brehobit
Explorer
Ok, as the title implies, this is something of a character generator/DDI rant, but bare with me.
I only recently picked up DDI and I've now made a number of characters in the 1-18 level range. The software is slow and eats my fairly new computer, but I'm fine with that. It's slow and hangs for short times on occasion, and I'm okay with that. But the output is very difficult to actually use. And that's a problem. I know most of you can use it. Heck, I can use it. It's just annoying from time to time to see unarmed attack numbers on powers that don't have attacks, or seeing other random things that don't make sense. Plus it lacks things like a listing of your various resistances (which get fairly common at higher levels for some builds).
But the biggest problem is that it's just so busy with stuff you don't need and occasionally lacking important information. I'm including a single monk power card from my level 6 monk. It's something of a mess (I can't figure out how to inline it, sorry) in that it lists a whole bunch of attack options I'll likely never use but leaves out the target of the move power.
I find it nearly impossible to use these power cards at the table and others I play with seem to either do okay with them or can't use them at all.
If WoTC is going to attract people to D&D with the essentials line, they need to clean up the character builder (and lots of other parts of DDI, but they are less important).
I personally don't care for the cards nature of the character generator output. I used, and liked, cards for the Bo9S, but here they seem too much with too many details. I'd prefer a simpler, check-box based design that actually figures the math and fixes the wording (I really don't like things like "5 plus your wisdom ability modifier (+4)", or "half your strength ability modifier (+5)"; just say 9 or 2.
I'm curious A) if people tend to agree that the character format scares people away and B) what folks think would be optimal for a character sheet. I'm including a sheet I built for that same monk as my thought of the _direction_ WoTC should go. Simpler to use, probably harder to generate when you start to look at the details.
Thoughts?
I only recently picked up DDI and I've now made a number of characters in the 1-18 level range. The software is slow and eats my fairly new computer, but I'm fine with that. It's slow and hangs for short times on occasion, and I'm okay with that. But the output is very difficult to actually use. And that's a problem. I know most of you can use it. Heck, I can use it. It's just annoying from time to time to see unarmed attack numbers on powers that don't have attacks, or seeing other random things that don't make sense. Plus it lacks things like a listing of your various resistances (which get fairly common at higher levels for some builds).
But the biggest problem is that it's just so busy with stuff you don't need and occasionally lacking important information. I'm including a single monk power card from my level 6 monk. It's something of a mess (I can't figure out how to inline it, sorry) in that it lists a whole bunch of attack options I'll likely never use but leaves out the target of the move power.
I find it nearly impossible to use these power cards at the table and others I play with seem to either do okay with them or can't use them at all.
If WoTC is going to attract people to D&D with the essentials line, they need to clean up the character builder (and lots of other parts of DDI, but they are less important).
I personally don't care for the cards nature of the character generator output. I used, and liked, cards for the Bo9S, but here they seem too much with too many details. I'd prefer a simpler, check-box based design that actually figures the math and fixes the wording (I really don't like things like "5 plus your wisdom ability modifier (+4)", or "half your strength ability modifier (+5)"; just say 9 or 2.
I'm curious A) if people tend to agree that the character format scares people away and B) what folks think would be optimal for a character sheet. I'm including a sheet I built for that same monk as my thought of the _direction_ WoTC should go. Simpler to use, probably harder to generate when you start to look at the details.
Thoughts?