Has lack of an insider account kept you from playing 4E?

[Peraion Graufalke]

My single biggest issue with the character generator is that I have no control over the format or layout of the character sheet. I don't like power cards, I can make a simple Microsoft Word document on one or two pages that contains everything I need in a very compact space. I don't have to worry about losing a power card during the week or eat up my ink cartridge printing a bunch of blank lines, much less five pages every time my character levels up. I might consider using the character builder if it ever allows for any degree of control over the layout and formatting. But this is a bit off-topic.

[sblock]You can unlock the panels, move/hide/delete/restore/resize them, edit some entries (Race/Class Features, Feats), and switch between Portrait and Landscape format. Regarding the power cards, you can hide those you don't need (right-click the card -> Hide). Just try it out; it won't blow up your computer.

If you want to use power cards, I recommend using CutePDF to export the character sheet as a pdf file, and then using a pdf editor to get rid of the pre-calculated numbers so you can fill those in yourself with a pencil. You can also delete unneeded lines, black spaces etc.[/sblock]

 

[Dausuul]

You can unlock the panels, move/hide/delete/restore/resize them, edit some entries (Race/Class Features, Feats), and switch between Portrait and Landscape format. Regarding the power cards, you can hide those you don't need (right-click the card -> Hide). Just try it out; it won't blow up your computer.

If you want to use power cards, I recommend using CutePDF to export the character sheet as a pdf file, and then using a pdf editor to get rid of the pre-calculated numbers so you can fill those in yourself with a pencil. You can also delete unneeded lines, black spaces etc.

Some of us hate power cards and want nothing to do with them. I don't generally have trouble remembering which powers I have and haven't used, and I can't stand having to keep track of a bazillion little bits of paper. (And yes, I've tried them.) I want my powers printed up on a single sheet, in a compact and easy-to-read format--like the power statblocks in the Player's Handbook, lined up in two neat columns in alphabetical order.

As far as I know, this cannot be done with the CB. You can fiddle with some of the details of the power cards, and you can choose to hide the ones with no useful information on them, but you're still stuck with the "card format" with its great chunks of white space and its distracting and confusing arrangement on the page. And I don't particularly want to have to do a lot of .PDF editing every time I update my character sheet.

In my case, I find the CB convenient enough to deal with the crappy layout. But it's still a pain.

 

[Dykstrav]

Here's the character sheet format that I personally use. Can Insider do anything in this neighborhood?

 

[Lord_Blacksteel]

I'm curious about those using it to "check the math" etc. - what did you do for 3rd edition? 2nd? 1st? Pathfinder? How about if your group decided to play Hero or GURPS or M&M? I like the character builder but the idea of requiring it because you can't trust the players to make a character correctly...I don't know about that. If you're playing in a home campaign it's not a tournament or a competition - how much does it matter if they forget a modifier somewhere? It's their problem and will probably come up fairly quickly in play if it's important. Plus if I'm running a game I like to check sheets periodically to see what my PC's have and I as DM should be able to notice something if it's a major problem.

Insider/CB is a useful tool, sure but - I run a 4th ed game and I would never require anyone to use a computer to build a character. Nor would I require it for any other game. I just don't think the benefit is there that some are claiming.

 

[Peraion Graufalke]

Here's the character sheet format that I personally use. Can Insider do anything in this neighborhood?

Nope. Should be an option, but the programmers are too busy with other stuff, I guess.

 

[Obryn]

I like the first two pages of the Character Builder sheet pretty well, though I wish it used fewer big black blocks. I'd much rather have a lighter, cleaner version with more whitespace. Nevertheless, it's functional - especially, IMO, in Landscape format.

I personally can't stand power cards. It's a cheap and easy way to print out power text, but I'd rather use a summary sheet, too. I've created my own, which I'll go ahead and post (again) for one of the PCs in the party. I've been offering to put them together for all of the players in my group; I think it speeds up play and cuts down on clutter.

-O

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

This is really a two-part issue to me. First of all... Honestly, I feel that relying on a computer to do things for you is a bad thing. For some people, it enables them to shirk responsibility, or at least, indulge in sloth or ignorance. I sort of got turned off to the character builder when I had a player still playing their character at second level when the party level was at fifth--because the player assumed that I was able to update their experience totals through Insider and the application would notify them when they leveled up. Despite the fact that I didn't have Insider at all, it was still construed as "my fault" because I didn't tell someone that I can't give them experience on Insider. But that's only one extreme incident among many...

Wow, that's just...wow. How old was this player?

I haven't had any really bad CB experiences, but I have very mixed feelings about it too. I use house rules, and the CB has a way of passive aggressively making that more difficult.

Most of my group really likes the CB, and one guy really should use it, but I feel like it's a crutch that I myself am better off without.

A 4e Heresy

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

I'm curious about those using it to "check the math" etc. - what did you do for 3rd edition? 2nd? 1st?

For 1st & 2nd we always dreamed of having some kind of PROPER character generator and tracker but never came even close. Everything was done by hand with pen, paper, and character sheets that we would design ourselves on a TYPEWRITER, draw a few lines with a ruler, and then photocopy.

3rd Edition came with character creator on CD tucked in a sleeve inside the back cover. Not the ultimate, in fact slow and limited to 1st level characters - but you could at least create any 1st level character with it and after that just had to transfer data to a new character sheet (and the sheets it printed up were gawdawfully slow to print, wasted tons of space, weren't well organized, but hey - you're ready to play in 10 minutes.) The limitations of that creator chafed but we managed just fine for a long while. Then we settled on PCGen when it came along. Still not the best you could ask for but it worked, and we LOVED it.

Then something interesting happened. One day we didn't have access at all to PCGen for reasons I now forget and which don't matter. The thing is that the players forgot ENTIRELY how to do something so simple as to level up their characters. They didn't know what to change, where to find the rules telling you what to change... They had become TOTALLY reliant on the software. Even calculating bonuses they had been relying completely on the software. They just read the total bonus but had no idea where this or that +1 came from or why.

I found that EXTREMELY enlightening and the incident was the beginning of what was a growing distaste for the complexity of a system that was SUPPOSED to be SIMPLER. In 1E/2E the rules may have been a hodge-podge of patchwork stuff that was unintuitive, but the thought of players being overwhelmed by the sheer volume of abilities of a high-level character was laughable. In 3E they may have streamlined those rules and made things intuitive but the higher level the characters the more complex the entire game became. That wasn't laughable - it was an unavoidable irritation that sucked fun out of the game.

Use of software for anything more than initial character creation is a dangerous crutch. We're not quite there yet but there IS a point where you may as well be playing a computer game rather than D&D if you can't live without the software to play it.

 

[ssampier]

You must spread XP around before giving to Dannyalcatraz again

[grognard]"You kids keep your ddi & CB off my LAN![/grognard]

*shakefist*

I don't know if its all newer players, but I bet newer players will gravitate to this in bigger numbers over time.

I hope I'm never in that group- keeping my PCs on a PDA or similar will be the extent of my use of electronics as a player.

Rotten kids, back in my day, we had to walk barefoot to school, uphill, both ways and we liked it.

*checks age, age < 30* I'll be going now....

 

[Festivus]

I'm curious about those using it to "check the math" etc. - what did you do for 3rd edition? 2nd? 1st? Pathfinder? How about if your group decided to play Hero or GURPS or M&M?

There is a generator out there for just about any system (Heroforge, Star Wars SAGA, etc). Leveling up in 4E is remarkably simple however, and doesn't really require a computer to see if something is wrong... except when you start to add in feats, magic items, class features, etc. For example, my level 10 rogue has Sly Flourish +21 vs AC with combat advantage... does that seem high to you? +5 for half level, +5 for dex bonus, +3 for weapon magic bonus, +3 for proficiency, +1 weapon expertise feat, +1 Rogue weapon talent, +2 combat advantage, +1 nimble blade feat.

It could be pretty easy to miss any one of those bonuses when figuring it out without the computer there to catch everything. While I can still do this on paper, why would I bother to when there is a computer there that can do it for me? It's not like computers are going to go away anytime soon.

Use of software for anything more than initial character creation is a dangerous crutch. We're not quite there yet but there IS a point where you may as well be playing a computer game rather than D&D if you can't live without the software to play it.

I don't get this either, "dangerous"? Really? In what way? If you are having fun playing it does it really matter how you arrive at that fun? The only way I could see this being even remotely dangerous to the hobby is if WoTC went to a pay to access model (which they don't have, you can download and use the software forever right now). If they went to that, something akin to Heroforge would arise and take it's place, and I think Wizards knows this.