Potential confusion during character creation

[asacolips]

In GitLab by @jegasus on Feb 5, 2023, 15:25

When creating new player characters, I noticed that a couple of steps of the character creation process can cause a bit of confusion. Specifically when selecting the character's starting gear.

For example, for the Wizard, the book states (emphasis mine):

You start with your spellbook (1 weight) and dungeon rations (5 uses, 1 weight).

Choose your defenses:

• Leather armor (1 armor, 1 weight)

• Bag of books (5 uses, 2 weight) and 3 healing potions

Note that the spellbook and rations are not really something the player is expected to opt out of or choose one of - they simply get both items regardless of what character creation choices they make.

Furthermore, the player is expected to choose only one of the two defenses: either the leather armor or the bag of books (a further exploration of the book's wording here can be found in this thread).

However, the system is currently implemented in a way where the user is given the freedom to select however many items they want for both both sets of items (the spellbook/rations and armor/books), which can cause a bit of confusion. This is made a little more confusing given that both choices are presented to the user very similarly, suggesting that both choices are supposed to follow the same type of rules: either get everything, or choose how many they want or just pick one.

I think this can be easily solved by adding a little bit of text in parentheses to guide users saying something like "choose one" or "select all":

The confusion might also be reduced by removing the first option (spellbook & rations) and just automatically adding them to the character's sheet.

The third and last suggestion I'd give is to make the choice explicit to the user by changing the selection from a check-box (which allows multiple items to be selected) to a radio item (which only allows one item to be selected) where appropriate - typically in the defenses, weapons and gear sections.

It's also worth noting that this doesn't just happen for Wizards - these little issues with choices (select one/select all/etc) happens with the character sheets for all classes.

Lastly, I fully understand if the changes I'm suggesting here are a pain in the butt to implement. I also believe that the system was developed in its current form to give the players more flexibility. So please feel free to just disregard these suggestions =)

I hope these comments help!

PS: Apologies for the essay-long issue report here.

[asacolips]

In GitLab by @Asacolips on Feb 14, 2023, 15:01

@jegasus first of all, thanks for the detailed issue! These are UX issues with the character builder that I'm aware of, but I hadn't actually captured in an issue to track and/or prioritize before, so this will be useful to have around.

I'll add another comment to this issue later with more detail, but at a high level I agree with all of the problems presented, but some of the solutions will be a bit more nuanced due to technical issues with the current architecture of the character builder. I've marked this issue as a low priority for now because this is one of the more complicated areas of the codebase and will be non-trivial to fix, and I'm not sure when I'll be able to devote the time to make a Character Builder v2 to improve it.

With that said, once I've updated the issue description with my notes on what the current problems are and how I would likely resolve them, I would definitely be open to reviewing and accepting MRs to help improve this!