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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lexeme" data-source="post: 5807321" data-attributes="member: 6679682">The WotC 4e Character Builder has a great user interface, and I find it a pleasure to use.  While I really enjoy using Hero Lab for Pathfinder, the UI is definitely not as user friendly.  I have experience watching my wife attempt to create characters with both.Hero Lab has a number of places where you have to do unintuitive things like click labels to bring up pop-up menus that have options like "Add," "Add and Close," and "Close," which while powerful for an advanced user, can be confusing for novices.  That would really summarize my experience with Hero Lab, in general: powerful, advanced, and sometimes complex.None of that really gets to the point, though.  I think folks saying that Paizo should steer clear of first-party character builders simply because either WotC struggled with it or they're happy with Hero Lab (or PCGen or whatever) are being a bit shortsighted.New players don't often go looking beyond first-party for add-ons to their experience until already moderately advanced players.  I have (anecdotal) experiences with new folks who got into 4e, love the character builder, and rely on the entire experience that WotC put together.  They've never heard of Hero Lab, and those that don't subscribe to Insider just do everything by hand.Also, just because WotC struggled doesn't mean Paizo would.  There were a lot of things that contributed to the problems Wizards had with D&DI.I'm definitely not saying Paizo should devote the time and money into a bunch of online tools. I think there is something to be said about sticking to your companies core strengths, but objectively, despite all of the missteps and issues, Insider promises a lot for Wizards - consistent revenue, consistent branding, and a controlled experience.  Those aren't all benefits for gamers, obviously, but really, their Character Builder is pretty sweet. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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