(and one of my very good friends Erik Mona)
I am going to become filthy rich, buy Greyhawk and gift it to Mona so he can create amazing material for it! I love his work!
(and one of my very good friends Erik Mona)
At this point, would it be permissible to continue to develop the sheet personally? Never feeling the need to bother with the headache before, since the announcement I've begun to fix a few bugs and add the rest of the XGtE content to the sheet so that my players can continue to use it with the campaign they are currently starting. I'm not trying to distribute this, but I don't want to step on any toes either.
How would one begin doing this? I would like to at least add the parts of the characters I'm running. I work in a psuedo programming position (small scripts), so I can likely figure out the structure needed - just not sure where to start with this.
It's not like it's difficult to calculate anything in 5e. Ability score + proficiency bonus, if proficient. This is one of the easiest to work out editions since 2e.Oh man. I've been using Orc Pub2 for awhile now and it's a great resource, but they got taken down too a few months ago. I didn't realize this excel sheet was a good resource too. How do people make characters these days? Are we back to calculating everything by hand now?
I hear people say "Well ForgedAnvil's sheet just gave you all the information that WotC worked hard and spent money to develop! They need to be able to sell the product!" I already own the books. Everyone I know who uses the sheet also owns the books. You know why? It's hard to pick your character out from a drop down list if you don't already know what they are. You don't know classes, races, backgrounds, feats, spells, items, and archetypes right out the gate, and looking through them using just the character sheet is cumbersome. It's not designed to replace the books, it's designed to make your sheet look professional and clean after you've made all those decisions, usually after picking them out using the books. Make no mistake, The very existence of this sheet has helped promote and sell 5e. And they just went and killed not only this valuable tool, but every bit of goodwill surrounding it.
This sheet was a great resource, you did t even have to buy the books to use it which might be why the C&D came along. I'm not surprised it did, I'm mostly surprised at how long it took WotC.It's not like it's difficult to calculate anything in 5e. Ability score + proficiency bonus, if proficient. This is one of the easiest to work out editions since 2e.
Except you really don't need the books. The basic rules and this sheet really does give you all you need. I've had players that didn't own the books use this sheet to figure everything out.As the quote above states... You will still need the books to read about the individual races, classes, backgrounds and a host of other information, as you will need refer to the books to know what you are selecting to assist you in creating the character you want. It doesn't matter if 5th edition is the easiest to use/ work out since 2nd edition, this CS offered the community a clean looking character sheet AND it provided additional information that the WotC CS doesn't offer. Those that used the CS really enjoyed it. I understand WotC wanting to protect their material and not wanting people profiting off of it, but Forge offered it up free of charge. Personally, I don't care for the CS that WotC created. This is just my $.02.
Except you really don't need the books. The basic rules and this sheet really does give you all you need. I've had players that didn't own the books use this sheet to figure everything out.
I know 1 who did, others did not and even if they download or buy the PHB to better understand classes, they were getting everything else as well. Certainly no one cared to get SCAG but this builder gave them all of the options that were in it. Before the c&d they would have also gained all of the subclasses and spells in Xanathar's. As much as it sucks to lose this excellent resource, I agree with WotC's decision.But I bet they torrented a pdf version of the books so WOTC still isn't making an extra sale. People are going to buy or not buy the books irregardless of 3rd party tools.