OrcPub Is An Unofficial Online Character Generator for Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition

wow...so is this going to stay up or be C&Ded... any bets...

 

[Over the Hill Gamer]

This is a nice site and was created by a fan. With a little more work it could be a professional product available for sale at the WotC website. It would greatly improve my in-game experience if I could rapidly create, and have availabe at my fingertips stats for PCs, NPCs, monsters and spells. While 4e had many well-documented flaws, the cool part about it was the digital backup and the lack of constant page turning for DMs and players alike.

 

[red-orc]

So I've played every version but 4e. I've heard mention that the character generator was awesome, but flawed. Does anyone care to elaborate about what was great about it and what was flawed? That would really help a lot.

 

[ExploderWizard]

So I've played every version but 4e. I've heard mention that the character generator was awesome, but flawed. Does anyone care to elaborate about what was great about it and what was flawed? That would really help a lot.

I really liked the 4E tools- until they went online only using craptastic MS Silverlight as the interface. If a tool cannot be used without being online it has little value to me. I don't mind needing updates and patches via download, but I prefer to own a copy of the tools if I'm paying for it.

 

[red-orc]

I really liked the 4E tools- until they went online only using craptastic MS Silverlight as the interface. If a tool cannot be used without being online it has little value to me. I don't mind needing updates and patches via download, but I prefer to own a copy of the tools if I'm paying for it.

Thanks for your response ExploderWizard, I will have to keep that in mind about the offline tools. I'll investigate the options.

 

[Quatermane]

What really made the DDI 4e character creation tool worth subscription was the full inclusion of all character relevant content, updated for errata, in one tool.
This included character aspects or skills relevant to specific worlds (Forgotten Realms, Dark Sun, etc) as content for those worlds was released. Even new character types and content from Dragon magazine was included.
This was particularly relevant as 4e matured and content for character options accumulated with the release of new official materials for 4e.

The other capability that my players really liked about the DDI 4e character generation tool is that it created a PDF that included color coded skill references that could be cut into useful reference cards for use during a session.
Those cards would display the skill results (damage, effects, etc) with modifiers automatically calculated on the description. So if your fighter had a strength bonus, the skills that relied on strength bonuses to determine effects would be included in the card so the player simply had to reference the card instead of looking back at the character sheet. The color coding corresponded to the encounter and daily skills so that a player could quickly pick out the quality of a skill from the many that they would accumulate as their character progressed in levels.
The cards were so popular that I purchased the spell cards that Gale Force Nine released for 5e spells.

 

[Magistus71]

For those who requested point buy for abilities, I added that. Now you can select from 'Random', 'Point Buy' and 'Free Form' options, 'Free Form' allowing users to just directly input existing characters' abilities.

There should be an export for this data, so it can be backed up and reimported later if needed.

 

[red-orc]

What really made the DDI 4e character creation tool worth subscription was the full inclusion of all character relevant content, updated for errata, in one tool.
This included character aspects or skills relevant to specific worlds (Forgotten Realms, Dark Sun, etc) as content for those worlds was released. Even new character types and content from Dragon magazine was included.
This was particularly relevant as 4e matured and content for character options accumulated with the release of new official materials for 4e.

The other capability that my players really liked about the DDI 4e character generation tool is that it created a PDF that included color coded skill references that could be cut into useful reference cards for use during a session.
Those cards would display the skill results (damage, effects, etc) with modifiers automatically calculated on the description. So if your fighter had a strength bonus, the skills that relied on strength bonuses to determine effects would be included in the card so the player simply had to reference the card instead of looking back at the character sheet. The color coding corresponded to the encounter and daily skills so that a player could quickly pick out the quality of a skill from the many that they would accumulate as their character progressed in levels.
The cards were so popular that I purchased the spell cards that Gale Force Nine released for 5e spells.

Thank you much for your response, Quatermane, I definitely hope to be able to provide all of the content available if I can work out licensing. As for cards, that is an excellent idea, I've thought about providing such cards for characters, NPC, spells, etc., I hope to start adding some of those features soon.

 

[red-orc]

There should be an export for this data, so it can be backed up and reimported later if needed.

Agreed Magistus71, thanks for your feedback. It does provide the ability to save your data, but it just saves to your browser's storage and the data can easily be inadvertently removed if you clear browsing data or if you use other applications that use a lot of browser storage. Plus you can't share between devices. It was really just a temporary solution until I was able to provide cloud storage, but an export option will be much easier to implement and should solve the problems. I plan to make some big changes next week to which I will definitely add export/import.

 

[Magistus71]

Agreed Magistus71, thanks for your feedback. It does provide the ability to save your data, but it just saves to your browser's storage and the data can easily be inadvertently removed if you clear browsing data or if you use other applications that use a lot of browser storage. Plus you can't share between devices. It was really just a temporary solution until I was able to provide cloud storage, but an export option will be much easier to implement and should solve the problems. I plan to make some big changes next week to which I will definitely add export/import.

Look forward to the changes.

 

[red-orc]

Look forward to the changes.

Magistus71, Import/export is live, let me know if you see any issues. Thanks.