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Hello everyone. First of all, if self-promotion posts are forbidden here I will delete this asap. But I checked the guideline and I didn't find anything about this.
I am an occasional player and a frequent GM of Pathfinder 2e since its official release. During the years, the way I GM changed, since I started RPGs I was always an advocate of "full pen and paper" and no electronics at the table. But after having tasted a fully remote and "assisted" GMing style with Foundry during the lock-down, I was more inclined to introduce more electronic tools to assist me during the encounters in my physical games. I tried a lot of stuff but as I didn't find anything that perfectly met my needs for the way I GM, I decided to make my own android application.
I am using it for some weeks in my games and kept adding stuff to it, and now that I think it's in a stable and usable state I am putting it on the playstore on early access here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.piR.pf2eBattleTracker
## So, what is it?
It's a simple initiative tracker with some additional features to make it a "encounter/battle" tracker. The main goal of the design was to have a clear interface with the most important information always displayed in an easy to read layout, without too much bloating. And limit as much as possible the time spend in menus and the number of clicks to do actions *during* the encounter.
## What does it do?
Well it tracks initiative, duh ... More seriously once you set up an encounter it displays a list in initiative order of all the characters involved. With the currently playing character highlighted and navigation button to move the turn. For each characters it always displays:
* Current/max hit points
* AC
* Saves
* If it has its reaction available
* A small icon when below 50% or 25% hit points (I use that for description of the state of the NPC, when applicable)
It also does math for you and you can update hit points by adding damage or heal value directly.
You can easily rearrange the turn order by editing manually the initiative value, or by drag and drop of a character. Dying PC may also be moved automatically just before the initiative rank of the currently acting character.
## But how do I build an encounter ?
I'm sure it's going to take time to do that during a game session?
That's where you are wrong ! You have several options for this.
* First, you can find all the NPC from books published by Paizo in the application. You can add them to the encounter and either let the application roll the initiative with Perception or Stealth score, or set up yourself the initiative value if you roll the dice. You may also edit the stats of the NPC before adding it to the encounter if needed (Applying weak and Elite template at this step is in the todo-list!).
* For the PCs you can prepare them beforehand in a specific menu. Save their stats and everything and then add them with 2 clicks to any encounter. Same as above for setting up the initiative. (Very soon you will be able to import them from Pathbuilder)
* Last option is to create a character manually. This indeed takes a little bit more time to inputs all the stats, but most of them are optional. And once it's done you can save it forever in your phone (forever = until I break the API for loading stat blocks ...)
* Finally, you can save a whole encounter with all its characters, their initiative, current HP, etc. And load it at a later time. With this you can prepare beforehand a "library" of encounters for the next session and just load them up when needed.
## But why do you need this application?
How do you use it?
Well, for a bit more than a year I started to automate things behind the GM screen during encounters. My main goal was to speed up "my" turns during battle and to free my mind from math and number tracking. Don't judge me, I love this as a player. But as a GM I want to spend all of my brain and time focusing on the narrative part, the descriptions, and also the strategic decisions of all of my NPCs.
First step was to remove most of the dice rolls for my NPC using pf2 easytools on my tablet (amazing tool btw). But I still needed to write down the initiative order and track the HP (oh damn, scary subtractions and additions !) and all various conditions.
Then I found out about the BattleTrack application on my phone. It allowed me to roll initiative automatically and update the HP without doing math, incredible!
It's nearly what I wanted, but it's made for DnD 5e and missing some major features for me. The main one being condition and persistent damage tracking. I track them on paper like in the antique time before electricity and screens were invented. And how many times have I forgotten to add/substrate something from a condition to a save or to the AC ? How many times did I forget to roll the persistent damages ? … You don't know ? Hopefully, neither my players …
That's why I decided to make my own application. I will still have pf 2 easytools on my tablet but replace battleTrack on the phone with my own.
## Wait a minute ...
Now you talk about conditions and persistent damages being the main missing feature of this other tool, but you didn't mention that in the description of what your tool can do !
Hey, looks like you are following. Good, take this hero point !
That's right, it's not there *yet*. This was the main feature I wanted to have, but I had to start with everything else. And now that the rest is working, I already replaced the previous application with mine in my game. So maybe it can be useful for you too !
Anyway, as soon as I'm done with all the small remaining details on the current features, I will focus my work on adding the condition and persistent damages tracking and release the application out of early access.
## What do you want from us ?
Nothing ? Actually, maybe that you give it a try … I'm making a self promotion of the app in the hope that you will find it useful too, and maybe it will help you in your games like it helps me !
I'm also of course looking for feedback.
## TL;DR
New android application for GM : initiative tracking, and other encounter tracking. Now in early access, when I am done adding the conditions and persistent damage tracking and have a stable version it will be completely released.
Here is the link to subscribe to get a notification on the playstore when it is out of early access: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.piR.pf2eBattleTracker
Here is the link to participate to the early access: https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.piR.pf2eBattleTracker
You can leave feedback directly on the playstore, or you can write them here to have more tracking and follow up discussions: https://github.com/314r-app/pf2eBattleTracker_issues/issues
Cheers everyone, thanks for your time reading this wall of text !
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Well, I don't think this one is an AI Spambot at least.
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I signed up for it in the store. Looks like it might be pretty cool, from the description.
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I signed up for it in the store. Looks like it might be pretty cool, from the description.
Thanks ! If you don't want to wait you can join the early access with the second link and download it already, it's free and you can opt out at any time.
Will it also be available for Automotons and Poppets?
Nah, Automatons use a very archaic operating system. For poppets, dealing with multi-threading is a big pain...
Hello and thanks for the feedback. I didn't think about that because it's not the way I am using it but I can see the interest for other people indeed.
Opening it in a web browser would be fairly easy to add. Now displaying it correctly inside the application would be much longer to do.
I am adding the first option to my todolist. I just need to find a nice place to add the button, I was thinking on the side of the title bar when editing a character or when clicking on a npc in the bestiary view.
Just a quick clarification: Does the HP/AC/Saves/etc. values only apply to the PCs? Would Monster/NPC values be shown as well? If so, is there a way to disable this function (because it shouldn't be easily visible to all PCs the exact value of health they possess), either entirely or selectively?
Hello, for clarification this tool is made primarily to be used by GM only.
Now to answer your question: yes they are displayed for every character, PC and NPC.
However I have on my todolist before the first full release to add preferences to let the user enable/disable some displays. This will be one of the thing that I want to be able to turn off.
Can't seem to get the early access version. It just takes me in an endless loop of links that never actually downloads anything.
Update. It finally worked. Downloading it now.
It needs a link added to AoN monsters stat block. It is nice, but to replace current initiative tracker systems this is what it needs to stand out.
Hello, I added a first version of this in the latest release (0.1.8, you can check the playstore if you didn't select the automatic updates).
It is doing nearly what you asked, right now it opens the search result page of archive of Nethys with the name of the creature and the correct filter. What you are looking for should be the first result of this page.
Unfortunately, due to the way the website is made I cannot automate this last click. I have an idea of a different way to proceed but I will need to find some time to test it, so I decided to already release this first version. I also asked the maintainers of archive of Nethys if there is better/easier way than what I have in mind.
To access the new feature, open the "edit" dialog of any character in the tracker view by clicking on its name. If it's a character loaded from the bestiary, there should be a new icon in the top right corner of this dialog. Clicking on it open archive of Nethys in the default web browser of your device.
Actually, one of the maintainer of Archives of Nethys provided me a very easy solution. So, a new version have just been released. It now opens the first result automatically as desired !