Making a character ยท the first step, and what follows it

One Step at a Time

The first screen asks one question: which class. Nothing else is on it, and anyone who does not know the answer has a way out that does not require knowing any of the words.

When a step resolves it does not scroll and it does not navigate. The answered step shrinks to a line and rides to the top, and the next step rises into the space it left. The middle panel plays that movement on a loop.

Step one

Which class

Class
Barbarian
Bard
Cleric
Druid
Fighter
Monk
Paladin
Ranger
Rogue
Sorcerer
Warlock and Wizard below
Guide Me
A few questions, and we will narrow it down.

Twelve names and one button. No hit dice and no key ability, because nobody chooses a class by how much health it has, and a number printed on a card people cannot use yet is just noise. No name field either: naming is its own moment and it does not belong in front of the first real decision.

Between steps

The answered step rides up

Class
Barbarian
Bard
Cleric
Druid
Fighter
Monk
Paladin
Ranger
Rogue, Sorcerer, Warlock and Wizard below
Class Fighter Change
Abilities
STR−15++2
DEX−13++1
CON−14++2

plays on a loop

The class step does not disappear and it does not scroll away. It collapses to one line that keeps the answer visible with Change beside it, and the next step rises from underneath into the room that made. Going back is the same movement reversed, which is why the loop runs both ways.

Step two, landed

Now the abilities can mean something

Abilities
Class Fighter Change
12 Hit points
10 from the fighter's die, plus 2 for Constitution. Raise Constitution and this goes up while you watch.
STR−15++2
DEX−13++1
CON−14++2
INT−8+−1
WIS−12++1
CHA−10++0
Saves with this Fights with this
Standard array Point buy Type them All six placed

The hit die and the key ability appear here, where they change what you do next. A filled dot marks a save the class is proficient in, a brass diamond an ability it fights with, both read out of the class file. The heart shows what the class bought and says where the number came from.

What a class card cannot say yet

A card carries the class name and nothing else, because the class files store rules and no prose: there is no one-line description of how a barbarian plays, and no class art anywhere in the app. Both are content that would have to be written or drawn, so the card is honest rather than padded. Guide Me exists partly to cover that gap, since it can describe a way of playing without needing the class to describe itself.

Decisions taken to draw this, all of them open

Four steps are shown in the dots and the last two are unnamed. Standard array is drawn as the chosen method though no method has been ruled. The classes are alphabetical, which is a default and not a choice. Guide Me is drawn as a peer of the grid at the bottom of the first screen, on the reasoning that a person who needs it should not have to recognise a class name to find it.