4e / GSL The Character Builder and House Rules

[Kzach]

I'm a big tweaker.

And no, I'm not a crackhead.

By tweaking I mean that I constantly try to tweak the game to fit my personal preferences and that usually results in a lot of little houserules.

I'm at the stage now where a lot of the houserules I've been playing with are starting to mature into rules that I'm confident are balanced, reasonable and improve the game (to my preferences) and so I much prefer them to the standard rules.

The problem with this is that the more I want to include my house rules, the less useful the Character Builder becomes.

For instance, currently I have a house rule that replaces all racial ability bonuses with two floating +2 bonuses. Now I'm not arguing the merit of this house rule here, just stating that it is now quite awkward for me to make characters in the CB because it automatically assumes it's own rules and there is no option to get around that.

Now that's just a minor annoyance. I can still make characters with 'houseruled' bonuses and stats, but there are other rules that I'm starting to prefer and want to include in my games that the generator absolutely will not tolerate.

A good for instance is the mage class I've built to replace the weaksauce wizard build. Because my class adds a daily class feature as well as a class feature that mimics the cleric's channel divinity power, I now can't make up a mage at all. There is simply no way to include these powers other than as side notes somewhere on the character sheet.

My point is that as 4e begins to mature, whether there will be a lot of third party content or not (and it seems there won't ever be much), people WILL tweak their games. In fact, I'd wager that the majority of groups use bucketloads of houserules to tweak the system to their personal preferences.

And with this tweaking, the character builder becomes less and less of a useful tool. For now, it is a great tool that a lot of people use, but how long is that realistically going to last?

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I fear what will be happening is that a lot of people will avoid tweaking or add 3rd party material, instead of stop using the Character Builder.

My preference would be that the CB should be more customizable. They might really need a Race, a Power, Magic Item and possibly even Class generator. 3rd Parties should be able to create their own rules in a format readable by the Character Builder.

I think a lot of that would be technically possible - not necessarily for all possible ideas, but for a lot. The question is if it's worth WotC effort and money to do expand the CB to that aspect.

I wonder if the Campaign Tools will support this already a lot better - the monster generator for example could be a wonderful tool to allow third parties to publish their own monsters in a format useable in that tool. Of course, the question then is if there is a way to distribute their monster stats or character builder rules without giving their books away for free.

[wedgeski]

You're right, the CB has less utility for heavily house-ruled games, although I would question your assertion that "the majority of groups use bucketloads of houserules to tweak the system".

Ultimately I think the software needs to be expanded into a full suite of class design tools, and I can see it going there later in the 4E life-cycle. This will solve all of your problems in one fell swoop.

[Rel]

Even though I have a sizable list of house rules this hasn't been much of an issue for me thus far. Most of my house rules tend to be rather "global" such that they wouldn't be reflected in the CB anyway.

For example I did away with Milestones as written in favor of a more cinematic/quest driven method of handing out Action Points. But that has no bearing on the CB. Same thing with my ditching the normal skill system. In fact I usually delete the skills section on the character sheet and the players just (literally) cut and paste on the one that I did as a spreadsheet.

[catsclaw227]

I would love to see 3PP support with add-ins to the CB. If WOTC gets a small cut from each purchased add-in, forcing you to register the add-in (or something to help avoid piracy), then there may be a financial reason to design for and allow 3PP packs.

[Asmor]

Originally Posted by Kzach

A good for instance is the mage class I've built to replace the weaksauce wizard build. Because my class adds a daily class feature as well as a class feature that mimics the cleric's channel divinity power, I now can't make up a mage at all. There is simply no way to include these powers other than as side notes somewhere on the character sheet.

At the top of the list of your character's powers (not the list of available powers), there's a house rule icon. Click that to add a power slot.

Select that new power slot. At the top of the list of available powers, there's another house rule icon. Right click that and choose create custom element.

Not perfect, but gets the job done.

[Kzach]

Originally Posted by Asmor

At the top of the list of your character's powers (not the list of available powers), there's a house rule icon. Click that to add a power slot.

Select that new power slot. At the top of the list of available powers, there's another house rule icon. Right click that and choose create custom element.

Not perfect, but gets the job done.

Does it add a power card with all the abilities and weapons added in as well as the effect text?

Seriously man, did you think I wasn't aware of that button? It's friggin useless and there is little point in pointing it out so I'm at a loss as to understand why you did.

EDIT: we've addressed this post privately with the OP. Carry on. ~ PCat

Originally Posted by catsclaw227

I would love to see 3PP support with add-ins to the CB. If WOTC gets a small cut from each purchased add-in, forcing you to register the add-in (or something to help avoid piracy), then there may be a financial reason to design for and allow 3PP packs.

That would be awesome if they did that but I highly doubt they will.

[Fifth Element]

Originally Posted by Kzach

Does it add a power card with all the abilities and weapons added in as well as the effect text?

Seriously man, did you think I wasn't aware of that button? It's friggin useless and there is little point in pointing it out so I'm at a loss as to understand why you did.

So this is a complaining thread, not a discussing thread? Lighten up. Seems to me Asmor was trying to help. No reason to snap like that.

[Asmor]

Originally Posted by Kzach

Does it add a power card with all the abilities and weapons added in as well as the effect text?

No, it does not. As I said, it's not perfect, but it gets the job done. Having an actual power card is quite useful, even if it's just the name; it gives the power the same tangible representation as all the other powers. And it's got enough white space that it shouldn't be too hard to write in what you need by hand.

Seriously man, did you think I wasn't aware of that button?

Yes, frankly, I did. It's a common thing to miss (I myself never noticed that you could add power slots until someone pointed that out in a thread much like this one) and your reference to only being able to make notes about the power specifically made it seem as if you were unaware that you could do this.

[neuronphaser]

Originally Posted by Rel

Even though I have a sizable list of house rules this hasn't been much of an issue for me thus far. Most of my house rules tend to be rather "global" such that they wouldn't be reflected in the CB anyway.

For example I did away with Milestones as written in favor of a more cinematic/quest driven method of handing out Action Points. But that has no bearing on the CB. Same thing with my ditching the normal skill system. In fact I usually delete the skills section on the character sheet and the players just (literally) cut and paste on the one that I did as a spreadsheet.

I think this is an excellent critical-thinking exercise: can you look at a house-rule and find a way to make it "global," and thus not fear it being misrepresented in the CB?

Obviously everyone's different, but after years of being really nit-picky with my houserules, I finally realized that I could make so many of these changes "behind the screen," and thus the players and the tools like DDI don't have to see them. Axing a few feats is easy (just tell the players not to select those feats), but it's tough to do this across the board. If you can, though, that's often a much better way to do things so you don't invalidate people's rulebooks (i.e, their hard-earned money) and other resources.

[Filcher]

Originally Posted by Asmor

Yes, frankly, I did. It's a common thing to miss (I myself never noticed that you could add power slots until someone pointed that out in a thread much like this one)...

I, for one, have missed it up until now. I need to try it tonight.

[Intrope]

Originally Posted by Filcher

I, for one, have missed it up until now. I need to try it tonight.

As a quick note: when I try it, after creating the power slot and putting in a Custom Element I *also* have to 'Restore Hidden Power Cards' on the options menu, or else I don't see the custom element. The custom element doesn't compute anything, though.

[Nylanfs]

Yes I agree it needs to be more like PCGen

But in all seriousness, yes the CB needs to be must more customizeable than it is. I'm not talking about customized magic weapons, and feats or powers that are essentially just fluf text. Feta and Powers that actually work, alter your character have calculated rolls etc.


And as a side note, PCGen just released a 4e starter kit that users can use to create their own data for 4e from. Plus add in any 3pp stuff they want. Note it's only guaranteed to work with 5.16.0+

[Kishin]

Originally Posted by Kzach

Does it add a power card with all the abilities and weapons added in as well as the effect text?

Seriously man, did you think I wasn't aware of that button? It's friggin useless and there is little point in pointing it out so I'm at a loss as to understand why you did.

Maybe *gasp* he was trying to be legitimately helpful?

So maybe, flipping out on him in such a fashion was crass and completely uncalled for?

[arscott]

Man, I did not know that button was there. While I'd love fully editable power cards (and, of course the ability to include custom-designed character sheets), the ability to add powers that show up with their own cards is pretty damned sweet.

[fissionessence]

I posted a thread about this a couple months ago (WotC: Character Builder's effect on Third Party Publishers).

I totally agree with the OP this this is a legitimate concern; it's an issue that needs to be resolved if 3PPs are going to 'flourish' in a DDI world. I guess we disagree as to the effect of the problem. I think people are less likely to abandon the character builder for their house rules than they are to abandon their house rules for the character builder.

And if feedback in my old thread is any indication, that's already the trend that's started.

~

[DEFCON 1]

See I don't think it's a concern for WotC at all. The percentage of people who have signed up for D&D Insider for only the CB (and have no use for the Compendium, Encounter Builder, Dragon and Dungeon) is probably extremely small. And of those people, the percentage who have so many house-rules that a non-3PP-customizable CB is mostly useless to them is also extremely small.

Those are the only people who would ever decide to dump D&D Insider for that reason. And I would venture to guess that the incredible headache it would be for WotC to open up their programming code to any and all 3PPs or regular players to do wholesale modifications to the Builder, the power cards, and the charsheet, while trying to maintain it realatively bug-free, is not something they probably want to deal with.

If that small percentage of a small percentage feels that a non-customizable CB is a make-or-break issue on whether they maintain a D&D Insider subscription, I have a feeling that they probably will just say "thanks for trying it, hope you enjoyed it while you did."

[Baron Opal]

Can you directly tweak a data file? I'm not much of a programmer, but I seem to remember that can be an option in other cases.

It is possible under the GSL to make a PC Gen-like program? Or would you have to do an OGL-backdoor?

[Shroomy]

Originally Posted by fissionessence

I think people are less likely to abandon the character builder for their house rules than they are to abandon their house rules for the character builder.

And if feedback in my old thread is any indication, that's already the trend that's started.

I pretty much agree with this statement, and I would think that the percentage of players involved in a campaign with a significant amount of houserules and/or 3PP content (moreso than the CB can currently handle) is also very small (I would say that players in "official content only" and RPGA campaigns comprise the largest percentage of CB users). Given that WoTC has to update the CB on a monthly basis with their own content (which often includes new mechanics), why would they spend their limited resources on making major enhancements to its houseruling capabilites? IMO, we'll probably see minor, incremental updates to expand the houserule functionality.

[Insight]

Here's a relatively common issue that I am having with the Character Builder. What if you don't use the D&D, Eberron, or FR deities and have replaced them with your own? What if you want to create deity-specific feats (such as Channel Divinity feats)? Can't currently be done.

I'd really like to see a Character Builder that allows you to create your own feats, powers, and items. Mark it 'houseruled' for all I care. It stymies those of us who do like to tinker.

My players are all addicted to the Character Builder and frankly, I like it that way. But I need to be able to customize it more than what's available right now.