Character Sheet Damage

This is now twice today that I have saved edits to my character and find half of it is GONE. This is second time today. This really sucks having to try to reproduce info.

Hey Gene,

Is it the same fields? Random? Any info, including the characters you had trouble with can help me find if there's an issue.

It is a custom character sheet. I saved it and then looked at it and half or more of the character is missing like as if I marked it and deleted it. So I set up a test character sheet and copy the code that was missing, but I lost the data in the fields. Well, this again happened an in a different spot half or so of the character sheet was deleted. And again, a make a copy blank character and copied the missing code.

Both times I was editing and adding new info to the character sheet. I never marked the latter half or edited the info in it which is what was deleted both times. Total mystery when the latter half of the character sheet vanished twice. I wasn't even working in that area of the character. All my editing work was on the upper part of the character.

The character is "Huerago The Russian" and back then it was originally "Fate" as starting character sheet for a "Fate Core" game. Later it was renamed. One disappearance of the code occurred when I was changing the character to the library function. The first time was during general editing.

Are you by any chance setting the field content inside the edit->preview? I know that leads to loss of the fillable field changes.

If you see this while editing the fillable fields, it will not be saved.

I use custom sheets semi often.

This character sheet damage that I received was just after the header Skills on the character sheet. Everything after that was destroyed. That is the damages both times. So just over half the character sheet was missing.

I have never experienced this problem before, and I edit character sheets daily. But twice in an hour time period was bad for damages.
[abilities="Notes"][/spoiler]

I have not been able to replicate this. Neither with my own characters (with complex sheets) nor with the character sheet code you posted.

Did it only happen those two times? Have you been able to successfully edit characters since then?

Were all your problems with the same character sheet? Can you post the sheet ID number or a link to the sheet.

It happened twice out of what 20 times. I do a lot of editing here and there. hasn't happened since or before then. Hopefully not again.

I'll have a look at your sheet, see if there's a coding error.

Qralloq I'm not keen on code. I didn't create that sheet. I always have troubles trying to modify or edit such. Since other in the group are using the exact same code, it leads me to think the system hates me. And I still don't pay the Dice Lord enough ...

It doesn't look you answered TheGenerator above. Are you perhaps editing the sheet on "Preview" mode? If so, changes won't save.

I never used the Preview function. I added data in normal mode and editing mode. Code was only changed in editing mode. One loss was noted after I just did the library function. But the library function was after doing some data editing so it could have occurred then and was only noted when I did the library function.

Case closed! It was those damned Dice Lords. I have consulted the sacred scrolls and found this:
Oh for their wrath shall fall upon ye through ill fortune and lost data

Jokes aside, this is a very strange issue that I also have not encountered. :/ Sorry to hear you are having such troubles, GeneCortess.

Nothing in the logs to lead me astray yet, but I'll keep trying to find something.

Grrr. I just lost most of my items area while saving the character doing edits. This is on a standard 5e character sheet. I was saving it and it removed almost all of my items area! This is a major pain as I had considerable info stored there.

I had just completed that 'items area' and was updating the 'weapons area' and it KILLED my 'items area' that I wasn't even editing at the time! Noticeable when I went back to make sure I had all the weapons listed.

Oh my god. I just now realized it wiped out almost my entire 'Notes' area. My character just got wasted!!! EVERYTHING is gone!

Character is "Sedaris of the Sea". or at least was.

That was HOURS of work in that character sheet.

This is now the third time I have noted the system nibbling on my characters. This time I'm not sure that I can reproduce what was damaged.

I'm so sorry for what you're going through. I'm gonna keep looking, and if anyone else has been experiencing issues, I'd love to hear about it. I can't think of any code that would alter a section you aren't working on, and it makes me worry maybe you have an extension that's interacting poorly with the site? I used to have an extension that restored forms that I left without submitting, but after a while, if my browser was lagging, it would take effect after I had already started entering data into the form. I wonder if something similar is happening? Regardless, I've been trying to reproduce this on and off.

The only html that I was using was "[b]" and "[color=?]. I really didn't need much of anything else for creating a character since I was using a premade 5e character sheet. If you look at the damages they actually started in the middle of a word. It has all the appearance of the system deciding that was enough and just sliced off the rest. The break looks random and not related to the content.

If you look at the size of the "items" area and the "Note" are you can see that both are relatively the same size. It is like it decided that was enough and remove everything else beyond that. It is as if the max memory area was changed and butched it. Strange that it did it to two sections and not one. And the one section "Note" wasn't even being worked on. Notable that in the first two times butching that damages was always on the later parts of the character sheet and not the first parts.

All work at the time was in the "Weapons" area and "item" area. I had completed the "items" area which had a ton of the above html and entering in the "weapons" from it which had no html in it. No work was being done in the "Note" area which has lots of the above html as it was extensively long. I would say it was a good 10 or so pages long. It is now about 10 lines long. The "Items" area was a good 2 or 3 pages long as it contained other information at the time.

It might help to review the size of each to give you a number for damages. I have not edit further since the butch job happened so you can see it the same as I did when it happened. If you have a previous copy of "Sedaris of the Sea" that would be great. Any previous copy would be much better than what I have left right now.

I'm really getting afraid to work with this. Losing hours of unreplaceable data is hard. First two time on that other character there wasn't much of a loss, but this time it was hours of work lost as it was a major butching.

Last time the butching might have been size area too but it did not appear to me as it did this time. Both cases neither had any extensive html used as i don't know of any. The butchering the first two times was also in the middle of words and not content related. Only thing to note is an lots of "[b]" and "Color=?" html is used. Well over 20+ times each in the "items" area but no other html used.

The butching on the first two was not on a standard 5e character sheet so it also had an extensive amount of odd html which was not present in the premade one. In both cases the amount and type of html I used is about the same that I have done for all my many characters. Each has hours of time put into them.

Considering the years I had done this and fairly much the same each time for characters, I would say the new code is the villain.

Also noted that the basic 5e character sheet is alter from what it was before. The skills section has changed. Pain to have to had enter each skill and you can't copy and paste. The listing has been butched. No idea why the basic 5e character sheet has been altered. This is a pain since I predominately use that 5e basic character sheet.

That is a scary situation to be in.

Maybe you can copy/paste your work into a text editor? Then you won't lose it if this happens again. This only works for the textarea fields and not the 'special areas' of the character sheets (Strengh/Dex/...), but it sounds like those are where you are seeing the problem, and filling in the numbers again is not too onerous (let us know if you have issues with the number fields as well, since that could help us track down the cause).

Using a text editor rather than typing on the website could also give you other benefits. A nice editor can do all sorts of things for you, like good search/replace, highlighting your bbCode and displaying error message (for unclosed tags, or whatnot). These can make the extra step worth the effort of editing in another place and then copy/pasting each time.

Nice thought vagueGM but considering I do a lot of editing and using html characters, text editors don't understand that. I like using html stuff to highlight my work. And a lot of extra works since it is supposed to be available without a third-party editor.

I notice that you are using "custom sheet bbcode" inside a built-in sheet (D&D5e).

For example,

Code:

[_=1/1] Superiority Die 1d6

Looks like:
Superiority Die 1d6

I'm not sure if the "custom sheet" codes are meant to be used with the built-in sheets, so that might lead to unexpected errors.

I don't know if that is what caused the problem, but it might be.

Does anyone have experience using custom sheet codes in built-in sheets? I just tested this instance (the checkbox) in isolation and it seems to work (although the state of the check is never saved if clicked, similar to when used in a post), but it could be an interaction with other parts of the sheet that are now gone or it was another custom sheet code that led to the problem.

For now, if you are using a built-in sheet, I would stick to the standard bbcode that is available in the post menu:

I think you're right, Chalrytharendir. I never considered anyone doing that.

Fields change the underlying custom character BB code when you save a value. But there has to a custom sheet to change. I suspect it's the same as fields not being saved in posts.

Custom sheets were developed only for custom games. It was only when people showed me how flexible they were that I started using them for 5e, but I don't try to mix the two technologies. I consider non-custom sheets as deprecated for my games.