The Character Builder and House Rules

[Mika]

Take a look at the December 15th update -- it has taken some very nice first steps towards customization. Custom languages are now fully supported (except with certain backgrounds) as are deities (if you do not need to hook them up to any domain or "must worship X" abilities) and feats (assuming that they don't do anything that modifies your other stats).

 

[occam]

Take a look at the December 15th update -- it has taken some very nice first steps towards customization. Custom languages are now fully supported (except with certain backgrounds) as are deities (if you do not need to hook them up to any domain or "must worship X" abilities) and feats (assuming that they don't do anything that modifies your other stats).

Woo hoo!!

 

[MidrealmDM]

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

You can add customized class Daily power (sort of)
I've mentioned it in another post:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/5241203-post.html

You can give a custom power (sort of); on the Power Choices tab, at the bottom of the screen at the Power Choice Checklist, click the 'Houserule' icon it should add an extra power called 'Power Users Choice' Select that and then at the top of the screen, in the title bar for Power Choices, right-click the houserule Icon and select create custom element.

Enter the info you want for your racial power and click Add Custom.
The power will show up as a generic utility power, but it should work.

Alternatively you can go into Campaign settings, under custom rules, enter your racial power (you still have to save it as a power) and save it as part of your campaign.

Then, after adding 'Power Users Choice' you should be able to find the section labled 'Custom Powers' (scroll all the way down to the bottom of the list, and then back up just a bit, it appears near the bottom of the list right after the 'Cleric Encounter Powers') and the power should be there.

Another downside it that it doesn't do any calculations for you (attack, damage, etc), but since you are doing that anyway, at least this option will show a power card for the ability.

On the plus side it does include a parnethetical note showing your ability modifier. So if your character has a +2 Wisdom modifier and your power has the text "Wisdom modifier", the power card will show "Wisdom modifier (+2)"

 

[MidrealmDM]

I think we all agree that they should do it. It'll be good for everybody

I've e-mailed customer support a few times requesting changes, perhaps if more people do so it will become a higher priority.

 

[lonewolfdevel]

The CB is a great tool for running 4E in its "stock" configuration, but it still has significant limitations on customization. For those of you running games with a lot of house rules, consider taking a look at Hero Lab as an interim solution. The complete 4E data files are made available, so you can customize it in whatever way you see fit to support your game, even letting you add, change, and/or remove core mechanics. You can take the tool for a thorough test drive for free.

 

[ExploderWizard]

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?

The rest of the edition's natural life. (another couple years)

For the same reason that every rules "fix" is accepted and used-the system is too much of royal pain to be tracking down changes on a bunch of powers or writing out the effects of custom stuff by hand.