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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Silveras" data-source="post: 2398083" data-attributes="member: 6271">I considered mailing them mine, actually. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />I can take a few guesses as to why. Actually, they are not guesses. I write software professionally, and I am a database architect/administrator. I am intimately familiar with how the design process goes, and I can say this: you cannot make a working program for rules that are not yet defined. Any such tool would be useful to WotC only for books *after* their content is finished, and the rules can then be implemeted in code. Trying to do it *while* the content is being finalized means that the coding process would slow down the book creation process, as the authors and stat-block editors need to wait for the program to be revised to cover this morning's changes to the rules. Depending on what was changed, that could be 10 minutes to 10 days to code, and as much again to test to make sure the change was made correctly. A second problem is when the developers adopt a new method of some kind. An example I have used before is spell advancement. In the 3.0 Core books, all of the classes used a few simple methods... spell advancement 1-6 over 20 levels, spell advancement 0-9 over 20 levels, spell advancement 1-4 starting at level 4, and so on. In general, though, they were a formula... some advancement every level after level X, up to level Y (for Paladins, Rangers, and others with a maximum spellcasting advancement). Then, new supplements added new casters, and new breakdowns, espcially in Prestige Classes ... +1 every other level, +1/+1/+0 repeated every 3 levels, and so on. Then, we started getting +1/+1/+1/+0/+1/+1/+0/+1/+1 and the like -- you could no longer reasonably expect to be able to use a few formulae, you had to pretty much list out the progressions for each class in full. As for selling it... well, because each new supplement is liable to require code changes to include this or that new feature, it would almost have to be a subscription model... you pay a fee to get all the updates for a year, and renew the fee each year to keep getting the updates. Additionally, an internally-developed product does not have to support "user customization", but a commercially-available one *does*. In order to support the DM's right to decide which rules s/he wants to use, the software has to become much more complex, and cannot use the most efficient code (it has to allow for deciding on-the-spot which rules apply, instead of having that assumption embodied in its design). The more such a tool is written to do for you, the longer it takes to update, the slower it runs, or less it can allow you to make choices. Now, before I come across as all negative <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> let me say that I think the 3.x rules are *much* more computer-tool-friendly than any of the previous editions.</blockquote>

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