As long as the thread has turned into a comparison discussion, here's what I'm looking for:
- Handles spell points and psionics
- Handles armor as DR (from UA)
- Handles weapon groups (from UA)
- Handles class defense (not from UA, more like Star Wars, but different math)
- Nice output sheet(s) (HeroForge is the measure, here -- must neatly fill the pages, but not overflow)
- Flexible enough to work with expansion, custom, or modified classes/PrCs
- Handles all the monsterous races, too.
- Ability to add new weapons, armor, feats, etc. or modify existing entries
- Good interface or mark-up language for doing the above
- Rule, character, and campaign files that are easy to manage and email.
PCGen is flexible enough to do a lot of the customization (I've actually gotten it to accept all my house rules), but the mark-up language is somewhat cumbersome. And doing anything significant definitely requires a text-editor. The output sheets are universally horrid, with columns jutting about unevenly, vast amounts of whitespace, and the occasional overflowing page. I'm pretty sure that I
could get a nice layout, with some creative use of tables/divs and styles, but I'm more interested in getting the rules functional. Getting just the right settings for the UI can be a pain, too. The features are all there, though, just a bit rough.
HeroForge was probably the easiest to use character generator -- for humanoids -- that I've seen. Every single person I know that used it found it to be almost completely intuitive. The character sheet was near perfection, too. Unfortunately, it was pretty bloated by the time you got extra rules in, made it nigh impossible to roll out updates to existing characters, and was prohibitive for players w/o high-speed Internet to email their characters. Making complex updates, like spell points, was probably more difficult than doing so in PCGen, too.
I haven't bought any tools, though I have tried several of the demos. In general, though, most seemed to have a clunky interface (which I will
not pay for) or not enough customization options. At least, that was my opinion last time I looked at a demo.
I'm excited about RPGX and RPGT, though. RPGX looks amazing. The interface promises to be superb, at least for players. And the character sheet is very attractive -- the weapon format annoys me, but the rest is outstanding. My main concern is that it won't handle psionics and skill points upon release. That'll come out in a couple of months. I'm also not entirely convinced that the system is as flexible as I'd like it, but the jury's still out on that -- I'm still hoping to find a way to do mathematic progressions of class features, rather than entering them in at each applicable level.
It's hard to say much about RPGT. The screen shots have looked okay, but haven't really shown anything of interest. Right now, I'm assuming that it'll be like PCGen, compiled from a different language, polished up, and using a non-text database. If it keeps the flexibility of PCGen and adds some polish, it could be the poop, though. Right now, it's pretty much vaporware, IMO.
