Level Up Gateway September Dev Update

Level Up Gateway has come a long way since the last update! Our main objective this past month has been implementing spell features for spellcasting classes but we’ve also made progress on maneuvers, character origins and smaller screen support.

Spellcasting

Learning, preparing and tracking spells are a must for a digital character builder so we set out to build a robust framework for spellcasting this month. We started first by getting the wizard class up to level 5 in the character builder and quickly followed it with the Sorcerer and Cleric.

When you pick a class with spellcasting features a Spells item will appear in the Character Builder side bar where you can browse spells available to your class to learn. Clicking a spell here expands it revealing additional information. Level Up’s short spell descriptions from the class spell lists work great here to make spells easy to skim without expanding each one when you’re browsing.

And prepared casters have access to a menu in the spellcasting tab to manage their prepared spells.

You can also see that like with the maneuvers from last month we’re taking semiotics seriously by matching spells to easily identifiable illustrations to make it a little easier to find a spell on your spell list during play. These illustrations are intentionally minimal to be easy to identify and so that they don’t get in the way of the player’s imagination of the spell.

Selected spells appear on the character sheet under the spells tab grouped by level. Clicking cast will mark the relevant spell slot as spent. This list also includes spells granted by other features than spellcasting, for example this character’s Planetouched heritage grants them Arcane Riposte so it is listed here along with its number of uses. Its name and damage type is changed since the Planetouched Infernal Legacy specifies it deals fire damage only.

Similarly Mage Hand granted by the Scholarly Excellence feature: Rote Memorization has its components changed because the feature lets you cast the cantrip without the material components it would normally require.

Wizard

The wizard was the first spellcasting class we added to Gateway, with a long spell list many features that affect spells this was a good way to tackle the spellcasting mechanics. Wizards can also gain a lot of specialties which prompted us to make some changes to the skills list to better show advantages, expertise and specialties.

The Wizard’s Level 3 Scholarly Excellence feature for example can grant you 4 specialties if you pick Academic.

Now your specialties and advantages will always be visible in the list. This will make the list a little longer but it is important to give oversight over your specialties.

We’ve added the Wizard’s Elective Studies to the character builder as its own page. Here selecting a study like Detect Magic Savant which upgrades your detect magic spell automatically update the spell’s description on your character sheet to reflect the changes. If you prefer the original spell text you can unlearn the Elective Study and it will swap back.

Sorcerer

For the Sorcerer we’ve added a list at the bottom of the spells tab for Metamagics and other features that use Sorcery points:

And added pages to the character builder for Metamagic and Arcane Innovations:

Cleric

The first 5 levels of the Cleric class were some of the most intensive implemented so far—with archetype choice, Archetype spell selection, Defensive Blessing, Sacred Call and Spellcasting all at level one it’s the longest level page so far. We’ve also implemented a lot of integration with the Cleric features because of the way they interact with and add to your sheet.

The Heal Up feature is a great example of when it’s useful to have digital tooling but also needs care in its implementation.

At 1st level when you choose this archetype, you may add your Wisdom modifier to the hit points restored by healing spells of 1st-level or higher.

But we’ve built Gateway’s foundation for exactly sort of thing and spells can be automatically updated with additions. The spell is updated by the chosen feature and the source of the bonus is included in the breakdown so you can tell where it came from:

We’ve included this sort of breakdown for attack rolls, DCs and damage/healing rolls for spells and actions so that you can always tell what is affecting a bonus on the sheet and whether a feature is applied.

Characters with the Cleric class gain access to a Signs of Faith page and an Empowered Turning page for managing their choices:

Other Changes

We’ve added a bunch more character origin options, all the AG heritages and destinies and many more Cultures and Backgrounds are now available.

Support for smaller screens and phones is underway with some changes for tablet/medium screen sizes. For smaller screens the character sheet will swap more and more to a tabbed interface. At this size Ability Scores and the contents of the left and right sidebars are moved to this Properties tab.

The spells page is coming along; this will be a convenient place to find spells. It’s also within the campaign and so once we get to the point of multiple source books this page will only show spells from sources enabled within the campaign. For campaigns with specific limitations or unusual settings this should be helpful.

Conclusion

We’re starting to see the pace pick up as we go which is encouraging. This coming month we will likely be focusing on some martial classes again to get some more variety of classes available up to level 5 which will help with testing and experimenting.

Do let us know if you have any feedback or suggestions, everything is still quite flexible and it would be great to hear about anything you would like to see in Gateway.