I’m sure you may have already thought of this, but I’ll mention it any way, you don’t have to ever print off your character sheet. Just play the character on the laptop … play it right off the character creation pages and let it be from there. You can also track the adventure progress using the journal as you go.

Not entirely so. There is a bit of flexibility regarding the use of the custom button. It allows you to make up your own Race, Class, choose your own skills to train in and any number of them, choose any powers for daily, encounter, and at will … but as far as I can tell you are limited to the choices preprogrammed … and choose as many as you like even at first level. You can also make the ability scores anything you want them to be to fit the homebrew class or homebrew race you custom create.

To take it one step further, you do not have to use all of the rules and supplements that are preprogrammed into the CB. You can unsellect the ones that you do not want and leave selected the ones that you do want. This helps to customize the rules that fit your campaign best. To me there is a LOT of flexibility in the program for customizing the characters, it’s just not as easy as using the preset options … of which there are many.

Customize away!

First of all, if you don’t want to use the numbers they provide, don’t. Role the traditional way and plug them in. If the issue is “getting to know your character”, then create a lively back story for your character. It is in the back story that you will get to know who and what your character is. In most cases the back story has nothing to do with the statistics rolled and can help answer the questions of why this ability over that one.

Develop the character with plenty of back story. Answer the questions of where was (s)he born, who were the parents, what did they do for a living, what was the relationship with family and friends like, what personality traits does (s)he have and why, who are the best friends, what keeps them together… all this and more have nothing to do with the automated character creation tool but will really help you to get to know your character and ensure you are true to how you role play him/her every session.

In addition, as simplified a rules system as C&C is relative to D&D4e and others, it also has a lot of rules to keep track of. Racial abilities, Class abilities, multi-class abilities, magical abilities, temporary abilities, and more all must be tracked somehow and the tediousness of manually tracking it can often get in the way of the story… And isn’t that the most important thing? The story is why we play.

It is like making our own “choose-your-own-adventure” story. It’s the battling of the monsters, the role-playing interaction with NPC’s, and solving the mystery that makes the game, well, a game. The rolling up of characters and the ancillary advancement is sidebar and secondary to the story development. Anything that helps get to the heart of the story faster is AOK with me!

I use computerized character builders, even for characters with only three stats and a few skills for a game that is only 7 pages long. If I can’t find one, I write it (usually in Excel or Filemaker). I just like it better, as I ALWAYS make mistakes, and usually not in my favor. Also, the computerized versions usually show me options I hadn’t considered before, which is always nice.

In fact, one friend and I wrote a Villains & Vigilantes character builder in Basic using the Vic-20 (did you ever try to calculate carry capacity by hand?), and another friend wrote one for the original Chill on a Timex-Sinclair, so I don’t even think the concept of computerized character builder is even relatively new to gaming.

But then again, I might not be quite normal in that regard.

Yes, but it definitely makes it so much easier. Particularly sending my character sheet to the DM and helping another player with their so we know it’s legal. The book is much harder to go through in terms of character creation than the other system I know, Star Wars Saga and that is set out sequentially.

The tool is also invaluable online rather than relying on sheet websites like Myth Weavers

2. Having used it, do you wish other RPGs you run or play offered a similar tool?

Hell yes! I could simply direct my players to the program and not having to lend them my books as Star Wars books are pricey or make a character for them.

3. Do you miss any of the tasks it replaces, like calculating things by hand?

There is the tendancy to do things rather quickly, and not poore over various things, but the maths part I think is great, particularly with how you see different things stack.

4. Has it changed the way you relate to D&D?

Definitely, the DM and I can IM and have the character sheet in front of us. I IMed with a friend and took her through the program as she couldn’t run it.

5. Has the Character Builder changed the way you game?

We all come to the table with our DDI created sheets, but it also means that the DM has copies of our sheets and can ask for changes before the game.

6. Are robots going to take away our jobs?

Unless we listen to Isaac Asmov more.

I will say this: the builder is not always right. Had an interesting comparison with one of my bard class features on Enworld the other week, with my sheet saying 10 squares range and PHB2 and the Builder saying 5. What can you say there?

The negative aspect is that the more we rely on the machine, the less we actually retain in our own rules knowledge and application of the mechanics.

I’d have never run 3.0 without computer help though. It was just too much work otherwise. But we probably retained less rules knowledge because of feeling the need to do it that way. I have no doubt about that.

Google for SWPC.RDR.xls – It’s a Savage Worlds character generator that runs in Excel. I don’t know if it runs in OpenOffice or if it requires VB.

It needs some work, or at least the version I have does… but it pretty much works, and is easily customizable.

And once we started using HeroForge with 3.5, nearly everyone caught a mistake in their character. Most of them were to the character’s benefit, once corrected.

I have built characters both ways in 4e, and agree with some of the critics who claim a hand built character usually is better thought out. If only because the effort of writing/copying everything down makes you consider twice or three times.

It is great for making sure that everyone’s characters are totaled right and up to date. Emailing your character to the GM who can pop it straight into his own CB is great. I know that in my 3.5 campaign, there are a lot of cumulative math errors and incorrect skill point allocations (etc.) over time– and that rebuilding characters would take hours.

Related: did you ever keep a change sheet? I found that keeping a log of XP earned and spent in White Wolf, or HP rolled, skill points allocated, feats picked, etc. in 3.5 made double checking a character a lot easier. Did anyone else do that?

2. Having used it, do you wish other RPGs you run or play offered a similar tool?
I’d like character tools that make nice looking, easy to read character sheets. My group tried some Excel sheets to create Dark Heresy characters, and the output looked like some damned XL spreadsheet. Everyone went back to doing it by hand.
I use init tool from http://www.rptools.net, customized for Dark Heresy.

3. Do you miss any of the tasks it replaces, like calculating things by hand?
No.

4. Has it changed the way you relate to D&D?
Yes, we level about every third game, so I have a brand new sheet fairly often. I miss those old sheets I kept for a whole campaign.

5. Has the Character Builder changed the way you game?
I wish it included the flavor text for my abilities. By only having the crunch, I’m less likely to describe my psionic powers other than “he takes 18 points of psychic damage.”