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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Zaruthustran" data-source="post: 3468058" data-attributes="member: 1457">Worth repeating. Man, just the other day I set out to create a character--a 300-style Spartan--for a campaign starting at 8th level. I wound up moving from the table to the floor, because the table wasn't big enough to hold all the books spread out before me: PHB, PHB II, Eberron CS, Races of Eberron, Complete Warrior, Complete Adventurer, Complete Divine, Book of Exalted Deeds, Complete Mage, Complete Arcane, Complete Scoundrel, Races of Destiny, Heroes of Battle, Miniatures Handbook, Book of Nine Swords, and Unearthed Arcana*. It was a horrible, exhaustive experience. It took, oh, three hours to finish making that guy. I had two pages of scribbled notes, because I'd jot down the name of a feat and then forget the exact details of the bonuses and requirements, and so would have to go back, flip through multiple books (is Phalanx Fighter in CW, HoB, or Miniatures Handbook?), and then through multiple pages (some books put the feats after the PRCs, some before--it's a mess). It took a solid 20 minutes or so to calculate everything for a test build, in order to see how it compared to others and fully check out feat interactions. Ugh.I just kept thinking about creating a guy in D&D Online, and how simple and easy it was via a simple menu-driven interface: click, click, click, done. I finally had to bring my laptop over, so I could access the Feat Index on WotC's site (it only provides feat name and source book, but that helps a little) as well as the primitive grey market tools that actually collate the full feat descriptions. Talk about user-unfriendly. Sheesh. As it is, the game can't support the weight of it's current horde of supplements. Given that more supplements will be released, the completist player *needs* some kind of online resource. Sure, one could play D&D with just the PHB, but I'm not that player. I want good tools--tools that make my collection of content actually usable--and I'll gladly pay for the privilege of a better experience. -z* I was only looking at feats, really, so each book had about 10-15 pages of actual usable material. The rest was essentially worthless. If I have to create another character any time soon, I'll first make photocopies of the feat indexes and descriptions, and just reference those. But holy cow, what a chore. The last time I photocopied something out of a gamebook was in middle school in the 1980s! I'd feel ridiculous walking into Kinkos with a backpack full of books.</blockquote>

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