrie]

in roll20....can you only have 1 kind of character sheet for all pcs and npcs at a time?

It looks like I set that in the campaign settings.....

(I know this is a roll20 question, not strictly level up......but how would I have PCs from teh regular PHB and LevelUP PHB in the same campaign?)