PathCompanion Update

Hi everyone!

I haven't released a major update this year yet. I've made some minor updates, but to be honest I just needed a bit of a break. The pace of development was getting overwhelming for me, and I've been also working on a few other projects in my spare time. I'm definitely not abandoning PathCompanion, but some of the changes coming might be pretty big, and will take a while for me to get out the door.

Specifically, I'm looking into monetizing portions of PathCompanion that are not based upon the utilization of Paizo IP. After some discussions, I believe I can legally have a "Pro" tier of PathCompanion that allows things like extra character slots, special rules that are governed solely by the Open Gaming License rather than the Community Use Policy, third-party content access, and possibly GM mode. I'm still ironing out a lot of the details, but rest assured that if you have existing characters, they will be grandfathered in to how things currently work. My goal is to not pull the rug out from anyone.

There are a few features that I really want to have available before I release a "pro" tier if I do end up going that direction. These would be features that make it really feel complete as far as a character generator is concerned: Custom classes, custom archetypes, and a start on rolling in some third-party content would be some of the features I want to have available. And, if I had a paid tier, some major improvements to GM mode and multiplayer are much needed, as they are a bit unpolished and I want a much more polished experience for anyone who chooses to pay.

I've been spending the last few weeks going through everything I need to prepare for custom classes and archetypes. Specifically, I had to go through every class feature and make it generic to whatever class may utilize it. For example, Rogue Talents within the Rogue class were specifically based on the Rogue's level. There was an override for the situations where other classes gained rogue talents and passed in their class to the Rogue Talent code, which then determined their class level based on that class, but from the core Rogue class, it was specifically counting only the Rogue levels. This is a step toward allowing custom classes to add Rogue Talent from the Rogue class as a class feature and have it consider their levels in whatever that custom class is as their class level.

Finally, I've become a bit more transparent with the roadmap. I have a Trello board now that I'll use to track progress on features publicly. It also allows public voting on specific cards within the board, so feel free to upvote anything you're specifically interested in, and if I missed something, let me know so I can add it to the board. It's both a TODO list and an aspirational list, so I'm happy to put anything on there that I might not ever get to, as long as it's within scope for what I could imagine PathCompanion becoming. Here's a link to the board: https://trello.com/b/lHzk5Gtj/pathcompanion-roadmap

Anyway, that's all I have for now. Thanks for continuing to use PathCompanion!