Man, the Characters page just continues to compound on bad decision after bad decision because they refuse to accept they made a bad choice and go back to the old method of importing and exporting. (also, the name is SOOO CONFUSING when trying to search for anything related to this system or or character sheets, or other issues. could've easily named it "Vault 2.0" or something other than just "Characters"). Roll20 should also remember that there's a LOT of players who play in systems like Adventurers League which does not just have characters only being used in one Roll20 room for the life of the character sheet, and often get sent to many different games and use their character sheets very differently. Initial Problem: Exporting a character from the "Characters" page would delete it from the "Characters" page, possibly deleting the ONLY copy of a character, hoping that the export worked (which is doesn't always), or the DM didn't accidentally delete it. Roll20's Solution : Remove GM's ability to edit access to a character sheet AND making it so that any character imported to Characters is now FOREVER LOCKED to that system by creating a "synchronized" version of the character sheet across games and Characters page. Why This Doesn't Work : First off, not being able to edit access to a character sheet as a GM removes their ability to have control of their game and how they present it to their players. There may be a situation where a GM (with players' consent) needs to temporarily remove access to the character sheet (maybe there's a body swap or need to hide character info from the player). This sucks as a GM to not have full control of your own game, and now be handcuffed because of this new system. Secondly, because of the way a character sheet that's been exported/copied from the Characters page is now locked to the player's account and is synchronized across games or the Characters page, it means that once a character sheet begins using the Characters system, it can NEVER be removed from that system without it (and all copies) being completely deleted. There are A LOT of players who prefer to keep their character sheets inside a Roll20 game that they've created/are GMs of, which allows them more complete access and use of the character sheet. They would use the old Character Vault to import from these games, export to the game they were going to use that character to play in. Update the sheet, import it back to the Character Vault, and then export it back to their own game. Kind of clunky, but it worked clearly and reliably and the players and GMs continued to have full control. However, now if I have a character sheet in a Roll20 game (that I created, am GM of, and have Pro subscriber features), and I use the Characters page to import them and then export to another game, that character is now forever locked to the Characters page and can never be unlinked from it in a Roll20 game. If I update the character sheet in the other game, or back in the Characters page, and then export it back to my original Roll20 game, I cannot remove the Journal or Edit access on the character sheet (as GM of the game, even though I am ALSO the OWNER of the sheet). I also cannot remove it from the Characters page without also having the character sheet in my Roll20 game removed. This also applies if I make a duplicate of the character sheet in my Roll20 room. If I make a duplicate, then remove the character from Characters, it deletes it from Characters, and removes the character sheet from the Roll20 game room, but it does leave the duplicate character sheet...however...that sheet is still locked to the Character system, and the Journal & Edit access still cannot be removed. (interesting bug report: the duplicate character sheet in this instance, when you click "Edit" on it as GM, the "Remove from Game" button no longer works and can only be deleted by right-clicking on the sheet in the journal and selecting "Delete Item"). So the updated version of this character sheet can now ONLY be the Characters locked version, and I cannot keep an unlinked version of the character sheet in my Roll20 game. This just continues the trend of removing full control of your own character sheets or Roll20 games that this whole debacle of a system has created. Currently the only way to make sure you have a copy of a character sheet that is updated, and is not linked to the Characters system, is to ONLY EVER update the copy that you keep in your original Roll20 game, never updating the one being used to play in other games, or updating the character in the Characters system, and just deleting the copy from Characters and the game you played in. How To Fix : 1) Give GMs back the full control of Journal/Edit access of ALL sheets in their games. 2) Allow character sheets to be unlinked from the Characters system, (which means there could be a duplicate copy of a character sheet in the Characters page, and in Roll20 game(s) that are not synchronized). This way players can have unlinked backups in a Roll20 game separate from the Characters system, or can delete characters from Characters and still have their updated copy in their Roll20 game. Yes this would break the "synchronization" across all sheets if they choose to "unlink" the character sheet in a Roll20 game, but it gives the player full control of how they store, edit, and transfer their own character sheets, instead of Roll20 forcing these not fully-thought out systems on it's members, or making them do much more work to maintain their characters by having to find workarounds of the system.
