An Overview of PathCompanion

Well, here we go. This is the first time I've ever made anything myself that I ever thought someone else would want to use. Hopefully as this project becomes more mature, it will be considered the de-facto companion app for Pathfinder 1e. 

What made me start this project was that I was looking for a companion app for Pathfinder similar to D&D Beyond, saw Lone Wolf Studio's Hero Lab, and just couldn't bring myself to use it, much less pay for all the source books again. Not only was it way overpriced, but the UI was horrendous. I also didn't have a lot of faith that it would be usable on a tablet, which I wanted to use in order to reduce clutter on my gaming table. So I mocked up the first basic concept of the layout - tab system, header, and automatically-updating character sheet values, and got working.

I wanted to keep the "feel" of the traditional character sheets, while also taking advantage of modern concepts. In the end, really, the traditional character sheet style ended up being relegated to the Character Sheet page, while the other tabs have different designs out of necessity. You don't need drop-down selects or a class feature/feat-option chooser in a character sheet.

I also wanted to try to clean up the clutter of your typical character sheet. The fact that so much data was crammed into an 8.5x11 page in a somewhat intuitive way is actually a monumental feat, and I commend whoever developed the first D&D 3.5e character sheet I first started playing with. But the interactivity of the web opened better options. The skills tab, for example, collapses and expands as the header is clicked, overlaying the rest of the content. When you don't need to make a skill check anymore, click it again and it goes away.

OK, so what about situational bonuses? Tooltips!

The next piece was the main "Adventuring" view, which is currently named "Combat" but I'm open to suggestions, because it's grown out of its original concept. The idea was that there would be different views for different scenarios: A social view for when you're not in combat would have shown you your non-combat abilities or abilities that take minutes or hours to perform. The problem with that was that I realized it was wrong to "dictate" what was appropriate to use in combat and what wasn't. Instead, I've decided on a new long-term goal to allow users to customize loadouts to have different groups of abilities visible in different loadouts.

The current state of the Combat/Adventuring view is as follows:

At the top are your HP, AC, CMD, and saves, with situational bonuses in the "drawer." You can update the HP either by typing a new number, or by pushing +10 <return> or -5 <return> as you heal or take damage. Clicking on the bonuses or sometimes the value in the circle will show you the bonus or the list of bonuses that apply to the value.

The next part is a place where you can add temporary bonuses to yourself manually. Then, the "Extra Info" section - pieces of information that are relevant, but not always needed to be highlighted. I'm still trying to figure out whether this is the layout I eventually want for this, but I haven't had a ton of time to play with different designs for how to present the information here.

Finally the main part, that in my opinion is the most exciting - the card layout system. Each of your actions are represented by cards. You can go into a mode where you can hide and show the cards by clicking the edit icon in the top-right. Eventually this will be used to create different loadouts, as described above.

The card layout is a responsive CSS design. It's very light-weight so the package size for the web app is relatively small to download. I'm working with an artist to provide more embellishment for the cards (see the Arcane Revitalization card below has a different style than then others).

The cards are organized into "Full-round actions", and then 4 columns of the various action types you can take. Sometimes cards will be duplicated between columns if they can be used in multiple ways.

Many cards are reminders that you can do something, but if the card has a tangible effect that lasts an amount of time, they can be "activated" to apply the effect to yourself. For example, in the case above, the Arcane Pool has been activated to add the Flaming Keen property to the Black Blade. This can be dismissed by clicking on the card again, or opening the effects menu by clicking on the wand icon floating in the bottom-right and dismissing the effect from there.

From this effects menu you can also manually apply nearly any effect in the game. If you'd like, you can even save the application of this effect as a custom action to apply quickly again later.

 If there's a spell that's a move, swift, or immediate action, it'll show up in the list of actions in the respective action duration column. There's also an options menu to show all spells with standard actions in the standard actions column, but I think the best way to view spells is via the spells view.

The above is for a prepared caster, and as prepared spells are used they are greyed out. Spontaneous casters instead show their spells per day tracked alongside the level header.

If a character is multiclassed, multiple spellcasting tabs will be visible, tracked separately.

Speaking of multiclassing, let's talk about the leveling interface. I wanted to make sure a user could easily see the archetypes, how they stack with each other, and the final result of the class they're going to be playing.

Choosing a class should give you as much information as possible, so the class choice page is relatively complicated, but not as complicated as looking through all the pages of the SRD on your own! Archetypes are automatically disabled if they can't be combined with the current chosen archetypes, or if you don't meet the prerequisites. VMC is there as well.

Notice that as an archetype is shown, the summary of the class is updated so you can see the final list of class features the character will receive as they level.

A lot can happen when you gain a level. Especially at first level.

Fortunately, the leveling interface is separated into sections as needed, and there are indicators to identify what you still need to choose. In the case above, the user still hasn't chosen their Oracle's revelation at first level.

Finally, there are tabs for managing equipment and spells, which aren't beautiful so I won't go into them in detail. I hope to make another pass on them at some point.

Anyway, that's the overview! Next update I'll talk about what's been implemented and what hasn't. But that will be for backers only. Will you join my party?