A single Arrow

[Azhrei]

Well, we’re currently playing through an Adventure Path. The PCs will level up at known times during the campaign. The GM usually gives us one session’s notice before it happens so that we can be planning how we’ll be leveling up (skill points spent, feats, that kind of thing).

I typically copy my existing PC and level up the new guy, playing with options until I get it the way I want it. (This is one of the main strengths of HL for me: the ability to “try stuff out” and have HL tell me when I’ve gone to far — or not far enough.)

When we get to the point of actually leveling up, what do I do? Should I try to recreate every change made to the new copy back to the original PC? That can be time consuming and tedious when you consider spellbook editing and so forth (and what is tedious, is error prone).

But I can’t use the new PC either, since then I have to move any newly acquired gear, loot, and journal entries to the new PC, also copying adjustments, conditions, and so on.

Moving PCs between portfolios isn’t too big a deal on the desktop version, but the iPad app doesn’t manage portfolio content beyond creating new PCs or deleting existing ones; there’s no way to move a PC from one portfolio to another. Which means there’s no way to move gear from one PC to another. (I’m told it’s a memory issue. Since I started using an iPad Pro, I haven’t had any memory-related problems; I presume because of the larger RAM size on the Pro.)

I prefer to use the iPad app at the game table, but if I need to bring my laptop along in order to do some XML juggling, I’m willing to do that.

[Farling]

Originally Posted by Azhrei

When we get to the point of actually leveling up, what do I do? Should I try to recreate every change made to the new copy back to the original PC? That can be time consuming and tedious when you consider spellbook editing and so forth (and what is tedious, is error prone).

Isn't a new level mostly a feat, some skill points and only 2 spells?
With maybe some class choice.

I found the Android app "Pathbuilder" that allows you to plan changes between levels. It does quite well at listing only the changes each level.

[Azhrei]

You make it sound simple. I just know from experience that it hasn’t been.

We typically do our new spell stuff at level up time (not just the free ones, but purchasing spells as well). That includes editing spellbooks now, as well as changing prepared spell lists. The latter is mostly because I may purchase a lower level wand of something and decide I don’t need the spell prepared anymore...

Feats would be easy. Skill points would be easier if there was a way to tell which skills had points spent on them for a given level, bit AFAIK there isn’t such a history mechanism.

Maybe it’s just trickier for me because I test out a bunch of different builds every time my PC levels up, so I’m constantly trying out different configurations until I find one I like, but that means I can’t remember the specifics of what I’ve changed for a particular build...

I’ll look into that Pathbuilder thing; sounds kinda neat. Thanks.

[Fuzzy]

Something I thought about doing was making a program that could unpack a portfolio, and split it into it's individual characters, and another that could do the reverse. The idea was that the GM could have open an entire party, including encounters and such, and each user could have the individual portfolios opened. The issue then becomes one of triggering the program to run when changes are made on each end, and each user reloads (CTRL-R) to get the changes. Would need to all be accessing the files from a common place, and other such complications - but it's possible in theory.

[Azhrei]

Yeah, it wouldn't bee too tough. I've looked at the XML and I have a couple of Python scripts that manipulate it already. Using the same script to upload to a particular URL or to copy the resulting files to a public DropBox location wouldn't be difficult at all.

It's an interesting idea...