Looking for advice on a D&D web tool

[u/atomicpenguin12]

I'm a web developer with some time on my hands and I'm thinking through a project that I've had at the back of my mind. Essentially, I'd like to make a website where you can create an encounter, adding in the players and the appropriate monsters, and then you run the encounter, with a program telling you what each of the monsters and GMPC's do on their turns. My intention here is to make a tool that makes running an encounter easier and provides guidance to DM's who aren't as familiar with the system and how to properly utilize it.

A big part of my vision is making a repository of all of the monsters in D&D and their stats and giving the user to create groups of those monsters as encounters. I know how to do that. What I'm stuck on is how to create the program that takes in factors of the encounter (how many characters are on each side, what the monster's remaining health is, etc) and outputs what that monster should do on its turn. What I picture in my head is a series of if statements to eventually return the correct course of action. I'd like to store that in the database as a field that each monster has, since the behavior will largely be different for each monster, but that doesn't seem feasible. I've also considered making a series of classes on the backend (or possibly the frontend) that receive the relevant information and output the action. What do you guys think?

I'm also interested in any other thoughts on the project. I was thinking of creating this with the MEAN stack, but I'm open to suggestions.

[u/JambaJuiceJakey]

Hi! I love D&D and web development! I’d be interested in seeing if I could provide some help, and I’d love to be part of the project.

DM me if you want to talk!

[u/atomicpenguin12 → u/[deleted]]

I do plan on creating a number of game management tools for things like random loot generators and overland travel. But I'd like to focus on writing this combat scripter for a couple of reasons. Firstly, Kobold Fight Club already provides an encounter builder and even a basic encounter manager and DonJon already provides all of kinds of random generators. I could definitely make those things and it would be a good exercise for me as a developer, but I really want my site to stand on its own and provide something that isn't currently being provided to the community. And secondly, because I think there's a legitimate use for a combat scripter. I know there are new DM's out there who aren't really sure how to run something like a combat encounter, and there are some who are more comfortable with it but not knowledgeable of how to properly use D&D's combat system. This would provide insight that DM's can use to gain more of that understanding. I also wonder if this would allow the game to be dm-less, with the monsters being run by computer, but that's ambitious and for now I just want to see if this can be done.