The Joys of Javascript

Probably the single most useful tool I have for my 3e games, outside of the core rulebooks themselves, is my auto-calculating Character Form. Originally, this came from the Mad Irishman, although I've done a fair amount of work since then updating the sheet (to fix some errors and omissions, to incorporate some of my house rules, and to auto-calculate a few things that hadn't previously been done). It really is lovely.

However, there are a couple of things about the sheet that I don't really like, but don't have the ability to correct. The sheet actually predates the release of the "Expanded Psionics Handbook" but does include psionics. When putting the sheet together, the Mad Irishman made his best guess as to what the rules would look like, and didn't get them quite right. Unfortunately, while I can edit the Javascripts on the form, and so fix some of the calculations, I can't edit the form itself to eliminate the unnecessary elements.

(The Mad Irishman does provide some extremely nice 'fixed' sheets, but these don't exist in form, um, form.)

Where I hit a major snag when developing Nutshell, or even when applying some of the fixes that I think would really help 3e along (such as a reduced skill list) is that this will necessitate the creation of an all-new character sheet, and then a lot of work turning that into an auto-calculating form. Maybe I've become spoiled, but I really don't want to go through that!

(Especially after having just spent several hours this weekend changing the skill calculations from 3e style to Pathfinder style, and so eliminating the 'half rank' fix from the sheet, and adding an auto-calculate of the +3 bonus that Pathfinder gives for having a rank in a class skill. Acrobat makes this a long, slow, tedious process, such that every skill needs done separately, with a new cell inserted, reformated, set to 'hidden', and the calculation script inserted. That last is a copy-and-paste job, so it's quite quick... and prone to errors.)

Still, the upshot is that having done all this work, I now have a much better understanding of Acrobat's version of Javascript... and I also have a much nicer auto-calculating form.