Current Project - Pathfinder 2e Character Trackers

   A few years ago I made a simple webpage that could track Pathfinder 1e characters, something the GM could use as a reference.  Not because it was needed, just to learn how to do it.  It looked like this...

    While it wasn't amazing, I was kind of proud of it.  It was really more of a teaching tool on how to use JavaScript to write to a page than anything else.

    Recently though, I was getting ready to run my first Pathfinder 2e adventure.  I thought about that old program, and that it might actually be helpful since I was going to be using a new system for the first time.  So I took a look at it again and realized it was not nearly enough to help me at the table.  So I did a mock-up of a more advanced layout...

   I liked the look of this, but I didn't have enough time to code it before my game.  So I didn't end up using it at all.  But after the game I thought about it some more, and decided that it needed more than just tracking the party, it also needed to be able to track the monsters, like this...

    And, while characters and monsters are good to reference, spells are also a pain to keep track of, so maybe it should have a spell tracking section as well...

   Well, now I had gone far, far beyond the original, simple little page.  How far you ask?  Well, here is the table columns and the JavaScript object that powered it...

   It's around 30 lines of code, and the rest of the code to format and write it to the table is about another 100 lines.

    For comparison, here is just a part of the current JavaScript object...

    So once again I have turned a simple idea into a horribly complicated project with features that spiral out of control (and what I can code).  I've done this so many times I'm used to it, sadly.

    I'm hoping that I can actually get this done, and keep it from acquiring too many extra features. (well, with all the code to define a character, it's not really too much to make a step-by-step character creator section. Plus, with a Pathfinder 2e character defined you've got most of a Pathfinder 1e or Dungeons and Dragons 5e character...)  I can't say how long this will take, I've been bad about tracking time to get a feel for how long it takes me on these projects.  But I hope in the near future to be posting the site as a tool for GMs, and as a tutorial on the HTML, CSS and JavaScript (plus maybe more) used to create it.