Not sure it is appropriate for me to give a lot of screenshots, but my first impression of the Protagonist character sheet (the PC sheet) is good. I will say that at least in its initial iteration it is fully focused on the fantasy genre. Ancestry options are: Devilkin, Dwarven, Elvish, Giantkin, Gnome, Halfling, Human, and Orcish.
But you can also create you own ancestries and backgrounds. You just create a new item with the ancestry or background type and fill out the configuration sheet. This will make it very easy to create custom ancestries and backgrounds.
Selecting options is a bit wonky. For example, clicking on ancestry pulls up the compendium for ancestries and you can click on an ancestry and read out it. But I see no way to apply the ancestry from the article itself. You have to drag the ancestry from the compendium onto the character sheet. Hopefully, in the future, they will develop a character builder feature that will step you through the character-creation process a la DnD Beyond.
Adding ancestries and backgrounds automatically updates other stats like abilities, defenses, resistances, skills, etc.
While there are warnings, such as "you may not advance to level 1 until you have finished all character creation steps", there is nothing on the character sheet that steps you through those steps. You need to have the character-creation journal entry open to figure that out. That's not exactly "consistently automated mechanics" at least when it comes to character creation.
I find the reliance on hyperlinks tiresome. Step two of character creation is to spend 9 Ability Points on your Ability Scores. But you have to click on the hyperlink for "Ability Scores" to read what they are. [Update, not true. The abilities are listed and defined in this section, just collapsed.] You can't click on the character sheet itself to pull up a tool tip or article explaining the stat on the sheet. Not a huge deal, as searching through the compendium is easy enough, just more clicks than should be needed in a digital character sheet.
As you spend your Ability Points on your ability scores, the other stats automatically update.
Next you have 2 skill points to spend on a selection of 16 skills organized into groups of four under four categories:
- Exploration Skills
- Awareness
- Pathfinding
- Stealth
- Survival
- Knowledge Skills
- Arcana
- Religion
- Naturalism
- Society
- Social Skills
- Deception
- Diplomacy
- Intimidation
- Mercantilism
- Technical Skills
- Beastcraft
- Tradecraft
- Medicine
- Performance
So these seem definitely made for a fantasy game. There is nothing built into the rules or system to create your own skills, remove or rename any.
Next you select talents. Clicking the "open talent tree" took some time to load, so I was confused at first on how to spend my talent points. I found the talent tree to be confusing at first, but basically it is just like a video game like skyrim or the witcher. What made it confusing to me is that it is not very responsive, there is a lot of lag between when you click on something and the content loads. With a bit of patience, however, it was pretty straight forward to select my talents.
Basically, these work like feats but on an advancement tree. My only concern about this mechanic is whether you'll be able to make your own feats. Seems like the talent tree interface will make this difficult. Oh...okay, no, you CAN create your own talents and tie it to the talent tree. The talent tree needs more polish in that they use cody like references such as int(0)b. Also, when creating a custom talent, it is not readily obvious what you should be selecting in the config option. You'll need to refer to instructional material. Also, the json code field for actions doesn't bode well for non-technical users.
Next you select equipment. Rules for starting equipment are have not be released yet. So for playtesting you just select whatever you want. Basically drag weapons, armor, etc. from the compendium to your character sheet. The system only provides weapons and armor at this time. There are no general equipment available at this time (e.g. rope, torches, etc.).
Once you have done all of this, you advance to level 1. Doing this locks all of your choices, so you shouldn't do this until you are sure you are happy with your selections.
Note that there are no classes in this system. You build your character concept by upgrading or selecting new talents and skills and increasing abilities. Personally, I like this. You can basically create whatever character concept you want, especially with the support for creating custom ancestries, backgrounds, and talents.
Now that I have a character, I'll have to do some testing of combat and skills tests and see how the automations work out of the box without any community mods applied.
foundryvtt.com
