Electonic Aids, Gaming, and Third Party Publishers

[Belen]

I think a spreadsheet-based solution might be the best idea for a third party tool. Excel contains even the possibility to create masks for putting data in. I haven't looked too closely at Openoffice.org, but I suppose it will be similar, and as it's completely free, it would be the easiest solution. I think the main problem with these easy to use solution is that those files will be easy to copy, and many publishers might simply fear that they will lose sales because of this.

Well, if you take Heroforge as an example, then you have nothing to worry about. The feats are entered as requirements only. If you want to read the description, then you still need the book. The spell sheets that it generates only provides a barebone description of the spell and the page number where it resides in the PHB.