Let me be clear: this is NOT the place to rant about the direction that DDI and/or the CB are going in. If you're going to post here, please at least accept (however grudgingly) that the new CB is going to move online, and is likely going to stay there.
"Please don't make this change" - however its worded - is NOT a feature request, and will be ignored - and quite possibly reported for being off topic.
I'm going to assume that any features requested are *OPTIONS* (IE - "Give us the old character sheet" will be considered a request for that option, not as a feature that removes the Essentials Sheet, or the new sheet style).
I will be requesting this thread get stickied, and will monitor it for updates as well.
When posting a feature request, please try to include at least a couple sentences about why you want that feature, how you would use it, etc.
I'll try to list the feature requests I keep seeing in a sample format, to give some guidelines.
--------------------------------------------------
Requests listed in no particular order
1) Character Export (save to local PC)
The ability to retain control over one's characters is important to many users, both for backup purposes, as well as for being able to quickly transport their data to another location for quick printing.
Additionally, there are third party tools (like the HIGHLY popular iplay4E) that read .dnd4e files, and allow players to interact with that data. Exporting gives customers great flexibility and control. To this end, sticking with the existing .dnd4e format is also of high value.
While some changes are expected to the .dnd4e format (as is normal with new features being added like Themes), keeping to the same basic structure is important, as opposed to creating a wholly-new filesave format.
WotC has stated this issue has been given high-priority in the feature list, and we can expect to see it added early on.
2) Character Sharing (within the cloud)
Much like Character Export - many DMs like the option to verify character sheets, or even tweak them a little (as a storytelling tool) between play sessions. The option to share a character sheet (either publicly or to selected users/groups) would help facilitate this, and if done within the DDi Suite of tools, would save a few steps, as opposed to exporting the file, e-mailing it, re-importing it on the other end, etc.
Further to the issue of sharing - community site integration would also be a very welcome option, or at least using community groups to setup ACL permissions for who can see what characters.
Sample: If I start a "WolfStar's Thursday Night Game" group, I could share characters back and forth with others in that group - but not with the rest of the world.
PaoloM has said that this is something interesting that they are looking into.
3) Original Character Sheets
While the new style of sheet may be optimized, and the Essentials sheet may be another option - some people very simply prefer the classic 4E sheet as originally laid out in the back of the PHB, and as printed in the original Character Builder. These users would like the option of formatting their character sheets to print in that classic style.
4) SSL/TLS Security
[Description coming soon - I need to refresh my understanding of the isue]
5) More Storage Space
Many users are, to say the least, disappointed in being limited to 20 characters. Some users simply have more than 20 characters (especially DMs for the RPGA, who might manage and keep copies of characters for a large number of players) - others like to save their character at every level, in case they ever need to roll-back for any reason. The current limit wouldn't (appear to) allow for even saving a single character through all 30 levels
WotC has stated that 20 characters is just a starting number, and that useage will be evaluated in considering changing this limit going forward.
6) Character Summary
[description coming soon]
7) Editable Character Sheets (layout/design)
Similar to the request for the Classic 4E Character sheets - The ability to change the layout, add pages, and otherwise make a sheet that works best for the individual player is something that is much appreciated in the offline Character Builder. That functionality would be just as greatly appreciated in the new online effort.
8) Offline Viewer
The Character Sheet Viewer in the classic builder allowed users to check/uncheck boxes to track power use, and had other "interactive" features that made it a great way to track your character at the table on small computing devices (netbooks, iPads, etc). The new Character Builder's online-only feature will remove this option for many gamers who don't have wi-fi at their gaming table (be it in an FLGS, or in a basement where reception is poor, etc).
Users would appreciate an option to have a small Character Sheet Viewer for offline use that would simply read and interact with a created Character Sheet - without allowing any (permanent) edits to things like character stats/powers/equipment.
This way they can still take full advantage of the Builder at their gaming table.
9) Basic house-rule support.
User would like the ability to house-rule sheets that is, at an absolute bare minimum on par with what the classic CB offered. Many groups give things like free expertise and other bonus feats, so using the web-CB if it can't handle importing that will be a great impairment
10) Advanced house-rule support and custom content.
The ability to define new feats, items, races, etc.
While the content WotC puts out is fantastic, customers are also encouraged (especially in the Dungeon Master Guides) to go "off-roading" with their game - and to implement their own ideas into the game. The Character Build should fully support this kind of open play experience.
11) API Support
An API for (authenticated) 3rd party applications to directly pull character information from the cloud. Exporting to .dnd4e is essential, and applications like DMBS (which I rely on heavily) or iPlay4e can import those exported files - but it would be great if they didn't actually need to.
12) Character Sorting/Organizing
As many DMs keep digital copies of the characters for multiple campaigns (as well as designing some NPCs as full blown characters) the ability to divide their online storage area (using folders, labels, or other dividers) is being requested to help keep those files organized.
If the request for more storage space (#5, above) is put through, this becomes even more important, as the amount of data grows.
13) Native PDF Support
While it's been stated that users will be able to install a PDF writer, and then print their character sheets to PDF via those 3rd party tools, bringing that into the software as a native feature is something that would add value to the application - especially for users who may not be on a computer that's under their immediate control (Internet Cafes, hotels, borrowing another user's system), or who aren't tech savvy or simply comfortable installing more software.
14) Use the cloud to suggest build options
With WotC being able to data-mine builds that are stored on DDi - they should, in turn, be able to use that data to help suggest common/popular builds for new characters.
A character creating a new level / would be able to see the most popular options taken by players who have also chosen that race/class - or better still, as characters progress, what feats/powers/items players with similar builds (previously selected powers/feats/etc) chose at this new level.
Similar in nature to the well-known Amazon.com feature of "other customers who looked at "X" also looked at "Y" - it would help optimizers see popular/common choices.
15) Ritual Books (and similar)
For characters that make heavy use of Rituals (or Martial Practices, or Alchemy), having a mere listing of names, while helpful, leaves the players wanting more. With rituals and the like spread across multiple books, it would make these kinds of "extras" a lot easier to manage if all of their relevant information were available as part of the character sheet (casting times, durations, costs, effects, etc).
Notably - because use of these features fluxuates (from some users with only one or two rituals, to some with a near-library of them), printing this information should be an option not everyone will need the full details with every re-printing of their character.
A power-card style format seems to be a popular example for this kind of option.
16) "Future-Proofing"
While it's likely (hopefully?) far enough into the future that there are no current plans to change rules editions (5th Edition), many users are curious as to what plans WotC is, or will be making in regards to the new online Character Builder, when a new version of the game does release.
Will WotC continue, for a time at least, to offer access to the 4E toolset? Or will all support for 4E drop when 5E is (inevitably?) announced one day? Would a "last hurrah" offline version of the 4E tools be made available?
These decisions are a factor for many customers as to where they plan to spend their money going forward.
17) Lapsed-Subscription Access
"Read Only" access to an already-generated character sheet that's been stored online is being requested.
This would allow a customer the chance to print out a "fresh" copy of his character, even if - for whatever reason - he's not a current subscriber. Financial times are tough, it's not unlikely that customers might need to skimp for a month or two here or there.
Leaving them access to their existing work in these times would server both as great customer relations, but would also be a good enticement for them to re-subscribe. As new books/power/gear come out, seeing their character and daydreaming of the new things they could assign that character could be a strong emotional pull to re-subscribe at the earliest opportunity.
On the flipside, being locked out of their existing work will only cause disfavor toward WotC, and eventually "out of sight, out of mind" experiences could set in - leading customers to see that they don't really want/need/miss the online toolset.
1) Character Export (save to local PC)
The ability to retain control over one's characters is important to many users, both for backup purposes, as well as for being able to quickly transport their data to another location for quick printing.
WotC has stated this issue has been given high-priority in the feature list, and we can expect to see it added early on.
I think this is not what people mean by local export - the focus of the "save to disk" or local export feature is that users who requested it want the builder to export .dnd4e files, not a format for printing. That file format is useful for 3rd party tools, importing and sharing of characters, and so forth.
Local / portable-printable format will already be available at launch, as I understand it, by printing to 3rd party PDF generators.
2) Character Sharing (within the cloud)
Much like Character Export - many DMs like the option to verify character sheets, or even tweak them a little (as a storytelling tool) between play sessions. The option to share a character sheet (either publicly or to selected users/groups) would help facilitate this, and if done within the DDi Suite of tools, would save a few steps, as opposed to exporting the file, e-mailing it, re-importing it on the other end, etc.
Paolo answered this, kinda sorta, in the mega thread. I pulled it out here:
Paolo - Post #100
Question - Is there any plan to address sharing between accounts?
Answer - Absolutely. We're planning to address the sharing scenarios with one of the next updates.
- House-rule support that is at an absolute bare minimum on par with what the classic CB offered. Every group I'm involved in has free expertise and other bonus feats, so we can't very well start using the web-CB if it can't handle importing that.
- Real house-rule support and custom content. The ability to define new feats, items, etc.
- An API for (authenticated) 3rd party applications to directly pull character information from the cloud. Exporting to .dnd4e is essential, and applications like DMBS (which I rely on heavily) or iPlay4e can import those exported files - but it would be great if they didn't actually need to.
- The ability to generate and save a PDF character sheet without having to install a PDF writer locally. We've developed multiple web applications at work that do this, it's trivial to implement.
1) Character Export (save to local PC)
The ability to retain control over one's characters is important to many users, both for backup purposes, as well as for being able to quickly transport their data to another location for quick printing.
WotC has stated this issue has been given high-priority in the feature list, and we can expect to see it added early on.
I think this is not what people mean by local export - the focus of the "save to disk" or local export feature is that users who requested it want the builder to export .dnd4e files, not a format for printing. That file format is useful for 3rd party tools, importing and sharing of characters, and so forth.
Local / portable-printable format will already be available at launch, as I understand it, by printing to 3rd party PDF generators.
I knew that, but didn't mention it explicitly. I'll edit to clarify.
(I'm starting to wish I'd just made this a wiki. . . )
I knew that, but didn't mention it explicitly. I'll edit to clarify.
Cool - just wanted to make sure that while printing and such was one reason, it wasn't the only reason. Notably, if cloud-sharing is enabled, then using .dnd4e files to transmit a character from one account to another is irrelevant, but until #2 appears, #1 might be the way to do it.
Character Sorting/Folder System: Similar to setting up different mailboxes and such on an email account, or as we can set up to add additional folders on the current one. With the limit of 20 characters, this isn't really an issue, but once this increases it will be well received.
Character Images: I haven't heard exactly how this will be handled, but the ability to use our own artwork, either uploaded, or just by providing link to where the picture is located to use, whichever works best.
Character Summary Links: Be able to flag your character as public, so you can post a link to the character summary. Just the facts, with links to the compendium entries for details. Basically like how iPlay4e does it.
- House-rule support that is at an absolute bare minimum on par with what the classic CB offered. Every group I'm involved in has free expertise and other bonus feats, so we can't very well start using the web-CB if it can't handle importing that.
- Real house-rule support and custom content. The ability to define new feats, items, etc.
Another reason I've found house rule support important in the past was to work around occasional bugs that popped up now and then in the CB (missing Paladin Channel Divinity feats in an example). So I second this request.
Thank you.
8) Offline Viewer
The Character Sheet Viewer in the classic builder allowed users to check/uncheck boxes to track power use, and had other "interactive" features that made it a great way to track your character at the table on small computing devices (netbooks, iPads, etc). The new Character Builder's online-only feature will remove this option for many gamers who don't have wi-fi at their gaming table (be it in an FLGS, or in a basement where reception is poor, etc).
Users would appreciate an option to have a small Character Sheet Viewer for offline use that would simply read and interact with a created Character Sheet - without allowing any (permanent) edits to things like character stats/powers/equipment.
This way they can still take full advantage of the Builder at their gaming table.
+1 (really +5, since it affects many of my players) to this.
Character Images: I haven't heard exactly how this will be handled, but the ability to use our own artwork, either uploaded, or just by providing link to where the picture is located to use, whichever works best.
Would you object to me leaving this off the list until we see how it's handled in the software? If the option already exists, it seems silly to put in a request for it.
Specifically .dnd4e Availability: This is for third party support, (namely iPlay4e from my perspective). Its my favorite way to be able to display my character on our group webpage. If this isn't possible then..
Character Summary Links: Be able to flag your character as public, so you can post a link to the character summary. Just the facts, with links to the compendium entries for details. Basically like how iPlay4e does it.
I'm already including these (in my head) in the features above, but will edit to call them out specifically under "export" and "sharing" respectively.
For the 20 character limit:
Have the possibility of creating an infinite number of characters, the majority of which are stored on the computer, and then have the ability to upload 20 (or whatever the limit turns out to be) into the cloud.
Character Sorting/Folder System: Similar to setting up different mailboxes and such on an email account, or as we can set up to add additional folders on the current one. With the limit of 20 characters, this isn't really an issue, but once this increases it will be well received.
Character Images: I haven't heard exactly how this will be handled, but the ability to use our own artwork, either uploaded, or just by providing link to where the picture is located to use, whichever works best.
Right, the apparent lack of any sorting structure struck me as a glaring omission when the tool was first announced, but I forgot about it since then. I'm in full agreement here, having all characters in one unmanaged list is unwieldy. This sorting could be handled by a directory structure or, even better, by tagging.
Additional comments re: character sharing (in the cloud)
When we share characters, a binary "This character is for me only" or "This character is shared for the whole world" decision is not adequare. We should be able to specify who is allowed access to the character; we should also be able to grant both read and write access to shared characters. See Google Docs or MS SkyDrive for the behaviour to emulate here.
Further, sharing should tie in with the character sorting above. We should be able to seamlessly view our own characters grouped together with shared characters of others - this would probably be easiest if characters are sorted by tags. So for example, I could view all characters tagged as "Low Rollers" to view the members of the Low Rollers adventuring party.
Altogether, this would work very well with how the groups I'm with run our games. At our games, the DM runs the session with a laptop, and at least one player at the table will also have a laptop. The player with the laptop essentially acts as an "accountant" for the party, keeping track of changes for everyone in the party during the session, especially inventory changes.
As an aside to Wolfstar, I edited my first post in this thread twice to add additional feature requests... just wanted to make sure you saw all four of them. ;)
Character Images: I haven't heard exactly how this will be handled, but the ability to use our own artwork, either uploaded, or just by providing link to where the picture is located to use, whichever works best.
Would you object to me leaving this off the list until we see how it's handled in the software? If the option already exists, it seems silly to put in a request for it.
No problem, I'm just going through my head thinking of things that I'd like that haven't been mentioned... Really just biding time until the video of the program is at least posted.
I believe I'm caught up to this point (include your multiple edits, Vault).
Now I'm off to put in a sticky request, and read another thread to "relax" a little.
Use the cloud for build suggestions
Currently, build suggestions are limited to feat choices, and aren't terribly useful. If character data in the servers is to be mined and processed (as the devs have suggested), it would be nice if it could be used to suggest popular choices for a given slot, based on player popularity and other factors. And it wouldn't need to be just feats - you could apply this for powers, magic items, paragon paths, and other stuff.
With all the appropriate caveats about privacy, and that kind of stuff
I see this as a low priority, long term idea, but I still think it would be pretty cool:
Use the cloud for build suggestions
Currently, build suggestions are limited to feat choices, and aren't terribly useful. If character data in the servers is to be mined and processed (as the devs have suggested), it would be nice if it could be used to suggest popular choices for a given slot, based on player popularity and other factors. And it wouldn't need to be just feats - you could apply this for powers, magic items, paragon paths, and other stuff.
With all the appropriate caveats about privacy, and that kind of stuff
This would be great to see.. especially for suggested feats. List the top 5-10 feats similar characters are choosing that your character qualifies for. (Always by level then by Race/Class, Class, Role, Other..)
Additional comments re: character sharing (in the cloud)
When we share characters, a binary "This character is for me only" or "This character is shared for the whole world" decision is not adequare. We should be able to specify who is allowed access to the character; we should also be able to grant both read and write access to shared characters.
As a quick suggestion, integration with community groups would be a good idea. I have a group for my D&D game, my players are all in it. Let them share their PCs with the group, or with just me.
Additional community integration would be cool (tab in a group for characters shared with it? that sort of thing), but is also probably basically impossible to implement given that the community is outsourced. But group membership for a standard ACL sharing scheme should be possible.
I suggest, export to a .dd4e(?) file, and have offline viewer with editable character sheets (for both layout, and at-table use).
Like.. If there was a little drop down box that had all my characters, and i could just click, and it would paste a summary, or i could PM someone my build, or i could list what i'm currently playing or have open access to char-op builds, ect..
8) Offline Viewer
The Character Sheet Viewer in the classic builder allowed users to check/uncheck boxes to track power use, and had other "interactive" features that made it a great way to track your character at the table on small computing devices (netbooks, iPads, etc). The new Character Builder's online-only feature will remove this option for many gamers who don't have wi-fi at their gaming table (be it in an FLGS, or in a basement where reception is poor, etc).
Users would appreciate an option to have a small Character Sheet Viewer for offline use that would simply read and interact with a created Character Sheet - without allowing any (permanent) edits to things like character stats/powers/equipment.
This way they can still take full advantage of the Builder at their gaming table.
Not sure if this falls in the not to be discussed options here, but depending on how the online CB is implemented, it might not be that much of a stretch to allow two things:
1. A version that can be run outside of the browser. Silverlight 4 allows for that option without too much development effort.
2. A version that allows for you not to be logged into your account/online in order to use it. Web based apps, especially if you're using Silverlight, can be made with a briefcase like architecture, i.e. you pull your information from online to cache it locally, and if the connection drops, or is not available, it saves it locally, so that when your connection is renewed, you are able to save it online.
PS
It's amazing. I'm at a convention right now (CarnageCon in Vermont - started 20 minutes ago) and the first thing everybody did was start pulling out their character builder.
Not sure if this falls in the not to be discussed options here, but depending on how the online CB is implemented, it might not be that much of a stretch to allow two things:
1. A version that can be run outside of the browser. Silverlight 4 allows for that option without too much development effort.
2. A version that allows for you not to be logged into your account/online in order to use it. Web based apps, especially if you're using Silverlight, can be made with a briefcase like architecture, i.e. you pull your information from online to cache it locally, and if the connection drops, or is not available, it saves it locally, so that when your connection is renewed, you are able to save it online.
To point #1 - PaoloM has made it pretty clear that while the application could, indeed, be made to run offline - you'd still need an active internet connection to get to the data - which will reside online, making it a rather moot point (unless/until you consider offline browsing capabilities for already-generated characters).
Much the same for #2 - it seems pretty evident that the database will only reside on WotC servers from here out.
Not sure if this falls in the not to be discussed options here, but depending on how the online CB is implemented, it might not be that much of a stretch to allow two things:
1. A version that can be run outside of the browser. Silverlight 4 allows for that option without too much development effort.
2. A version that allows for you not to be logged into your account/online in order to use it. Web based apps, especially if you're using Silverlight, can be made with a briefcase like architecture, i.e. you pull your information from online to cache it locally, and if the connection drops, or is not available, it saves it locally, so that when your connection is renewed, you are able to save it online.
To point #1 - PaoloM has made it pretty clear that while the application could, indeed, be made to run offline - you'd still need an active internet connection to get to the data - which will reside online, making it a rather moot point (unless/until you consider offline browsing capabilities for already-generated characters).
Much the same for #2 - it seems pretty evident that the database will only reside on WotC servers from here out.
Even if it requires connectivity, a version of the app that can run outside the browser still has merit. Sometimes it's just nicer to have an app running "standalone" rather than inside a web browser.
Not a big deal to me, but it could have merit to some.
1. A version that can be run outside of the browser. Silverlight 4 allows for that option without too much development effort.
2. A version that allows for you not to be logged into your account/online in order to use it. Web based apps, especially if you're using Silverlight, can be made with a briefcase like architecture, i.e. you pull your information from online to cache it locally, and if the connection drops, or is not available, it saves it locally, so that when your connection is renewed, you are able to save it online.
To point #1 - PaoloM has made it pretty clear that while the application could, indeed, be made to run offline - you'd still need an active internet connection to get to the data - which will reside online, making it a rather moot point (unless/until you consider offline browsing capabilities for already-generated characters).
Much the same for #2 - it seems pretty evident that the database will only reside on WotC servers from here out.
Well, I'm hoping that's a here and now stance, and that it might change in the future, which is why I bring it up. Unless it's securing the content that's the big reason for the change, if enough people want it (and prioritize it), I hope it's a possibility for the future. After all, you can't export now either... but it is coming, and is now a bigger priority because people asked. Maybe this could do the same thing...
Even if it requires connectivity, a version of the app that can run outside the browser still has merit. Sometimes it's just nicer to have an app running "standalone" rather than inside a web browser.
One big thing... the browser itself has some overhead, and it's own instabilities outside of the CB, so having just the CB would be a nice thing.
Unless it's securing the content that's the big reason for the change...
I think it is, and I say that as a supporter. It just makes sense from a business standpoint.
On a more serious note, I would LOVE to see a fully featured API. Love love love love love. ... love.
If it works well enough I could build an iPad front-end for it.
Unless it's securing the content that's the big reason for the change...
I think it is, and I say that as a supporter. It just makes sense from a business standpoint.
On a more serious note, I would LOVE to see a fully featured API. Love love love love love. ... love.
If it works well enough I could build an iPad front-end for it.
So... where is the situation to point to that the content has been pilfered from the downloaded content? I don't think that's necessarily the issue. After all, no one can seriously believe that it takes as long as the update does to download the new content. It's because of the encryption.
1 (exports), 2 (sharing), 3 (original sheet), 6(summary), 7 (editable), 8 (viewer), have alot of overlap in goals. They should not necessarily considered separate things.
I suggest, export to a .dd4e(?) file, and have offline viewer with editable character sheets (for both layout, and at-table use).
I was thinking the same, with regards to the 'old style' character sheets, editable sheets, and offline viewer specifically as well.
If an offline viewer (that could perform no character-data manipulation of any kind) could read the export file, provide any number of character sheet layout options (like CB does pretty well today), and allow saving of the tweaks you make (so every time you want to print, it's still there) - I would be far less bothered by the need to be online in order to level up.
-Scot
Please add in a "ritual book" option for character sheets. I have a Wizard with a large array of rituals from different sources and would like to have the info for each of his rituals printed off in a nice format. At the very least, allow component cost and casting time to be appended to the ritual name. The classic character builder will only print out names of rituals you own...
-Scot
Seconded, for rituals, and martial practices (alchemy too... I guess...).
I am stealing this idea from another poster (Xandore) who suggested in in another thread:
For the 20 character limit:
Have the possibility of creating an infinite number of characters, the majority of which are stored on the computer, and then have the ability to upload 20 (or whatever the limit turns out to be) into the cloud.
Oooooh, I second that idea.
An idea I had that might address some of the "I can't use the CB at my local gamestore/friends house without internet/whatever" issue is this.
If they don't want to have a full blown offline character builder, how about some sort of offline character viewer, once they can export to dnd4e files, anyway. What I mean is something that you can't use to build or even level up a character, but you could pull up a character that you have saved locally and edit it in a way that would allow tracking of the sort of data one might be tracking during a game (character notes, potions used, etc) then when you are back in an area where you DO have access, you could synch it back up with the original file in the cloud.
Not a perfect solution, but it lets WOTC have its cake and the users without good online access to eat some of it at least.
Please add in a "ritual book" option for character sheets. I have a Wizard with a large array of rituals from different sources and would like to have the info for each of his rituals printed off in a nice format. At the very least, allow component cost and casting time to be appended to the ritual name. The classic character builder will only print out names of rituals you own...
-Scot
It's possible that the new character sheet has this on it somewhere? I don't think we've seen the whole thing yet, have we?
2) Character Sharing (within the cloud)
Much like Character Export - many DMs like the option to verify character sheets, or even tweak them a little (as a storytelling tool) between play sessions. The option to share a character sheet (either publicly or to selected users/groups) would help facilitate this, and if done within the DDi Suite of tools, would save a few steps, as opposed to exporting the file, e-mailing it, re-importing it on the other end, etc.
Further to the issue of sharing - community site integration would also be a very welcome option, or at least using community groups to setup ACL permissions for who can see what characters.
Sample: If I start a "WolfStar's Thursday Night Game" group, I could share characters back and forth with others in that group - but not with the rest of the world.
PaoloM has said that this is something interesting that they are looking into.
I would love to be able create a Group in this forum and let other members of the gaming group add to the group's wiki and update characters outside of gaming sessions.
I believe it would be a great place for GMs to store NPCs, and if the ability to block out certain parts of a character sheet become available a good place for PCs to view important NPCs [character sheet].
- Character data were exportable - this seems to be on the radar already, AND
- WotC would give some sort of undertaking, publically, about the ability to continue using 4E character builder functionality after 5E comes along. My biggest concern with this development is that I will come to rely on this tool (as I already have on the existing CB) for the smooth running of my game and then it just gets yanked. When 5E does come along I'll almost certainly give it a go - but I reserve the right to stay with 4E if I don't like it. I know "I can just use pen and paper like we did back in the day" - I just don't see why I should put myself in the position of having to. My past experience has been with eTools - remember that? - where all support was axed as soon as 4E was in preparation. That experience has not left me overflowing with confidence on this score - and with eTools I at least ended up with a persistent program I could still use.
Please add in a "ritual book" option for character sheets. I have a Wizard with a large array of rituals from different sources and would like to have the info for each of his rituals printed off in a nice format. At the very least, allow component cost and casting time to be appended to the ritual name. The classic character builder will only print out names of rituals you own...
-Scot
Seconded, for rituals, and martial practices (alchemy too... I guess...).
Yeah, I'll nominate this one, too.
Please add in a "ritual book" option for character sheets. I have a Wizard with a large array of rituals from different sources and would like to have the info for each of his rituals printed off in a nice format. At the very least, allow component cost and casting time to be appended to the ritual name. The classic character builder will only print out names of rituals you own...
-Scot
+2
Yes yes yes. This is huge for my campaign where rituals are used EVERY night. This would be hugely appreciated.
Please add in a "ritual book" option for character sheets. I have a Wizard with a large array of rituals from different sources and would like to have the info for each of his rituals printed off in a nice format. At the very least, allow component cost and casting time to be appended to the ritual name. The classic character builder will only print out names of rituals you own...
-Scot
It's possible that the new character sheet has this on it somewhere? I don't think we've seen the whole thing yet, have we?
It's certainly possible, but it's not on the classic sheet, and Essentials seems to be ignoring rituals for now, so my guess is that they will not be included in the first release.
Happy to be proven wrong though!
-Scot
It's certainly possible, but it's not on the classic sheet, and Essentials seems to be ignoring rituals for now, so my guess is that they will not be included in the first release.
Happy to be proven wrong though!
-Scot
Hmm, I must have misunderstood what you were looking for because I thought the original sheet did have a place for rituals. It couldn't do much more than list them, so I guess you're wanting something more than that? I agree, that would be cool.
As in if a person marks a build as public access a way for folks to search different characters. I love being able to see what other folks are doing. And as a plus if I need a say level 10 NPC who is a magc user I can search for one and pick it up at a moments notice.
1. Character management. I'm a huge fan of iplay4e, but there's a few things it lacks (showing your current resistances/vulnerabilites, for example). I would love to be able to manage my character in a way that tracks my current bonuses, penalties, and conditions, and reflects them with modified attack and damage bonuses, defenses and saving throws.
2. Sharing. Allow me to share my characters with others, create groups for campaigns so the DM can see all the characters in the group without having to own them all. Allow me to give permission to others to manage my character in-game.
3. Offline viewer. This has been mentioned. I'll go as far to add viewers for other platforms (iPhone/iPad, Android, Linux), and the ability to view and print my characters stored on the cloud if my subscription lapses.
I also LOVE the idea of being able to search character builds, and view popular options taken by characters similar to mine.
- Custom feats that properly affect character, powers, skills etc.
- Custom powers that calculate attack/damage/skill bonuses properly w/proper power cards
- Custom equipment that properly affects character, powers, skills etc. w/proper equipment cards
- Custom power cards where one can fill in all the fields as desired
- All exiting feats, powers and equipment to be customizable (build a custom item starting form one that exists)
2. Choice of character sheet styles (at least two)
- Plus customization of character sheets - at least in the way that CB Classic allowed, if not better.
- Grouping any or all customization by campaign.
3. Export/Import and/or sharing of some sort.
- Some sort of buddy list capability for sharing characters on-line. (If it's going to be on-line only, then let's take advantage of that fact, shall we?) (This does not replace needing to be able to export/import)
4. Off-line use (okay, I admit that's a pipe dream, but it is a requirement, just one that will remain unmet, and is also a requirement for the on-line Compendium).
5. Ability to create a Custom Class (a sub-class, at least), Paragon Path and/or Epic Destiny (very low priority)
6. Thinking outside the box a little (well, a lot), how about support for on-line play-by-mail built right in? (Again, if it's going to be on-line only, then let's take advantage of that fact, shall we?)
7. Timely updates. Preferably simultaneously with any rules update, whether from a formal Rules Update, a new book or a dragon monthly compilation.
8. A way to keep using this tool even if WotC stops supporting it in the future (5th edition, or whatever). See number 4.
I'm not sure how hard that would be to code, it depends on if it gets the name from a database, and the rest of the information is in the table, or if the whole bloody item (power, feat, whatever) is one whole chunk of data. If it is proper SQL or similar database like I expect, you could just disable anything but the names if the logged in user does not currently have a paid subscription. Similar to the way the Online Compendium works now.
This would make the online character builder a companion to, but not a replacement for the books, as orignally intended, and help sell books. For people to use the CB as a replacement for the books, they would have to maintain a subscription. That makes it a win win. For people like me that don't like a monthly fee but like books, and for people that love their digital stuff.
Since it is trivial for a subscriber to make a character, print a PDF, and upload it somewhere, I think it would be a nice convenience and probably some good advertising to have an unauthenticated view-only version of the CB that can view characters created by a subscriber (basically, a "Read Only Share With Everyone" sharing option).
Non-subscribers (ahem, prospective customers) could see how the CB presents classes, races, feats, etc., but they can't change anything. They can view the character sheet and print it themselves once I've given them the URL or other sharing method. And it helps Wizards get little hooks into people who could potentially subscribe.
I think for PR, a good idea might be a free version for non-subscribers. This idea would also help sell books. The free version would help you make a character, with the full list of options, but none of those options would have any explanations. Just a drop down (or click or whaever) that you select your feat/power/ritual/etc out of. It does the math, and let's you print and save (This would also be good for people that have to let their subscription lapse to still access your characters for level up/printing, even if they have to own the books to see what they are selecting). It would not have power cards, all the class features/feats/powers/magic items would just be a name, no power cards or short text.
(SNIP'ed for space)
This would make the online character builder a companion to, but not a replacement for the books, as orignally intended, and help sell books. For people to use the CB as a replacement for the books, they would have to maintain a subscription. That makes it a win win. For people like me that don't like a monthly fee but like books, and for people that love their digital stuff.
+1
I REALLY like this idea. It's a reward to those who have the books and useless to those who don't. I think you could still have power cards, just leave them blank or just have the + to hit and damage expressions on them. That way you can fill in the info from your books. Hey WotC, give this some consideration please. I think it's a novel idea that warrants a look.
If you use the CB while not logged in, you get no rules text, only the names of Class/Race/Path/Destiny features, feats, powers, magic items, and rituals. You can still have it do the math for you, and you would not be able to save your character without having a subscription.
That is a great idea. They've been doing the same thing with the compendium from the beginning. If you try to search the compendium while not logged in to DDI, you can browse the names of everything, but if you click on something to get the full text, it asks you to log in.
If you use the CB while not logged in, you get no rules text, only the names of Class/Race/Path/Destiny features, feats, powers, magic items, and rituals. You can still have it do the math for you, and you would not be able to save your character without having a subscription.
Actually, if you re-read my idea you will see that saving without a subscription is indeed allowed. The idea is that people that have a run of bad times can still use their characters with their books. They just can't use it in place of their books. So, for people that know they might have an on/off again subscription status, that would encourage them to stick to things in the books they (or at least, their gaming group) own.
The idea is to use the tools to either promote book sales (helping retailers) or to keep them subscribed if they use the tools in place of the books.
The free version would also give a reason for them to bring back the pre-printed power cards. Cause I liked those, and was sad to see we never got any more past Martial Power 1.
Add to that a dice roller, ideally with a permenant linkable record for PbP useage, in the same basic manner as iPlay4E and the wCB would be pretty much perfect for me.
The biggest problem I have with the oCB is that you cannot use it easily during play, if the wCB makes that possible I will be a happy subscriber.
1) Import/export
2) Basic Houserules (bonus feats, PP's without prereqs, custom feats/items, ect)
3) *Usable Character sheets (track HP, power usage, action points, ect).
4) Different styles of character sheets (original, customize boxes, ect).
5) Other (form integration, sharing between accounts, power card gradients, character generator, advanced houserules, ect).
*With a strong preference for an offline version.
Thanks for your patience, all.
It could just be as simple as a few drop down menus for the things that add mechanical benifits - mostly that's just going to be simple +1s and such. The other conditions need only be typed text.
The Monster Builder was built for custom content, so the dev's can definately do it.
...
8) Offline Viewer
The Character Sheet Viewer in the classic builder allowed users to check/uncheck boxes to track power use, and had other "interactive" features that made it a great way to track your character at the table on small computing devices (netbooks, iPads, etc). The new Character Builder's online-only feature will remove this option for many gamers who don't have wi-fi at their gaming table (be it in an FLGS, or in a basement where reception is poor, etc).
Users would appreciate an option to have a small Character Sheet Viewer for offline use that would simply read and interact with a created Character Sheet - without allowing any (permanent) edits to things like character stats/powers/equipment.
This way they can still take full advantage of the Builder at their gaming table...
This is a great idea. It's relatively easy to implement, too. The sheet could be exported so as to be browser-friendly (HTML or something).
This could potentially be the way to export/import, too.
...
8) Offline Viewer
The Character Sheet Viewer in the classic builder allowed users to check/uncheck boxes to track power use, and had other "interactive" features that made it a great way to track your character at the table on small computing devices (netbooks, iPads, etc). The new Character Builder's online-only feature will remove this option for many gamers who don't have wi-fi at their gaming table (be it in an FLGS, or in a basement where reception is poor, etc).
Users would appreciate an option to have a small Character Sheet Viewer for offline use that would simply read and interact with a created Character Sheet - without allowing any (permanent) edits to things like character stats/powers/equipment.
This way they can still take full advantage of the Builder at their gaming table...
This is a great idea. It's relatively easy to implement, too. The sheet could be exported so as to be browser-friendly (HTML or something).
This could potentially be the way to export/import, too.
Already suggested by me community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/758...
...
Already suggested by me community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/758...
Sure, I was not meaning to steal your thunder, only to add my voice.
Already suggested by me community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/758...
Many of the suggestions I listed didn't come from this thread, but were ideas I'd seen elsewhere - often multiple times.
Because of this, I didn't list any sources for a given idea (since so many were expressed so many times by so many people - it would only upset whomever didn't get original credit). All the same, if you came up with an idea you see listed here, be proud - you contributed to this list whether you're credited or not.
Already suggested by me community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/758...
Many of the suggestions I listed didn't come from this thread, but were ideas I'd seen elsewhere - often multiple times.
Because of this, I didn't list any sources for a given idea (since so many were expressed so many times by so many people - it would only upset whomever didn't get original credit). All the same, if you came up with an idea you see listed here, be proud - you contributed to this list whether you're credited or not.
Funny thing is that I looked at the time of my post and yours only to find out yours was up first.... that said I'm not clear if editing your post changes your post "time" so you may have added it later :P
Funny thing is that I looked at the time of my post and yours only to find out yours was up first.... that said I'm not clear if editing your post changes your post "time" so you may have added it later :P
As I've made edits to the OP just a few hours ago, no, no it doesn't.
Oh man! Ya, I would love to see the card give me a max damage number (even if just in brackets at the end).
1d8 + 5 dmg. (Crit: 13 + 1D6)
Something like that.
Thanks very much.
Note: I don't plan on maintaining it, but others can quote what I have done and add to it over on that thread (and perhaps Wolfstar can watch for those and just link to the latest).
I have created a snapshot with links of the issues and requests for power cards thus far in this other thread.
Note: I don't plan on maintaining it, but others can quote what I have done and add to it over on that thread (and perhaps Wolfstar can watch for those and just link to the latest).
Lovely work, Alpha.
First and foremost, allow the ability to save characters on our own hard drive (on the host computer instead of this cloud nine thing). Not sure why this wasn't a no brainer. This could be a file needing the CB to use, a self contained sheet that shows the stats without access to the online database, or a PDF file that can be printed at anytime.
If saved characters can be on the host computer, a viewer for these characters. This can simply be a way to look at the infomation and give the ability to print the character and the various power cards, Ritual and Spellbooks, and the mounts/Familiars that one has.
I need the ability to print all the dailies/Untilities power cards instead of just what is "Prepared." My wizards are houseruled to hot cast choices instead of pick and choose when they rest.
The ability to exclude Dragon Material while Keeping the Annual Content. One check mark for this purpose, instead of the individual issues. In the same vein, have a way to just include what is checked, or have a check all box so that what to include can be unchecked.
The ability to use the various setting's exclusives (Themes, Dragon Marks, Spell Scars) for all characters, instead of having to make characters specifically for those settings. (I heard about this and wondered why this step backwards would even be considered)
Support for Hybrid Characters.
The ability to change purchase points for the characters when buy magical items and gear, and the ability to add genaric entries for eq for odd and ends (Block of wood for carving, for example)
For those that don't want it, make the Rarity system Optional.
Dice Roller. Please.
I'd love to have the ability to print my powers in the encounter format. Title line, checkbox and relivant text below. I've built my own, but having one in the character builder would be awesome.
I don't know if it's in the Encounters format or not, but there is a thread showing the character sheet from the new CB (a sheet of power cards are included in that sample).
A client side copy of the CB that still gets everything from the cloud, but allows for local storage of CB files, and doesn't require one navigate through the wizards.com/dnd/'s frankly labrinthine interface to find the tool. Just being able to double click an icon on my desktop, EVEN if it requires the internet to actually do anything, would be a massive improvement over having to access the one on the web.
There's also some matters with having slower internet- browser based stuff tends to... dislike... slower internet. The example I've found is internet relay chat. IRC works fine on dialup if you have a client. The web based java irc clients... do not work so well if you're on dialup. I would expect it to be similar for Silverlight based applications.
I'd love to have the ability to print my powers in the encounter format. Title line, checkbox and relivant text below. I've built my own, but having one in the character builder would be awesome.
I don't know if it's in the Encounters format or not, but there is a thread showing the character sheet from the new CB (a sheet of power cards are included in that sample).
I took a look. That's the Essentials format. All of the DnD encounters pre-gen characters come on 5x8 cards with stats on front and powers on back. A colored by type tiltle bar and relevant text below. Kind of:
(red line)Power name here Standard, Encounter, Melee 1 [ ](end red line)
all the text & numbers here
You can fit a lot onto one page that way. With my custom spreadsheet I fit all the powers of my shifter barbarian onto half a page. Makes things easier for me.
The CBC had a non-subscriber demo version that limited one to levels 1-3. Perhaps allowing access to all of heroic (1-10) or even all levels (1-30) but only allowing storage of 1 character at a time.
While I agree that there should be some way to entice people to subscribe to gain access to the full deal, I think that one character would not quite be sufficient for subscription, since you could (presumably) still save that file off. If the non-subscriber version is read-only, then it serves the players who can't afford to pay monthly and the players in games where the DM makes the character sheets, and the players can just browse them.
I would also like to request power cards for Summoned Creatures and Companions, both Ranger and Druid. They could look like the Companion section of the current Character Builder, but able to put them on power cards - this would be most important for summons.
Ohhhhh oh oh!!!! Where to begin...
First and foremost, allow the ability to save characters on our own hard drive (on the host computer instead of this cloud nine thing). Not sure why this wasn't a no brainer. This could be a file needing the CB to use, a self contained sheet that shows the stats without access to the online database, or a PDF file that can be printed at anytime.
This is a high priority item - it was orignally skipped because WotC decided they'd rather get a feature limited builder that would work with Essentials released, then to keep us waiting longer (for a fully-featured builder that would support Essentials).
While I appreciate the shift to an easier to read card format, I actually quite like how the old one looks, and would prefer to keep using it.
EDIT: Oh man, I know I'm going to get roasted for this one, but.... Facebook Integration.
For instance there are over 818 3009 feats in 4E so far, with dozens more coming out most months. Many of these have become obsoleted or are pretty bad and I know for sure that I will never be interested in them. Yet in the old version of character builder they regularly would appear in the giant list of feats. Sometimes these could be hidden in dropdown menus, but feats like paragon defenses and robust defenses will still be there in the tiered listings, even though I know will always take improved defenses instead. It would be nice to be able to click "hide" on robust defenses and never see it as an option again.
Feature Request: Ability to permanently hide character options I don't like, preferably both for all characters and per character. You can include a list somewhere of items users have premanently hidden so that they can go back and change it at a latter date.
For instance there are over 818 feats in 4E so far, with dozens more coming out most months. Many of these have become obsoleted or are pretty bad and I know for sure that I will never be interested in them. Yet in the old version of character builder they regularly would appear in the giant list of feats. Sometimes these could be hidden in dropdown menus, but feats like paragon defenses and robust defenses will still be there in the tiered listings, even though I know will always take improved defenses instead. It would be nice to be able to click "hide" on robust defenses and never see it as an option again.
818? There are more than three thousand feats in 4th Edition. It is Feat Bloat City. I too hope that the new CB provides better filtering options.
I had no clue what the actual number is, just that if you type "feat" in the compendium you get 818. I could not think of a broader search term, but I just tried leaving it the search field blank and that gives 3009 results, not counting the ones that have not made it in yet. That also revealed 7290 powers and I know some classes that have been around for a while have 400+ powers. Fighter has 419, not counting paragon path powers for instance.
I gotcha - wasn't trying to be snarky, just was thinking "oh, it's way worse than 818."
Open the API up 1 time for the users to do this and get a lot of sheets with the layouts and designs users want. Much more effective use of the DDI teams time than trying to jump through hoops to get all the different requests that will eventuate (and already have).
This is low end distributed development - take advantage of it.
Based on the current information (no info sharing, etc) it would appear that this whole function has been lost.
So the requested features would be:
- Ability for DM to create ruleset/content available to PCs and have some premades available (Dark Sun, LFR, etc would make sense)
- Include custom/house ruled data (obviously, once the new CB allows this)
- Make campaign editor function a little more user friendly than the old one (if you didn't know exactly what book the content you wanted to exclude was in, you had a lot of searching ahead of you...).
For the people that have chosen to let their subsriptions expire because of this announcment, who are in a state of 'wait and see if it gets better...', would you mind posting a timestamp at the top of your opening post that includes your last update time?
Thanks a lot.
I would like a way to "sort" the master list of feats for each character and/or to be able to "ignore" certain feats. There are a plethora of 4e feats, with more coming out every day. In addition, characters take a great number of feats throughout their adventuring careers. It can be very overwhelming for a player to look through that wall of text and decide which new feat they want to take. This can be especially frustrating if the player has already read through all the feats and decided which feats they would never want to take for that character, which feats they definitely want to take as soon as they can, and which feats are somewhere in the middle. It would help a lot if a player could click a check box or an "Ignore Feat" button that would hide the feat from view so that the player doesn't have to look through a long list of feats they don't want every time they level up their character. For example, if a character used a sword (and planned on only ever using a sword), the player could click a button next to every feat that was related to using other weapons/implements so they wouldn't have to see all those feats in the future. There should, of course, be a way to view "previously ignored" feats in case the user changed their mind. It would also be nice if there was a way to "star" certain desirable feats that the player would want to take in the future so that those feats could be quickly found and reviewed.
The lack of this feature was one of the reasons I did not like the previous character builder and why I stopped subscribing. I had to write out a hand-written note of which feats I liked for which characters (and not lose the piece of paper). At that point it was just as easy to write out my characters by hand and not subscribe to DDI at all.
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A way to edit the power/item descriptions on the character sheet would be a huge feature enhancement. While it can be nice to have the entire power's text printed out on the power cards, many times it is just too much text and it ends up slowing the game down as the player has to read through the whole thing when really only a brief summary of the power was necessary. For example, if a power does something extra when the character is wielding a hammer, but my character never wields a hammer, I don't need to see all the extra text about what happens if I'm using a hammer. Or sometimes a player uses a power so frequently that they essentially know what it does so they don't want to read through all that text, but there might be a few key pieces of information that they want to be reminded of when they use that power. For example, the old CB power cards have a line on every single power that says how much quarry damage to add. Some players may want to be reminded of that information, but if the player has been playing that ranger for an extended period of time they probably don't need that line printed on every card and it just serves as a distraction and wasted text. The power cards also have extraneous text, like how much damage the power will do at 21st level, even though the character is currently only 2nd level - that's not useful information. Other extraneous text is the fact that the "to hit" information is printed three times on every power card - once in the summary box at the top of the power, once in the power's text (DEX vs. AC or whatever), and once at the bottom with the actual modifiers for the weapon/implement being used. It would be nice if the player could delete that extra information if they wanted to.
Allowing customization of power descriptions will also allow the user to make the appropriate changes if the Character Builder doesn't appropriately calculate or account for certain things. For example, in the old Character Builder if a Fighter had Tide of Iron and Gauntlets of the Ram, the power description would say that the target was only pushed 1 square, even though it should be 2 squares. While it would be nice if the CB calculated everything correctly in the first place, mistakes do happen and it would be helpful if players could at least hand-correct any mistakes. The summary of each feat was editable in the old CB (which was immensely helpful), it would be nice if the power cards and item cards were similarly editable. It would also be nice if each power card had a line of how much damage is done on a crit and any other effects that happen on a crit.
The lack of editable power card text was another huge reason I gave up on the old CB. When I first started playing 4e I hand-wrote all of my power cards. While I was excited about many of the features of CB, when I tried it out I discovered that I was spending so much time crossing out irrelevant lines of the power card summaries, highlighting or boxing important parts of the power, and hand-correcting erroneously calculated parts of it that it would have been faster (and less messy) to continue doing all of my power cards by hand. If I had just been able to edit the power cards to include the information I needed/wanted, that would have made a huge difference.
I would greatly appreciate the ability to develop NPCs in this program. I've payed for this subscription to long to see these meager at best updates. Here, we added a power and an item. The rules are already laid out to create NPCs.
That's a great idea. I make most of my NPCs using CBC as PC's and then "strip" them down to be quicker to use. Actually being able to make NPCs per teh actual guidelines would be much nicer. And would work better from the CBOnline than it would from a new add on the Monster Builder.
+1 to this idea
with the following additional suggestion
Better Keyword support and/or the ability to houserule powers keywords
For example if i have lightning weapon it would be great if you could choose for the builder to calculate powers as if it had the Lightning keyword.
Fire focused tiefling swordmage with the Master of flames PP and flaming weapon would love to have their swordburst calculated with the fire keyword including the larger burst area.
playing in an evil campaign the ability to houserule a divine characters radiant powers to necrotic powers instead
+++++++
a feature i would love to see is working Spiked shields (tortoise blades) and Gauntlet Axe in the builder.
An alternate power sheet that can be used instead of power cards.
Sorry if someone said this already:
An alternate power sheet that can be used instead of power cards.
Seconded. Some would simply put checks on the encounter/Utilities/Dailies on the list instead of take up space flipping cards.
I run 2 D&D Encounters Groups, 2 D&D Online Campaigns, 1 Home Campaign, and sometimes just ad-lib "for fun" nights of D&D (yeah, I know... a lot there.. but where others watch TV, play WoW, or other games, we enjoy D&D). Because of this it is absolutely essential that I get more than a 20 character limit. There are 5 others I know of (plus who knows with Encounters) that have DDI, but I really, really prefer to also have characters stored for me personally so I can verify data, make sure that Fantasy Grounds 2 (online platform) characters are correct, etc. Not to mention that my 11-year-old daughter simply loves making multiple characters for our ad-libs. It's part of the fun for her.
Secondly, and I am not sure if this has been requested yet, it is very important to be able to see multiple weapon attacks for powers on the power cards. A thief (or rogue), for example, might use a dagger, short sword, and short bow regularly for a single trick or attack power. Because weapons often differentiate in attack bonuses, damages, etc., due to proficiencies, damage dice, affects from feats, class features, etc., not being able to see what each weapon attacks at is pretty crippling.
I love the new direction and hope to see it continue to improve and grow, but for it to be useful for me, some critical features need to be implemented.
1) Any chance for a modifiable/customized Race plug-in of some type? I always enjoy coming up with playable PC races (mostly from existing creatures in the game), and being able to combine that with the joys/ease of the CB would be wonderful. I honestly don't know how difficult/possible that would be in the programming, but I thought I'd throw it out there because certainly others like to make certain creatures playable as PCs in their campaigns as well. It's not at the very top of my wishlist, but it's an idea for down the road.
Thanks.
One important question for (quite literally) my money: will the new CB have a campaign setting for Living Forgotten Realms? If not, I'll be cancelling my sub until it does, or until I can justify paying for it, whichever happens to be sooner.
Along with that, for we need to be able to select which books apply for our home games, just as we could with the classic CB. If we cannot do this, that would be yet another loss of functionality.
In regards to all the folks asking about an offline viewer; once the export as .dnd4e goes live, wouldn't the existing, offline CB be able to open them up as usual?
How about if WotC could make a last update to the offline version; one that pulls all the rules *out* and reverts it to a true viewer, while leaving all the current layout options to the Character Sheet (supressing text, modifying powers, moving around text blocks, etc.); why wouldn't that work?
All of the new rules and updated powers, etc. would be embedded in the .dnd4e file and the offline CB would just read them, turning it into a viewer that would be unable to level up and stuff, but would allow the players to sit at the table with the same output from the CB that they're used to, whether on a laptop or printed out.
You would still have to have a sub to level up, get new content, etc, but not to play.
I truly am asking if this would be feasible. I'm not nearly as immersed in the nuts and bolts as some of you guys are. This is an honest suggestion; feel free to shoot it down if it's already been addressed elsewhere and isn't feasible for some reason.
Lord knows there are enough threads about the new CB, so please forgive me if this has been answered.
In regards to all the folks asking about an offline viewer; once the export as .dnd4e goes live, wouldn't the existing, offline CB be able to open them up as usual?
How about if WotC could make a last update to the offline version; one that pulls all the rules *out* and reverts it to a true viewer, while leaving all the current layout options to the Character Sheet (supressing text, modifying powers, moving around text blocks, etc.); why wouldn't that work?
All of the new rules and updated powers, etc. would be embedded in the .dnd4e file and the offline CB would just read them, turning it into a viewer that would be unable to level up and stuff, but would allow the players to sit at the table with the same output from the CB that they're used to, whether on a laptop or printed out.
You would still have to have a sub to level up, get new content, etc, but not to play.
I truly am asking if this would be feasible. I'm not nearly as immersed in the nuts and bolts as some of you guys are. This is an honest suggestion; feel free to shoot it down if it's already been addressed elsewhere and isn't feasible for some reason.
I'd prefer they just release a viewer that didn't require killing my currently functioning CB. But yeah, I suspect that once the export function get included ("soon"), then any characters that could legally be built with the CBC will be able to be exported and opened in it. But I suspect it won't work with characters including DS/Essentials/any other new content. We'll have to wait and see.
As long as the character doesn't have any features that are not included in the CB Classice, that should work. In theory.
That was my point in the line about WotC making a last update to the offline CB. Pull all the validation rules out of it so it's only a reader. The offline CB should not care *what* powers/feats/houserules are in it and whether they're legal or not. It should only be used to read the .dnd4e file and allow manipulation of that data in layout/text suppression, tracking during play, etc.
As long as the character doesn't have any features that are not included in the CB Classice, that should work. In theory.
That was my point in the line about WotC making a last update to the offline CB. Pull all the validation rules out of it so it's only a reader. The offline CB should not care *what* powers/feats/houserules are in it and whether they're legal or not. It should only be used to read the .dnd4e file and allow manipulation of that data in layout/text suppression, tracking during play, etc.
I don't think it would function - it would have nowhere to get the power card text or bonuses etc. from, nowhere to get race information, etc. The export file (.dnd4E file) as I understand it contains only the list of character components, not what they "mean" on the character sheet. I may be wrong, tho'.
As long as the character doesn't have any features that are not included in the CB Classice, that should work. In theory.
That was my point in the line about WotC making a last update to the offline CB. Pull all the validation rules out of it so it's only a reader. The offline CB should not care *what* powers/feats/houserules are in it and whether they're legal or not. It should only be used to read the .dnd4e file and allow manipulation of that data in layout/text suppression, tracking during play, etc.
I don't think it would function - it would have nowhere to get the power card text or bonuses etc. from, nowhere to get race information, etc. The export file (.dnd4E file) as I understand it contains only the list of character components, not what they "mean" on the character sheet. I may be wrong, tho'.
This is the root of my question, I guess. I don't know what kind of meta-information the .dnd4e file carries. It all kind of hinges on that.
As long as the character doesn't have any features that are not included in the CB Classice, that should work. In theory.
That was my point in the line about WotC making a last update to the offline CB. Pull all the validation rules out of it so it's only a reader. The offline CB should not care *what* powers/feats/houserules are in it and whether they're legal or not. It should only be used to read the .dnd4e file and allow manipulation of that data in layout/text suppression, tracking during play, etc.
I don't think it would function - it would have nowhere to get the power card text or bonuses etc. from, nowhere to get race information, etc. The export file (.dnd4E file) as I understand it contains only the list of character components, not what they "mean" on the character sheet. I may be wrong, tho'.
This is definitely the case. When I opened a character created in the updated builder with the demo, it read as houseruled all to heck, and any feats and powers from advanced sources and dragon magazine just read as their titles and nothing else. Bearing in mind that all the information the CB needs to construct a dnd4e file is what is in the summary, this shouldn't be a huge surprise.
Yeah it's just plain text XML, but the CB converted those XML "tags" into rules text. I'm with a previous poster. Make a viewer, but don't use the existing CB to do it. Embed all the data needed directly into the EXE so it can't be extracted.
I'd even be ok if the viewer didn't have all the power text, but just the character sheet itself. That way it doesn't have to have all the rules info either in the .dnd4e file or in the viewer itself. It would be better if it had those texts, but I can certainly understand how that could be difficult. In this case, the point of the viewer would be to allow live, electronic manipulation of the sheet (checking off powers/healing surges/etc as they're used, tracking HP and status effects, etc) which cannot be easily done with a pdf print-out.
The multiple deities worship for divine characters is allowed in PHB1 and clerics and other characters serving pantheons has a long history in D&D, but was never an option in the old character builder.
Many groups use homebrew settings with their own deities/divine rules and it is a pain that you could not build a divine character using whatever domains you want. Same goes for deity specific items, feats, and paragon paths, but domains are the most obvious ones where it would at least look to be easy to customize for homebrew characters.
Yeah it's just plain text XML, but the CB converted those XML "tags" into rules text. I'm with a previous poster. Make a viewer, but don't use the existing CB to do it. Embed all the data needed directly into the EXE so it can't be extracted.
I'd even be ok if the viewer didn't have all the power text, but just the character sheet itself. That way it doesn't have to have all the rules info either in the .dnd4e file or in the viewer itself. It would be better if it had those texts, but I can certainly understand how that could be difficult. In this case, the point of the viewer would be to allow live, electronic manipulation of the sheet (checking off powers/healing surges/etc as they're used, tracking HP and status effects, etc) which cannot be easily done with a pdf print-out.
Having just looked at a .d&d4e file I find that important information is missing if you plan to use the "viewer" instead of a printed character sheet at the table. Things like....power descriptions. I just pulled two examples from a cleric I have. For "Healing Word" the information about the extra dice is missing and for "Righteous Brand" the information about the +3 to hit for an ally is missing.
[Power name="Healing Word"]
[specific name="Power Usage"] Encounter (Special) [/specific]
[specific name="Action Type"] Minor Action [/specific]
[Weapon name="Unarmed"]
[AttackBonus] 7 [/AttackBonus]
[Damage] [/Damage]
[AttackStat] Unknown [/AttackStat]
[Defense] Unknown [/Defense]
[Healing] regain an additional 6 hit points. [/Healing]
[HitComponents] +5 half your level.
+2 Enhancement bonus - Inherent Bonuses
[/HitComponents]
[DamageComponents] [/DamageComponents]
[HealingComponents] +6 bonus - Healer's Lore [/HealingComponents]
[/Weapon]
[/Power]
[Power name="Righteous Brand"]
[specific name="Power Usage"] At-Will [/specific]
[specific name="Action Type"] Standard action [/specific]
[Weapon name="Sunblade Bastard sword +1"]
[RulesElement name="Bastard sword" type="Weapon" internal-id="ID_FMP_WEAPON_30" url="http://www.wizards.com/dndinsider/compendium/item.aspx?fid=30&ftype=3" charelem="136c3400" legality="rules-legal" /]
[RulesElement name="Sunblade +1" type="Magic Item" internal-id="ID_FMP_MAGIC_ITEM_2395" url="http://www.wizards.com/dndinsider/compendium/item.aspx?fid=2395&ftype=1" charelem="136b43b0" legality="rules-legal" /]
[AttackBonus] 17 [/AttackBonus]
[Damage] 1d10+11 [/Damage]
[AttackStat] Strength [/AttackStat]
[Defense] AC [/Defense]
[HitComponents] +7 Strength modifier.
+5 half your level.
+3 proficiency bonus.
+1 enhancement bonus. [Doesn't Stack]
+2 Enhancement bonus - Inherent Bonuses
[/HitComponents]
[DamageComponents] +7 Strength modifier.
+1 enhancement bonus. [Doesn't Stack]
+2 item bonus - Iron Armbands of Power (heroic tier)
+2 Enhancement bonus - Inherent Bonuses
[/DamageComponents]
[/Weapon]
[/Power]
1. The ability to show/display characters (in whatever format) in the community. This could simplify online play, form communities around characters and discuss (for optimization threads). DMs could even search for 'stock' characters to use as NPCs in their games.
2. Additional options to modify fluff. Add personal unique descriptors to the description text of powers, items, companions, etc.
3. Allow the ability add, import, share and export custom-built (houseruled) items, powers, feats, equipment, companions, and maybe even class builds or races!
4. Ability to make printable tokens. I'm dreaming here, but how cool would it be to have a printable token that changed as you leveled.
5. Somebody mentioned PC to NPC conversion. Can we import that into the Monster Builder (if/when that appears)?
Apart from the things others have posted, there are a couple things that would be nice in the Character Builder.
1. The ability to show/display characters (in whatever format) in the community. This could simplify online play, form communities around characters and discuss (for optimization threads). DMs could even search for 'stock' characters to use as NPCs in their games.
2. Additional options to modify fluff. Add personal unique descriptors to the description text of powers, items, companions, etc.
3. Allow the ability add, import, share and export custom-built (houseruled) items, powers, feats, equipment, companions, and maybe even class builds or races!
4. Ability to make printable tokens. I'm dreaming here, but how cool would it be to have a printable token that changed as you leveled.
5. Somebody mentioned PC to NPC conversion. Can we import that into the Monster Builder (if/when that appears)?
I would adore each of these.
One featur that is an absolutly must have, is the current display of all weappon stats on the power cards, not just the equipped one's.
I use multiple weappon, longspear, longsword, a cuple javalins.
as a dm, i would like to be able to print out the magic item cards and ritual cards to hand out as treasure. if i could make a list, and print out the list that would be great.
love ddi.
get together, drink beer, role dice.
i read through wolfs sumerized post, but not through the entire thread, so if this has been mentioned, then sorry.
as a dm, i would like to be able to print out the magic item cards and ritual cards to hand out as treasure. if i could make a list, and print out the list that would be great.
love ddi.
get together, drink beer, role dice.
Hi,
Although, for some reason, they don't print out in the same format as the cards (which is a shame), you can use the Compendium to print out items to hand out as treasure. Later, if a PC equips the item, this won't be an issue anyway.
I'd love to see an option to print out a condensed version of the Journal, which I can use to tell DMs whether I've played certain mods and/or received certain story awards in LFR. I've tried using the current CB to do this, but when I print out the Journal with my character sheet it takes up multiple pages. The end result is that I keep all the information stored in CB, but at the game table I have to rely on just the "buck slip" sized story awards, which aren't nearly as convenient. Or as accurate, since DMs often forget to bring them to a particular mod.
If the new CB offered the ability to print out a short list of my Journal entries that showed just the top line of each entry (in my case, this is where I note the names and numbers of the respective mods I've played with that character) with perhaps a few lines of space for notes (where I keep track of story awards, NPCs I've met, etc.), that would be very helpful, especially if it could be confined to a single page.
Thanks. I'm really looking forward to the new CB.
EDITED TO ADD:
Sadly, it appears that the Journal feature is missing entirely from the new online CB. I'm hoping that this is temporary and that a feature will be added that allows players to track the mods they've played.
In much the same vein, I'd like to add my voice to those asking for the ability to input more text under certain fields like "Personality," "Appearance," and especially "Session and Campaign Notes." I am accustomed to using Session and Campaign Notes to keep track of possible powers, feats, and items that I'm thinking about taking in the future. The limit imposed by the new CB means that I have nowhere to keep much of this data online. Until it's fixed, I'll just have to keep my notes and Journal in the old CB to use as a reference. This means I'll probably need to have both the old and new versions of the CB open whenever I'm leveling up a character.
As long as the character doesn't have any features that are not included in the CB Classice, that should work. In theory.
That was my point in the line about WotC making a last update to the offline CB. Pull all the validation rules out of it so it's only a reader. The offline CB should not care *what* powers/feats/houserules are in it and whether they're legal or not. It should only be used to read the .dnd4e file and allow manipulation of that data in layout/text suppression, tracking during play, etc.
I don't think it would function - it would have nowhere to get the power card text or bonuses etc. from, nowhere to get race information, etc. The export file (.dnd4E file) as I understand it contains only the list of character components, not what they "mean" on the character sheet. I may be wrong, tho'.
This is the root of my question, I guess. I don't know what kind of meta-information the .dnd4e file carries. It all kind of hinges on that.
If all that is needed is a view of the character, with no ability to change level or items, equipment, etc., then I would think a PDF "printout" of the character sheet would give everything you need? I don't really see that as an issue, but I'd be happy to have problems I'm not seeing pointed out.
as a dm, i would like to be able to print out the magic item cards and ritual cards to hand out as treasure. if i could make a list, and print out the list that would be great.
I just create a DM character that never gets played (I call him "Holding Ben" ;) ) and add items onto him for printing out as "treasure". This is with CBC, obviously - if it was one of my '20' I might be more circumspect...
No one should be forced to spend the ink to print off 30 different copies of Divine Challenge over their character's career, when the one they get with their 1st-Level Paladin has all the info they'll ever need. Healing/Inspiring/Majestic Word, Warlock's Curse, Sneak Attack, Hunter's Quarry, most Utility powersand most racial powers share this feature of never needing to be reprinted after 3rd Level. Also, there are no mathematical changes to most character powers when they gain an odd-numbered level. It's nice in CB to only print the new sheet and the new Encounter power, instead of throwing a bunch of ink into the trash.
Content updated the day a book is released
Custom items
Custom powers
Custom classes
Custom races
Custom feats
A compact version of the character sheet similar to the ones in encounters
The option to save a character as a PDF file
The ability to edit what shows up on the character sheet
The ability to make custom alpha mutation and omega tech cards. They are after all a part of D&D Gamma World.
- Scroll wheel on mouse should work on character sheet
- When I click on character sheet it always scrolls directly to the bottom (firefox if it matters)
- I see a lot of white space on both left and right side while the middle "pane" is very clustered especially on a small screen. Perhaps make better room for the actual content instead of a large portion of the screen being unused. Actually all of the content of the power and feats "tabs" aren't visible on my laptop running 1440 x 900 resolution.
- Generally I feel that to much space is used in the new character builder making it hard to get a quick overview and finding what you're looking for without having to scroll around all the time.
For instance, I have a mage and I can't select classic wizard spells or even feats (like expanded spellbook).
I know that classic classes can select Essentials feats at least--though I am not sure if they can also select essentials powers (haven't checked a classic wizard if he can pick spells from HoFL).
Joe
Edit: Nevermind, just realized it just sorts the roles but that they still all show up.
The ability for an essentials class to select non-essential feats and powers in a Custom Home Campaign.
For instance, I have a mage and I can't select classic wizard spells or even feats (like expanded spellbook).
I'm building a warpriest, and I can select cleric dailies and utilities...
My suggestions:
1) Allow mousewheel to work with it, as with the desktop program
2) Allow keyboard accelerators to work - mainly up-arrow and down-arrow to scroll through lists.
3) Don't scroll to the bottom of a list when I choose something (like storm domain for a warpriest), since it makes me scroll all the way back up.
- Inherent bonuses
- The ability to 'delevel' a character. I like to play with builds, and especially with a 20 character limit, it would be useful to be able to go back a level or levels. Never mind. One has to lower the XP amount to below a level's threshold, click off of the xp box, and wait for a refresh, then the bar above changes to level down option.
- Also, in the 'Retraining' screen, the button labels are cut off.
Thank you for your hard work. There is a lot to like here, too.
DustyPhoenix.
DustyPhoenix.
EDIT: Could one of the coders edit the web CB to play this every time there's an error? (ie: all the time)
The ability for an essentials class to select non-essential feats and powers in a Custom Home Campaign.
For instance, I have a mage and I can't select classic wizard spells or even feats (like expanded spellbook).
I'm building a warpriest, and I can select cleric dailies and utilities...
My suggestions:
1) Allow mousewheel to work with it, as with the desktop program
2) Allow keyboard accelerators to work - mainly up-arrow and down-arrow to scroll through lists.
3) Don't scroll to the bottom of a list when I choose something (like storm domain for a warpriest), since it makes me scroll all the way back up.
Nope.
You can see that Scorching Burst and Thunderwave, for instance, are missing. Only powers on HotFL are available. And wizard class feats from other sources are also missing. And I double checked and this is a Custom Home Campaign character--not an Essentials only.
I don't wanna bitch and moan about it, but this is a pretty big deal for me, and I'm quite certain for a lot of other ppl too. So I want this addressed ASAP.
heroes of the forgotten kingdoms is not in yet, even though the builder says it is
Where does it say that? I thought we were told that HotFK were not scheduled for inclusion until December?
heroes of the forgotten kingdoms is not in yet, even though the builder says it is
It's not listed in the Content in the Character Builder.
heroes of the forgotten kingdoms is not in yet, even though the builder says it is
Where does it say that? I thought we were told that HotFK were not scheduled for inclusion until December?
They actually didn't even say that much. December is just our assumption based on what used to be the update schedule before September.
heroes of the forgotten kingdoms is not in yet, even though the builder says it is
Where does it say that? I thought we were told that HotFK were not scheduled for inclusion until December?
right when you need to select campaign rules like essentials.
heroes of the forgotten kingdoms is not in yet, even though the builder says it is
Where does it say that? I thought we were told that HotFK were not scheduled for inclusion until December?
Choose the Encounters Season 3 option. It mentions Heroes of the Fallen Kingdom...doesn't say it is available but it does list it as a primary source for the campaign.
1. The ability to use a scroll wheel to go through lists, rather than having to click on the scroll arrows/bar.
2. Options for sorting saved characters (eg. alpha, by class, by race, by level, etc.).
3. More than a single-line, non-expanding space for RP info (eg. personality, campaign notes, etc.).
4. Have the builder expand to fill a window fully. I have a widescreen monitor and the wCB does not take advantage of that like the old one did. This would fix the next issue.
5. Remove the need to scroll horizontally to see all info in the equipment list.
6. The equipment manager is really confusing. Too many drop-down menu choices to make. I had to hunt down things I was looking for between tabs and menus. Two simple lists in the old CB was quicker and easier.
7. Folders for saved characters. It's not too bad with the 20 character limit, but would be helpful, especially after that limit goes away.
8. Feat summaries displayed without needing to click on every feat I might be interested in.
9. Character sheet customization - matching that of the old character builder. Rearange fields and add/alter text.
9a. See also: community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/758...
4. Have the builder expand to fill a window fully. I have a widescreen monitor and the wCB does not take advantage of that like the old one did. This would fix the next issue.
Similarly, when I have it set to half-screen, expand it vertically to fill.
heroes of the forgotten kingdoms is not in yet, even though the builder says it is
Where does it say that? I thought we were told that HotFK were not scheduled for inclusion until December?
Choose the Encounters Season 3 option. It mentions Heroes of the Fallen Kingdom...doesn't say it is available but it does list it as a primary source for the campaign.
I see. I'd suggest checking the list of sources included in the Character Builder release notes.
If it hasn't been mentioned: add Inherent Bonuses back in.
It has been mentioned.
heroes of the forgotten kingdoms is not in yet, even though the builder says it is
It's not listed in the Content in the Character Builder.
Great, more provably untrue communication from the mighty WOTC.
Previous Data: Includes all character-building data you enjoyed in the previous version.
You know, apart from inherent bonuses, weapliments, ANY desire to include maths for anything, campaign settings, journals... I could go on and on, but it's making my blood boil enough as it is. I can live, more or less, with a crappy tool. I have a better tool already installed, albeit with slightly less data. I hate that they still haven't learned the lesson about %*$#ing LYING to their customers.
1) Export, export, export. Very important for many reasons. I know this is a high priority already. In the end if I can choose to save in the cloud or on my laptop that'll kill 2 birds with 1 stone. Won't need more then 20 spots in the cloud.
2) Houserules. This is a core of my games. Bonus feat slots. Special powers. A complete different set of languages. Etc, etc.
3) Character sheet customizations. Whether I want to up someones hp or change another aspect of the sheet. The way it runs with the old CB worked very well for my purposes.
4) More online storage. Having only 20 in the cloud with an export function is fine. Ideally I'd like something closer to 100. I run a massive multi-tiered campaign with close to 80 characters. This doesn't count the 20 or so other characters i've made just fooling around.
I know all of these issues have been mentioned already, but it never hurts to second an opinion.
I have a few friends who use the CB classic to record their LFR adventure logs. I didn't notice these being imported with the new CB.
The online builder is also seriously slow. I have very little patience for it. APIUHRO#IU@HY)*&YW#!
I'm out of DDICB now. what I do? I can't remake my npc. Soft always bugging at me error error error.
I can't reinstall the Old one because I uninstalled it and it not available?? I DM a game this friday and no tools... GREAT.
My 2 cents....
1) Export, export, export. Very important for many reasons. I know this is a high priority already. In the end if I can choose to save in the cloud or on my laptop that'll kill 2 birds with 1 stone. Won't need more then 20 spots in the cloud.
2) Houserules. This is a core of my games. Bonus feat slots. Special powers. A complete different set of languages. Etc, etc.
3) Character sheet customizations. Whether I want to up someones hp or change another aspect of the sheet. The way it runs with the old CB worked very well for my purposes.
4) More online storage. Having only 20 in the cloud with an export function is fine. Ideally I'd like something closer to 100. I run a massive multi-tiered campaign with close to 80 characters. This doesn't count the 20 or so other characters i've made just fooling around.
I know all of these issues have been mentioned already, but it never hurts to second an opinion.
Thirded. This builder is absolutely no use to my campaign. I can't import the PCs, I can give them their extra feats and custom powers that they've acquired over the years, I can't add in their inherent bonuses, I can't upload their character portraits. I wouln't mind waiting it out but the characters have just gone up a level and I want one of the new shadar-kai feats that should, in theory, be in this update.
I've noticed that I can only pick one background too. although you can only gain one background benefit, it was nice to chart the history of our characters through a simple method of picking several backgrounds. In game it allows us to apply situational skill bonuses based on our characters' histories. Backgrounds are an easy way of keeping the Pcs on an even footing. Why are they now limited to one?
I wanted to be optimistic, I've kept my concerns to myself but this tool is a huge disappointment and I can see me waiting 2-3 months before the only thing I use from DDI is any use to me. That's not really money well spent.
Don't know if it's been mentioned yet, but a smaller version of the character sheet would be awesome. I'm not talking about physical size on the page, but when I go to print my character sheet it is over 1GB of data. I'm on the small size of our group, most are about 1.5 GB and one is almost 2GB. I can't understand why there needs to be so much data. Especially when the same character's sheet in the old version was 15 MB. Do the sheet's really need 68 times more data?
Agreed. My internet is capped at 40 gigabytes. So the thought of having to use a quarter of it to print less than 10 character sheets is a huge problem.
But fortunately trying to print one character out makes my entire machine grind to a halt, and crashes Firefox so it's not a process I'm likely to repeat.
Very disappointed.
Requested feature: Ability to have the background section of the character sheet display the background benefit and NOT the flavour text. Mine currently takes up a fair sized chunk of the page for the fluff, and doesn't display the benefit, which is what I really need.
Can I get a character sheet that isn't.... tiny?
Have you checked your print preferences to be sure it's set for portrait and not landscape?
- No summary text when picking feats
- Can't customize character sheet
- Can't customize which weapons shown on power cards
- Can't right click
When I print to file, my pdf print dialogue claims that my sheet for a level 1 character is 682 megabytes. The actual sheet is about three megabytes, and my bandwidth monitoring software confirms that it's a fair bit smaller than 600. (about 4 or 5 megs at most).
The stupendous spool file size probably has something to do with the XPS to EMF conversion that happens inside Windows when printing to PostScript printers; see msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms74241... and scroll down.
Printing to the XPS Document Writer should work better, although it's less useful. And it's still a huge file, whether it's Microsoft or WotC who should take the blame.
Thanks
- Why can't my bard equip his bard implements? I've got a Doss Lute. I want to use it for my implement powers. I try to equip it, and NADA.
- Where's the summary of my attack/damage? These used to be put in the cards themselves, now they're removed. I have to calculate this stuff on my own? Or always look at the character sheet?
- Why can't I combine campaigns? I want to add a Dark Sun theme to my Chosen of Mystara Thri-Kreen with a Dragonmark. What gives?
- Why can't I share or export my character? If iplay4e gives me a better and more useful layout, why can't I use it? What if my DM needs to look at my character?
- Why can't I customize elements? I wanna call "dragonborn" and "wilden" someting far less dumb. Why can't I replace their titles with whatever I want? Maybe "Drachen" and "Killoren"?
- Why can't I whip up a random character? I just wanna press a button and have the builder do all the work for me. Making decisions is obnoxious when I just want to see some interesting combintations.
- Why so sloooow? Faster. Faster. More Dakka.
Those are the big ones. I'm sure there's gonna be more....
(offline CB still better than this right now unless you're making a DS or Essentials char...and even then....by hand perhaps...)
(offline CB still better than this right now unless you're making a DS or Essentials char...and even then....by hand perhaps...)
FYI: As a warlock player, the new essential Hexblades should not lack the vestige pact. What a slap in the face that was.
1. Percieved Slowness due to loading every selection (should be an easy fix honestly)
2. Max Character Slots of 20(Obviously not enough for any DM...pathetic choice)
3. Can't upload pictures for your character(not certain about this one...but it's ridiculous that I can't actually customize my character and I'm forced to look at the image.)
4. Unable to customize the character sheets *at all* so I must look at the portrait..or the blank page in the back for all the stuff that I don't type in. Since I have my own notes.
5. No calculated stuff on the cards.
6. No local storage (Reason it's so low...is if number 2 didn't exist it *wouldn't matter*
7. There is no room for custom anything. Period. (Unique Items Extra Feats...Randomness)
8. Equpment interface is not very intuitive...the rest of the interfaces I like.
9. Can't arrow through powers and feats anymore. Makes it hard to navigate and browse.
10. Honestly I can't think of a 10th except for the powers selected image. It's not really necessary...since the power is there and not the big choose a power button.
Yea that is driving me nuts too!
Request: I would like to be able to specify that I want my +3 radiant dagger in my MH and my +4 strongheart dagger in my OH. Alternatively, I'd like to be able to specify that I want my power cards to use the +3 radiant dagger for calculations. Got that one too. It's the order in which you equip them that matters. OK. Clunky but OK.
I would like to be able to use Drowmesh Leather Armor for the +1 to Reflex. Aha, found out how to do that. OK.
I would like to be able to buy Dragonshards in home campaigns.
Another issue that's just as serious for me is house-ruling. The main campaign I play in is house-ruled out the ears. I have to be able to make & use custom magic items & weapons at the very least or figure out another toolset to assist me in playing that campaign.
Not being able to Show All Weapons on Power Cards isn't quite as limiting as the first two issues mentioned here, but it's a pretty major hitch in my gitalong when I can't tell what my chances of hitting are by looking at my Power Card when I switch weapons.
Not being able to load custom character portrait art doesn't affect functionality at all, but it does stink. The group I play with is a bunch of talented artists and our portraits are pretty bitchin'. I'm not saying the WotC art isn't good, but these just aren't our characters.
And I can't help but be a little cranky when I get down to what I can only describe as my "core gripe": all of these "feature requests" represent functionality I had already been utilizing and enjoying for ages. As a subscriber I now have to choose between...
a) ...keeping functionality I've come to rely on, and
b) ...having that functionality taken away from me in order to access the new content I'm paying for.
That's a pretty cruddy decision to be forced to make! It's sort of mind-numbing to have to list off a bunch of "improvement ideas" like "mouse-scrolling, arrow keys to move up & down lists, automatically resizing windows for simple readability's sake" when that's already covered by "for goodness' sake it never occurred to me that you might take away all the obvious, simple, base-level UI stuff I've been counting on all along up until now".
Let me say I totally understand why WotC has switched over to the online approach to this tool and I don't blame the company for making that decision for even a minute - I imagine I would do the same in WotC's shoes. But come on, doesn't the new version really sort of have to have all the features of the old one? I didn't expect everything to be perfect and identical when switching over to a CB based on completely different architecture, but I also never imagined it would be lacking so much basic functionality out of the gate. This thing isn't nearly ready for prime time.
I guess I feel like maybe you guys should have gone ahead and updated the old CB with the new content for another month while you got the new CB massaged into a usable state. I know that's a lot of work, but I don't know what to tell you about that.
Add to the list missing data from imported .dnde4 files.
So far I have the following.
RPGA number
Player names
Character Information
Journal
Why I dont see any bugs in promo video? :P
- WotC would give some sort of undertaking, publically, about the ability to continue using 4E character builder functionality after 5E comes along. My biggest concern with this development is that I will come to rely on this tool (as I already have on the existing CB) for the smooth running of my game and then it just gets yanked. When 5E does come along I'll almost certainly give it a go - but I reserve the right to stay with 4E if I don't like it. I know "I can just use pen and paper like we did back in the day" - I just don't see why I should put myself in the position of having to. My past experience has been with eTools - remember that? - where all support was axed as soon as 4E was in preparation. That experience has not left me overflowing with confidence on this score - and with eTools I at least ended up with a persistent program I could still use.
+5 Holy Avenger on this point.
At least we knew (in a relatively short period of 2 months) why the 4e offline CB was discontinued. The old e-tools for 3e was a huge upset for a long time. To not even let a 3rd party continue to support it for you without an explanation is just bad for customer goodwill.
A public promise for continued support or at least access is needed for some of us to feel secure in our purchase.
1. Houserulings - A campaign me and my buddies are playing requires a lot of houserulings for our characters. we are level 10 and we plan to go to level 30. We would like a houserulings options similar or even more customizable than the current character builder
2. All content availability - There are a few backgrounds, feats etc. That have been removed from this character builder that I liked from the previous one. The background I chose "pivitol Event-Possession" because it gave the language abyssal which fit with the campaign and still followed rules without houseruling or gyping other characters
3. Upload pictures - This is a no-brainer. I have some awsome pics but now they would be useless
4. Downloadables - at least allow us to download our character sheets, many of my friends play with digital character sheets
5. Customization - WE play the game if WE want a Dark sun campaign with dragon marks let us have them
6. Other sheets - Offer us the "old style" character sheets, i'm not a fan of the newer ones sorry.
7. Put the stats back on the cards it saved a lot of time doing math.
8. Max Character slots - This is not right. you are severly limiting players and DMs alike
9. Different version - I liked having an independent character builder that didn't need to be in the web browser. I still have it. All I want is new updates. Give us something that isn't connected to the web so we don't require a connection, in case internet goes down or parental internet controls.
10. There is more but I'm tired. I hope they will be addressed until then keep your spirits high, I hope they change these things and make it better
I'd prefer to have separate cards for each version, as in the old character builder. My middle-aged eyes will thank you.
Guess what my requested feature is?
That is all.
I can't imagine those files being very large (checks directory) yeah, a hundred or so kB, as I thought. In that case the cost to store 100 characters per user should be trivial next to the bandwidth costs. (And if they fix the builder so that it doesn't communicate with you every time you change a value by 1, the bandwidth could be cut down by 90%!)
My guess is this number is very temporary, just something they implemented to prevent some explosive loop from eating hard disk space unexpectedly on the first day.
A rewrite in something other than Silverlight. Something that is well supported by pretty much every browser released in the last 5 years without plugins and runs significantly faster with less overhead. Like, I dunno, javascript. Or if you really want to go for poorly supported things, maybe html5. Just something that is actually cross-platform and is handled by the browser instead of third-party plugins. Seriously, employ one of Google's, or one of Facebook's coders for a month or two and let them come up with something good. Or try open-source (not free, have access to the databases of powers/feats/equipment/etc require a subscriber login) and let your loyal and rather nerdy fan-base come up with something decent.
Oh, and bring back being able to edit the character sheet. At least to hide powers we don't want shown (like basic attacks and powers for unused equipment).
And the ability to edit the character sheet would be nice as well.
I want to be able to see all of the weapons and stats in a handy chart like the last CB had.
Having to select each item to see its stats is TERRIBLE.
I just finished reading the Dark Sun campaign book, and I saw a few things that were not available in the new character builder.
Fixed enhancement bonuses are recommended for a Dark Sun campaign, but I did not see that option on the character sheet.
Also, I'd like to see the option of choosing multiple backgrounds like in the offline CB. Dark Sun, in particular, have a lot of interesting backgrounds to choose from.
Those are the biggies.
Cf. to the Windows setting that will allow you to delete files with or without a confirmation dialogue box.
I would really like to be able to 'double-click' an item in a list to select it, and then Really Really Select it, as well as be able to single click to select it, and then click the 'select' button
o_O that's one thing I CAN do...
I can't seem to find any text for my familar on the character sheet and the grandmaster training doesn't seem to crop up anywhere in the equipment shop. It would be nice to edit the text of the backgrounds - they're useful to give a feel to the background but few character actual in-game backgrounds actually fit the official text.
Familiars are a known issue:
"Animal companions and familiars are not printed on the character sheets"
A levels 1-2 or 1-3 demo, like the old one had, is pretty much required to help get new (and skeptical old) customers.
- Ability to set your desired point buy maximum. If you use non-standard point buy it will never give you the "newbie" green next button and the change in graphics of the tabs on the left saying you've completed the step.
- In addition, if you make the mistake of going to the assign array or dice roll tab after you do your point buy then the abilities you have assigned seem to change but the point buy running total does not. Effectively it lowered the ability scores but still said I was spending more points.
- Choosing ability scores with point buy is incredibly slow. Is the tool recomputing the entire character sheet everytime I increment/decrement an ability score? If so, how about waiting until I do an apply button or something to speed things up?
- The Home Campaign option should allow one to select anything from any source. That includes themes and any other specilty options introduced in specific campaigns.
- Where did Inherent Bonuses go? That was emphasized for Dark Sun and I was intending on using it for my next game starting very soon. That was not a "house-rule" in the old character builder so I do not undertsand why it has gone missing.
- Minimal house-rule support such as (a) choosing a feat or power you do not qualify for and (b) adding a bonus feat or power. Basically give me what I used to have in the old character builder.
- Non-image based character sheets. Print to PDF options are very poor right now because of the sheets being image based.
- Export option so I can store characters locally.
- Better than 20 character max.
- Cleaner option for raising and lowering level after character creation. The "button/pulldown" either shows only the next level or for some reason on one of my characters only shows "Level Down to level 1". Let me simply pick the level. In some games characters may get more than one level at once. Or old characters may come back into a game many levels later. Bumping one level at a time is manual and tedious for no reason. The old interface in the old builder worked fine.
I have bought virtually every 4th edition book, box set, and module since 4th edition started and have been a yearly subscriber to DDI as well. I felt the purchases were fine because my players would be able to tap any of the new stuff because character builder did the work for them. If I drop back to just using the old builder my spending habits will drop as well. No point in reading all the cool stuff that noone will be using.
After the character builder and the issues with migrating over to the new forum last year, my single biggest request would be to stop using your paying customers as Beta testers (or at least roll out limited Betas before launching products). It's been four months since we have had an up to date (Using the all books published the month before the CB patch measuring stick that was the basis of the old model) and working (as the new one is too crash happy and missing too many key features to be called "working"). Seriously, is this what I'm paying my yearly subscription fee for? Let's remember this isn't a cool tool that wizards designed for it's fans out of the goodness of its heart. This is a Product that we have to pay for, and it would be nice to actually get what we paid for.
This is the BEST Request I saw in the whole forum. For myself, I already wrote to CS, I told them I paid for a Defective product. I hope for anwers soon.
CBC had calculation errors and looked like it was made in 1995, but it worked decently well.
However, the online character builder is atrocious. Wizards knows about all the errors in the calculations and coding of abilities. However, here's a list of usibility updates I would like to see:
-Derived info when selecting abilities. I would like to see my chance to hit and total damage dice plus attacck mods before I select the ability. This was nicely visible in CBC and only shows up after I pick it here, which is a good 2 seconds to 5 minutes away. This wouldn't be much of an issue, but there's some godo variance for characters that use melee and ranged attacks or weapons and implements or multiple mods to attack. Please help me decide my power as I select them, not afterwards.
-Average damage per attack / power when selecting. This wasn't in CBC, but seems like a simple request. How can more derived info be bad. This can go right below the derived chance to hit and total damage dice plus attack mods
-Pop out windows suck. Do you know why no other website or program uses this format? It's so annoying and worthless to always have to click and get a popout, locking everthing behind it and taking forever. There must be a more natural and elegant way to do this.
-Speed the program up. I've seen tons of reasons it's so slow and suggestions that help. You made it, so pick the ones that work. I showed my friends and we all began to groan every time the screen froze, which is every click. Making a character takes like 50 clicks, so it's a long process, all of it on your end.
-Thumbnail sketch of character that is always viewable. CBC did this poorly, but it was there in the middle bottom right area. That list only gave names of powers, but you could see them when you clicked on them. This thumbnail sketch is helpful if not necessary when you're looking at other powers, feats (notably feats that name powers you have), and equipment. It'd be nice to have a list in the corner that talls you what the power, feat, or weapon does when you hover over it.
-Character sheet and power cards should be moddable.
-Power cards should show logical additional benefits that are conditional. I mean, don't waste this info on extra damage that all attacks you do get (like Quarry damage, Curse damage, or Prime Shot). Players should know or will quickly learn conditional bonuses and damage that happen every attack. Instead, put additional modifiers that only happen rarely or to certain attacks (Running Attack, feats that affect elemental power, feats that refer to specfic powers).
These are the things I would like, beyond actually making the online character builder at least as good as CBC.
- Start the builder as normal. Close that window, but don't close your browser
- Go to vecna.wizards.com
- Load your character
- There should be a "debug" tab around. Go to it, copy the XML of your character. Save that to disk.
- Later, you or someone else might be able to import that saved file.
The stupendous spool file size probably has something to do with the XPS to EMF conversion that happens inside Windows when printing to PostScript printers; see msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms74241... and scroll down.
Printing to the XPS Document Writer should work better, although it's less useful. And it's still a huge file, whether it's Microsoft or WotC who should take the blame.
Regardless of any inefficiencies further down the print stack from the application, the biggest issue is that the Character Builder prints each page as a high resolution bitmap image (quite likely uncompressed - 8.5" x 11" @ 600dpi @ 32bpp = 128MB a page), rather than doing what any sane application does and breaking it down into text and smaller independant images.
Printing to XPS document writer produces files around 17MB for a six page sheet. And diving into the XPS file shows that the Character Creator disrespects user choice for image format, forcing the embedded images to PNG format.
I do not expect the CB to ever follow the rules with 100% accuracy or properly implement 100% of all equipment. I do expect to be able to customize it to make up for any shortfalls. I also expect to be able to customize it to create items/feats/powers and have the CB do the proper calculations for them.
On Printing:
I want the printout to be text based except where it must be a graphic. The current file sizes for print jobs and *.pdf storage are ludicrous.
Of course, I'm not sure if anyone else finds this kind of lightweight format useful. (Many players like their pretty, full-fledged character sheets.)
The new CB grants control of the application to whoever most recently opened the application. In fact, a partially completed character can be altered or deleted by whoever most recently opened the app, possibly costing a player valuable time for sharing his subscription. This means that subscription sharing is gone, unless players wait in line to use CB to update their Characters.
While I acknowledge WotC's right to make an honest dollar, do you honestly expect every player to buy a subscription to DDI just to play in a D&D game? Does it seem reasonable for a DM + 5 players to be expected to shell out 720 bucks a year, on top of their sourcebooks, just to be able to make Characters using the most up to date information?
I think that at the very least, the application should allow for 4 users to update their characters. Anything less will seriously cut into game time, and disallow updates to characters except between gaming sessions.
Or how about a special subscription just for Character Builder access???
Has there been any consideration to a reduced cost subscription that just allows users access to Character Builder, or an add on subscription to a main full subscription? Many players could care less about Dragon, and have no interest at all in Dungeon (being more of a DM's webzine), and a reduced subscription rate for just use of Character Builder might be a way to get more subscriptions and make the community more supportive, instead of more frustrated.
I have close to 100 characters on my netbook alone, since I have run 3 seperate campaigns - oriental, forgottem realms, and recently dark sun *until the mythical update was supposed to happen". Even if the web based CB worked on my netbook (can't get past the first page), the product would be useless to me with the 20 character limit. And I never shared the flipping account, and payed pretty much from day one.
High
* Accessability/font size adjustment. I have bad eyes. Old program, and standard browsers, allow adjustment of text size. Even using the zoom in and zoom text only options of my browser I can't make the text bigger. This makes it unusable on my laptop screen and not comfortable on my desktop.
* Arrow keys to move through power and feats - right now to browse through them you need to individually click each one.
* Character sheet customizations. I look at my character sheet for several sessions, to look at CB once. The Character sheet really needs to have a higher level of customizations.
* Multiple versions of the same character / copying characters. I often will have a character at current level, next level in case we level up during session, and a speculative copy at the next tier.
* Custom portraits - same reasoning as the character sheet customizations.
* Export / share characters. Including summary.
* More storage, including subdirectories.
* Ability to chose "illegal" feats / add in custom feats like in the old CB. Even better if this was extended to powers and items. Super fantastic if you can add in math.
Moderate
* Short feat descriptions always shown - same reason as arrow keys for feats/powers. with over 1000 feats we need to be able to quickly look thorugh. Yes, this will clutter it, so maybe an option.
* More on each page - lots of space given to look nice, but at the price of density. I shouldn't need to scroll my details page because of pretty boxes around choices, oversized buttons (with small text), and dropbox shadows.
* Offline reader/printer.
* House rules - that are sharable.
Low
* Expert mode - cut through lots of the handholding and extra screens. More dense information presentation. Change pretty whitespace for campaign type and steps on left side to small and functional. Ability to turn off suggestions which splits feats you might want and puts it elsewhere. Turn off the "choose for me' buttons which are somewhat insulting.
* Resize window. This might go hand-in-hand with font resizing.
* Notes field not on character sheet - for caracter build ideas, etc.
More as I use it more. Has a lot that I like, but it is missing some of the functionality I'm already used to. The small font size is the only real show stopper for me.
I mean, you guys went to the trouble of making the code for it but, what, forgot the check-box?
Im'a just leave this here:
The start up screen where one chooses type of character ie; Essentials, Custom... has 16 images that all load up separately. None of those images are used for anything on that screen other than Oooo pretty. I'd imagine just making the 16 separate images into a single image that right there alone would shave off a good amount of the sitting and staring at the screen waiting for it to completely populate and load so one could move on to actually trying to make a character.
Upon choosing ones race is it really necessary to populate every race's image? Again time wasted and I imagine a taxing of resources better used in making the CB faster instead of click..go get soda at 7-11, toggle over to read newest CB flame thread..toggle back..nope still waiting for images for my race to load.
I seriously have to question what sort of testing at all went into this? I don't mean to be snarky, I'd seriously like to know the mindset that looked at this and said "Looks good, roll it!"
Since the feedback selection just goes to constant redirect bounce I'll throw this here.
The start up screen where one chooses type of character ie; Essentials, Custom... has 16 images that all load up separately. None of those images are used for anything on that screen other than Oooo pretty. I'd imagine just making the 16 separate images into a single image that right there alone would shave off a good amount of the sitting and staring at the screen waiting for it to completely populate and load so one could move on to actually trying to make a character.
That's actually not true. You can click on each one of those portraits, and the whole grid will flip over, giving you a start-up character to load of the portrait you clicked.
2) There is no way to buy a quantity of an item unless you buy the item X times. For Example, you wish to buy 20 Shuriken, you need to buy 1 shuriken 20 times rather then having a quantity button
It may have been mentioned already but: the Essentials sheet has no listing for Passive Perception and Passive insight.
I noticed that when I opened my red box.
I won't cancel my subscription because of the Compendium, but will let it expire. The compendium is still super useful, but with the new CB being worse than the old in terms of practical use, I think I'll just pick up the in print rules compendium and use that.
- multiple weapons & implements to be visible on a card
- a "worksheet" that shows how all the modifiers are added up
- I just don't want that to be the character sheet
- or if part of the sheets it is just an extra page to the sheet that I can choose to not print
1. House rules. The ability to create feats and powers in a meaningful way (meaning it changes the stats on power cards), the ability to allow a character to use a feat or power that they aren't technically eligible for (my DM allows characters to choose options from either the paragon path they chose or the racial paragon path from PHB2 or 3), and the ability to grant additional feats (my Eberron campaign DM gave every PC a dragonmark as a bonus feat, and I know of DMs who give free expertise feats);
2. The character sheets... Wow. My preference would be to have the exact character sheet functionality of the classic character builder brought over. Show me the math in that forma. Frankly, I'm used to it and am very "change resistant" on this. Information on static bonuses and penalties for skill checks, passive perception, the ability to move parts around and customize based on what you want to see on your character sheet... The ability to have not only basic attack information, but also attack and damage bonus information (and, most importantly, the math) on the front page for whatever at-will, encounter, or daily attack power you want was great. The ability to "unlock" the sheet and move boxes around was awesome, and I miss it;
3. Some sort of "offline mode" for the character builder (I realize that probably won't happen, but I can certainly ask for it);
4. The ability to export character sheets;
5. "Power Swap" feats don't appear to currently work. I have a multiclass paladin / fighter who swapped his 7th level encounter for Come and Get It. This functionality does not currently work, and needs to be fixed;
6. Portrait Upload: Some of the canned Wizards art is OK, but I'm attached to the art that I like for my characters and have invested time in either finding it or creating it. And it's not in the canned CB art right now. Frankly, the least important because this is "fluff", but I do like to know at a glance which character I'm playing.
And now for the good news. There are some things that the new character builder gets right.
1. Search functionality. This. Is. Awesome. Well done;
2. Power cards: These are more logically laid out and more functional. Another good job.
1.) I have noticed that the new version of the browser based CB no longer shows the offhand weapon under Basic Attacks
2.) Nor does it show Ability score modifiers beside the attrributes.
3.) I am also not able to remove or sell equiptment using the new CB.
I was wondering the reasoning behind this or if it will be implemented at a later time?
Not content updates but feature updates, any prevision for the next version?
1. API for third party & community created tools.
2. The ability for users to create skins for character sheet.
3. When books are officially released, the character builder updated with all the new info the same day.
4. An offline read only character viewer tool.
5. Some sort of FTP client for the character builder. So I can drag and drop which characters are stored online or offline. This would allow me to store as many characters I wanted on my hard drive while maintaining the 20 slots available online..
it's kind of like a wish list.
I would like to have a separate slot for equipping Holy Symbol Implements (this is a feature in the old CB). Presently when you equip a holy symbol in new CB it is assigned to your off-hand stopping you from equipping other items in your off-hand such as a shield.
Most Holy Symbol Implements only need to be worn to gain the benefits with powers that have the implement keyword, unlike other implements such as instruments / orbs / rods / weapons etc that need to be held.
The most notable exception is a Holy Avenger that would need to allow you to equip it as both a weapon and a holy symbol so that the benefits are reflected in powers with either the Melee weapon range or implement keyword.
How about an interface element to switch Inherent Bonuses on without jumping through elaborate hoops?
I mean, you guys went to the trouble of making the code for it but, what, forgot the check-box?
Im'a just leave this here:
What hoops can you jump through right now to add inherent bonuses?
What hoops can you jump through right now to add inherent bonuses?
It involves importing a character that already has inherent bonuses enabled. That can be managed by using the debug tab at vecna.wizards.com to make a .dnd4e file of your character, editing it in notepad or the CB to give it the inherent bonus, and then importing it.
Second, I would like to request a way to skin/modify character sheet templates
Finally, I would like to request a place to publicly post characters, homebrew and character sheet templates. Perhaps it could be attached to our forum profile but also have a page here on the forums where players can search through them. Then add a way to easily share them (don't do this by default. Make it a check box in the builder or something) and a way to easily add them into my builder when I see one I like that is being shared (say by clicking an icon next to the link it will make that character/homebrew item/template available in my builder).
This would be AWESOME.
For example, the Dragonborn dragon breath enhancement feats do not apply to the power [d10's, use a different ability modifier etc.], and have also noticed for the Dragonborn paragorn path Honourable blade that the level 16 ability to give resistance does not show on the character sheet. While these are minor and easily manually adjusted would be nice to have the functionality on the builder itself.
Also, maybe the ability to change campaign settings for characters...
The stupendous spool file size probably has something to do with the XPS to EMF conversion that happens inside Windows when printing to PostScript printers; see msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms74241... and scroll down.
Printing to the XPS Document Writer should work better, although it's less useful. And it's still a huge file, whether it's Microsoft or WotC who should take the blame.
Regardless of any inefficiencies further down the print stack from the application, the biggest issue is that the Character Builder prints each page as a high resolution bitmap image (quite likely uncompressed - 8.5" x 11" @ 600dpi @ 32bpp = 128MB a page), rather than doing what any sane application does and breaking it down into text and smaller independant images.
Printing to XPS document writer produces files around 17MB for a six page sheet. And diving into the XPS file shows that the Character Creator disrespects user choice for image format, forcing the embedded images to PNG format.
I am using Bullzip PDF and the following setting provide decent files:
screen
1 MB or less
Quality not great
ebook
2-5 MB
Quality better slightly blurry
printer
6-9 MB
Best choice
prepress
Really big
Not so much!
I have made several 1st level and 20th level character. More pages larger file size.
I ussually pdf and print from the pdf.
Would be great to hear everyone else's experience.
I also know that once I pdf the character the current version is crash proof in the protect shield of static pdf. It also become edit proof if I loose it like I have a couple of times.
But hey we are deep in it now.
Regards
Option of less color for the powers. Just use the color for the box outline, not as a fill color.
Option of not using a fixed space with the text size changing to fit the space. Use fixed text size, and allow the boxed description area to expand or shrink as is needed. Doing this could reduce several pages of powers by a page or more.
Option to increase or decrease the base text size of the powers by one or two sizes. The powers could then be given a 2 or 3 column format.
But first I want to say: Thank you.
I realize that producing this new CB has been quite an effort and especially at the start of something new not everything is perfect.I miss these features most in order of importance, most important comes first:
- houserules, especially the ability to
- add feats you don't qualify for or not available in your setting world
- add bonus feats
- use themes for all characters (not only Dark Sun)
It is our game and not everything works as according to the rules printed in a house game. Tools not supporting this put a great limitation on us players and DMs and the end risk is, that they become irrelevant to our way of playing the game.
- Performance
Yes, this really is a big issue. More data needs to be cached and not lead to a reload of the whole page you are on. This becomes apparent when: Adding attibute points, choosing powers or feats. You always have to wait pretty long until the results are applied. This might turn people away from the character builder despite of the already great amoung of features you have made available.
- exporting of characters (or: third party access, hopefully without cost) so that I can use my characters in Masterplan
It is our game after all. In order to plan campaigns or execute battles we need some digital help here.
Well ... maybe not "need", but it sure makes things easier.- Summaries
Examle: choosing feats. In the old character builder you had a list of feats and for most feats we had a short summary what this feat would do. No need to click on every single one to find out what it does. The new character builder lacks such summaries sadly, making the choice process a bit harder than it neeeds to be.
- upload images for character avatars, of if you are not able to create choice due to fear of unlicensed material being used: A much greater choice of avatar pictures to choose from for at least all the official player races and classes (including the races and classes of setting books and Dragon Magazine)
They are our characters after all. I realize that the copyright issue might become important, but it should prove to be no problem as long as you don't make the images of characters publically available. So simply remove uploaded images from PUBLIC characters sheets (should public characters ever be realized).
- attack and damage calculations
It would be nice to see how our attack bonus and damage bonus are composed. This could be realized via a mouseover popup. IMO this information does not belong on the character sheet, but it should be available in the builder, when viewing the powers there.
Well I think these are my pressing issues.
2) There is no way to buy a quantity of an item unless you buy the item X times. For Example, you wish to buy 20 Shuriken, you need to buy 1 shuriken 20 times rather then having a quantity button
This is true from the 'Weapons' and 'Armor categories, but in 'Magic Items', Gear', and 'Misc' you can double-click on the number under quantity and change it to something else.
This does not help with Shuriken, though.
DustyPhoenix.
When you are used to just being able to get a feel for the feat from the brief description like you do in the old Character Builder, having to click every feat to see what it does is a major drag.
2) On the character sheet, PLEASE PLEASE put in the breakdown of values (AC, Will, Ref, Fort, etc) like the offline Character Builder does. Even if the stat breakdowns are displayed in a pop-up bubbles (saves having to redesign the layout of the character sheet) I'd be happy.
- List set of item
- Find item by set
- Display set bonuses
- Display set card
Multiple weapon support
- Display stats of secondary weapon on power cards
- Display stats of both weapons on two-weapon powers such as Twin Strike
The Feat descriptions are far to brief and they are often not applied to powers they were meant to enhance.
Example: There is an 11th level feat that increases the burst/blast area of a power with the Keyword: Thunder. It doesn't apply.
The same can be found in some items:
Example: Acrobat boots give a "Stand from Prone: Minor Action" ability. It is not listed in the special movement section.
Finally, at least some of the Paragon abilities are fairly complicated (e.g. Spellstorm Mage) but there is only the barest description of their abilities on the character sheet. Please find some real estate to explain the character's abilities fully.
As a frequent LFR player I really miss being able to keep each adventure logged with notes, gold, and other loot all associated with my character file.
A) A way to build a campaign, like the original CB campaign files (simple house rule elements and allowed/disallowed feat/power/race/religion et cetera lists), and then allow my players to get it for their own uses via the internet. The ability to do so was never really there, since exporting, updating and maintaining the files between many PCs was just not realisitc.
B) A way for me to host charachter sheets for my players. I don't really care about the 20 charahcter limit (as long as there's a working import/export function so I can save things I mess around with locally), but the main reason I can see to keep it is letting me had my players without DDI some sort of limited key, where they make their charahcter and store it in one of my slots, without needing a subscription.
It would be nice if the thing wasn't crushed under the weight of the feat list, too. More a problem with the amount of crap that gets churned out in Dragon, though (oddly magic items dosn't have the same problem, prerequesite checks must be the issue).
EDIT: Oh, and a nessessary hack since the math dosn't work: The ability to print the sheet with just short descriptions of stuff filled out, no bonuses or scores or anything. That way we can do it all ourselves and have working numbers.
A) I feel the Filters in the original allowing us to customise the setting is really important to me, I try to only use material in a hard format, it's accessable to every player that way.
B) I also agree that houserules need to be incorporated, although I'm doubtful they ever will be.
C) Editable character sheet formats, I personally really like the landscape sheets that were launched, leaves more space on the table for dungeon tiles. The essentals sheets are great for the kids but serious gamers are probably taking offense to the kid gloves approach taken with this new format. They really annoy me and I've only looked at them. I want space for the break down of bonuses.
Those are aside from the dislike I actually have with it being an on-line tool now. I can no longer just open my netbook and generate a character, that is up to date, were ever I happen to be. Have to write it to be heard. SORRY.
The old builder made browsing through available feats much more quick and easy since almost all of the feats shown in the list had their prerequisites and a summary shown. The new builder lacks this feature, meaning I have to click through each and every feat if I want to have an idea of what they do, or what their prerequisites are should I decide to retroactively change some of the character's features and still want to use that feat.
If I know the feat's name and what it does, the new and old builder don't really have an advantage over one another (although I still prefer the older builder's style over the new one), but if I am "feat shopping" the new builder makes the process tedious and time-consuming.
The power selection menus are similarly inconvenient, especially since I am playing a side game where material from the original Player's Handbook is the ONLY material allowed, meaning I have to click on each unfamiliar power I see to determine whether or not it is illegal, whereas the old builder showed the power's source to the right of the power's name.
I've seen a few gripes about how the clunky the equipment manager/marketplace is to use and I'd like to echo that last. The old builder had a lot of buttons and windows, but most of the relevant information and useful options were present before at once, and any others were 1-2 click away. Now you have to navigate through several dropdown menus, tabs, and press multiple buttons just to find, buy, add, and/or sell items.
Some people have mentioned instituting an "expert mode" that would resemble the old layout, and I think that'd be a fantastic idea and make this builder something I'd actually consider using myself, as well as recommending to my players.
What issues are going to affect our game play the most when we Print our Characters and carry them down into the Basement with our friends at the game table. Some folks may use laptops, if they got them. But let's say they are going to need a Character Sheet Print, Dice Note Paper, and something to write with for a simple afternoon evening gaming session.
I think Stats and Printing are Key Elements to keep the Game Rolling. We can feature tech adjust as time moves along. The Builder needs to provide quick information to save us hours of figuring stats and double checking the uncertain. Lay Outs are important but fuctional freedom is a must.
The ability to create custom content would also be good.
Also, whenever I do anything on the builder, it makes me wait 10 seconds. It makes the whole character building process veeeeerrrrryyyyyyy ssssssssssslllllllllllllllooooooooooooowwwwwwwww. You guys should fix this.
Maybe you guys can store changes on the client's machine until the client decides they want to save their changes, instead of saving changes everytime something is changed.
Session and Campaign notes should be as they were in the old CB.
As a frequent LFR player I really miss being able to keep each adventure logged with notes, gold, and other loot all associated with my character file.
/sign
This is a very important feature, please bring it back.
Journal or Free Write Pages
The new CB seems to have much less ability for a player to type up information to "flesh out" their character as compared to the old CB. While this could be done offline in any document editor one of the big value propositions of this new CB is that you have all your character stuff all in one place accessible from anyplace with and internet connection. Putting backgrounds/personalities/detailed descriptions else where removes some of this value.
Multiple Backgrounds
I really really likes that in the old character you could chose a number of backgrounds even though you only got a benefit from one. Being able to fish through the list and add a bunch of backgrounds was very useful in creating a sort of outline of a characters background that could then be expanded further.
On the topics already in the original posters post. If WotC can execute #1 and keep the same basic format then executing on #8 might be as simple as pulling out and revamping the old viewer built into the old CB. I know they did some major changes on the back end though so I don't know how much of a time investment this would require.
Just a thought.
scroll wheel now works =) it's a small start but it's a start.
Funny it does not work for me at all :/ what browser are you using? i cant get it to work with chrome, IE8;firefox 4 beta 7 nor opera.
scroll wheel now works =) it's a small start but it's a start.
Funny it does not work for me at all :/ what browser are you using? i cant get it to work with chrome, IE8;firefox 4 beta 7 nor opera.
Works for me as well. IE8, Windows XP
-Thanx.
scroll wheel now works =) it's a small start but it's a start.
Funny it does not work for me at all :/ what browser are you using? i cant get it to work with chrome, IE8;firefox 4 beta 7 nor opera.
workes with firefox and opera for me (havent used it on IE or chrome)
vista sp2.
we used to create campaing settings and email them to our players so that they can
create characters according to our limitations...
Edit: It DOES work for me in IE, but I don't use the Internet Explorer. For anything. So where is the problem? Does the current build of Firefox somehow not recognize the required input for silverlight or something?
On the Marketplace screen, the ability to filter out magic items entirely would be nice (for initial character inventories). Currently the only way to view non-magical items is without filters active.
I place for official announcements of updates, either in the program, or on the forums. Someplace where I don't have to wade through mass amounts of rage.
I thought the front page had a nice little widget for new and minor announcements, but WotC disagrees.
This thing looks like the kiddie mat at a resterant instead of the CB that we actually need.
1) The ability to edit the information (defenses, stats, skills) and have a note attached (as was the case with the previous version of the builder).
2) The ability to create/add/edit customized items.
3) The ability to create/add/edit customized powers.
4) The ability to customize the character sheet layout.
Losing the ability to edit items and stats from the previous character creator version has seriously hindered all 3 of the campaigns I'm involved in.
5) Previous suggestions about inherent bonuses I wholeheartedly agree with. It's really helpful to see where your numbers are coming from on your sheet.
6)I it would also be nice if you could change font sizes somehow so that cards actually display the full names of powers and items rather than just the first set of characters followed by an ellipses.
7) I'd like to bring back the full list of powers with check boxes on the sheet. It's really useful to make sure that you aren't missing any power cards from the last session. Also, if you had one that listed the full names of powers then you could ignore the previous suggestion =)
8) Finally, I'd really like to see items that you have equipped included in your inventory with their full names written out.
Improving/adding these features would be greatly appreciated. Been a pretty loyal customer to this service since day 1, and if these changes don't get implemented it's going to seriously hurt all 3 campaigns I'm involved with.
Many apps externalize the "locals" files.
Then users could translate those files in many languages (french, spanish, german..)
Same thing for the Compendium ;)
1) The functions already present in the original, off-line version
2) The new material added in such that it can be used properly (for example the 3rd Assassin option, etc)
I hate to be a hater, and I am trying with all my might to not let the current state of CB turn me into one. But really, my wishlist of options is just the old list of options on the new engine.
I dont want this to sound rage-ish or flippant, but all I really request for features are:
1) The functions already present in the original, off-line version
2) The new material added in such that it can be used properly (for example the 3rd Assassin option, etc)
I hate to be a hater, and I am trying with all my might to not let the current state of CB turn me into one. But really, my wishlist of options is just the old list of options on the new engine.
This. So very this. Replacing software, particularly without consultation of the userbase, should never NEVER remove functionality.
I dont want this to sound rage-ish or flippant, but all I really request for features are:
1) The functions already present in the original, off-line version
2) The new material added in such that it can be used properly (for example the 3rd Assassin option, etc)
I hate to be a hater, and I am trying with all my might to not let the current state of CB turn me into one. But really, my wishlist of options is just the old list of options on the new engine.
This. So very this. Replacing software, particularly without consultation of the userbase, should never NEVER remove functionality.
Sigh, yes - my problem is that the functionality in the CBC that I really want back is what I now suspect this move was designed specifically to remove. That is the ability, should I dislike a new design direction or should Wizards simply decide no longer to support D&D, to "freeze" my game support tools and continue playing with the stuff I was happy with, eschewing the stuff I'm not happy with.
Add to this that it has been demonstrated that the CBC was capable of doing all that the new CB claims as its advantage (DS and Essentials), and I am feeling rather disillusioned and disappointed, right now.
I dont want this to sound rage-ish or flippant, but all I really request for features are:
1) The functions already present in the original, off-line version
2) The new material added in such that it can be used properly (for example the 3rd Assassin option, etc)
I hate to be a hater, and I am trying with all my might to not let the current state of CB turn me into one. But really, my wishlist of options is just the old list of options on the new engine.
Well said. Before thinking about putting new stuff in, all the old functionality has to be restored.
I dont want this to sound rage-ish or flippant, but all I really request for features are:
1) The functions already present in the original, off-line version
2) The new material added in such that it can be used properly (for example the 3rd Assassin option, etc)
I hate to be a hater, and I am trying with all my might to not let the current state of CB turn me into one. But really, my wishlist of options is just the old list of options on the new engine.
Well, that plus fixing the (long) list of things (known issues) that were not functioning properly in the old CB.
This should have waited until after the winter, given more time to tweak and expand. Right now, it is a showcase as to why a web only app wasn't the way to go in the beginning in the first place.
I've been really good this year. I've paid on time for all my D&Di content. I've bought almost every book published, I haven't complained about the substandard support provided to CB even though it is a MAJOR reason I still subscribe to D&Di...
CB needs a House Rule Section, (as previously mentioned MANY times.) I need to be able to define Approved Sources, so the games my DM says No Dragons, no FR, or no Essintials in I can simple un-click it and not see any GM non-approved sources, but still be able to add a bit here or there when needed; I need to be able to add themes to non-Dark Sun Campaigns; and I really need a tool that can actually import my off-line characters. And it needs to actually load and run quickly...
Thanks
I only have one request: The abililty to create characters offline.
It wont happen with this version of the character builder. sorry
For one, a dwarfen barbarian the mordenkrad was the perfect mordenkrad.
Just compare the two marketplaces: In the old CB you take one look to see all the possibilities. A mordenkrad appears in red, so you go back to feats, choose Mordenkrad weapon proficiency instead of (in our case) improved initiative and magically the color of the mordenkrad has changed from red to black.
In the new CB try to make that choice and inform yourself about the consequences. Unless you already know exactly what you are looking for you have no chance.
This is just one example to show that the new CB fails completely in being a transparent tool.
There is currently no way to track weekly adventures on the single line provided.
This has been shamefully omitted imho...
Where can one find a list of CB update fixes and the like? (as example by the previous version when an update was done)
When can i actually use an image not from the piddly little list that exists on the current cb?
2: There isn't one. There should be.
3: See 1. Workarounds exist, however, if you can be bothered to edit the images that your PDF printouts consist of.
Out of the gate on this new CB I am not happy and not impressed with it. It's darn pretty for sure, but there is a lot that I think the local CB did better. Here is my growing list of complaints ranging from the petty to the down right aggravating:
- Online CB only pulls from your 'held gold' for buying and will not pull from 'banked gold.
- Online CB will not allow you to look at other weapons you're not proficient in when buying. I want an 'ALL' option or something like that, not having to use dual Compendium and CB.
- Character portraits: You cannot choose web images or upload your own images for character portraits. We must use the images they ALLOW us to use.
- Where is the houserule warning? The old CB did a way better job of letting me know something was goofed up, what it was and where it was.
- Retraining was better in old CB. Now, if you forgot what you did in the past and want to look back in the online CB you gotta scroll through the list and hunt for your choices. Old CB, it was right there, maybe it could have been better, but the web CB is a step backwards here.
- The Giant FEAT list: You no longer see a feat name / prereqs / small feat blurb (This is especially bad for new players who can be easily overwhelmed by the giant list of names). Now it's so confusing, these name are all fluff and barely even hint at the idea of a feat. Again I have to use dual Compendium and CB to understand what's going on here. I do not like this.
- HATE: We can no longer edit for multiple weapons on our character sheet! Certain powers / classes can use multiple weapons with multiple features / powers and I want to see all my options there. My melee choice, my ranged choice, HECK my 2nd and 3rd melee / ranged choices if desired. The Old CB did an amazing job with this, I grew attached and very happy with that feature. It is now gone.
- RIGHT CLICKING GONE: Entirely. All those great and growing features the old CB had with Right clicking are now just nothing. We've got the quite upsetting "Silverlight" dialog box. Remove items on character sheets, remove unnecessary powers, SHOW, HIDE, MOVE or CUSTOMIZE certain tables / powers all over the character sheet. EDIT and right notes directly into the input lines ( I used to rewrite things for my players instead of use the WOTC syntax b/c they understood things differently, let a lone I could right in personal notes like tatics and dice rolls here if need be, plus what if a feat had't been input in by WOTC yet? I'd just use EDIT and write it in myself. the EDIT feature was powerful and fantastic). All of these right click features are gone gone gone.
- Character Sheet Design: I'm not hot on either of these new designs much. A lot of it is great, definitely. It's easier to see zones when you get used to it after a bit, great. But, what is bad is it's now 3 pages for us to look at to get the jist of the Character, no longer 2. That's counter intuitive to what WOTC wants, which is to make for less, not more. In design on each sheet that is certainly achieved, but in 3 total sheets that is not. LOSS of STAT card, SKILLS card, ACTION POINT card. Those cards were great, loved them, we have players who don't even look @ the 1st 2 pages b/c they know their char so well and get the jist just from page 1 of the old powers page. That made it less tedious, faster and easier to use. Not there anymore.
- Multiple Character Builders: Old CB I could run 2, heck 5, CBs all at once, comparing my players character's skills, ability mods, edit my character vs another character ect... all at once. We are now restricted to one at a time. I tried this out in my browser with the web and ran into enough errors and crashes to see that it's not viable.
- Multiple people on the same program at once. Old CB I could have a one of my players on his PC looking at his char and myself looking at his char and talk about it. Now the web CB keeps crashing if we try this. I can understand proprietary holdings, but in the past I'd received the impression they were okay with shared accounts / programs, why the step backwards? We now have to work around eachother's schedules when updating characters.
- Variable weight / height - this affects a small category of players, but as a changeling you can have a range of weight and height and we typed that out. That can no longer be done b/c the text all runs into itself when printed. A small gaff I suppose.
- RASTERIZED PDF: I'm a graphic designer, I love to edit and manipulate my character sheet at whim and will. The web CB prints the PDF as a flat crappy, terrible quality pixel based jpg while the old CB would print as a Vector based file that had better quality and was easy to edit. Horrible. It upsets me a lot, but if they don't want people doing that I get why, BUT I'd also like to say this raster option leads to worse print quality. Petty, maybe, but important to some.
- Online CB: just as a personal note I hate the entire idea. As a user I do not trust, like or want to deal with 'the cloud' if I don't have to. I can trust, use, edit, and access my files as I want, when I want and how I want on my PC. Online access restricts and places the user in a box that is not fun to be in, especially after having been set free right out the gate. The idea that I MUST have internet access, MUST login, and MUST deal with download/upload speeds, and someone else's computation speed aggravates to no end. Access anywhere, anytime, no web ect.. was AMAZING! I talked the wonders of CB to people who were skeptics for the past years, but now my high points in arguments are dwendeling and people who won't convert to 4e are much harder to convince if they know these issues.
The ones that upset and disappoint me the most are the multiple weapons on powers features, Right clicking has disappeared, all of those customer features on the character sheet viewer and I KNOW the loss of feat 'blurbs' is a bad idea. All of those upset the most b/c they worked so well implemented and integrated with the Local based CB.
I feel so guilty for complaining like this. I LOVE WOTC, I'm a littel DnD WOTC fanboy. DnD is amazing to me, 3, 3.5 and 4e have all made me very happy and entertained. I have tossed a lot of money, time and energy here and never cared about that expense b/c this game is amazing and great to me. And I know they spent $$$ on making this WEBCBC and I know people had to have their hearts set on it. I'm sorry, but it's hard to not feel upset at this move from CBC to WEBCBC.
Further on that, the dice roller right now does not let you assign where to put your rolled up stats. It auto applies them to what it thinks is the characters main stats are and you can't move them around at all. If I want my wizard to have a high con instead of a high wis I have no way of moving those numbers around when rolling dice.
I'm planning on running a Dark Sun game after my current game is done and I really want to be able to have the characters that we create at the table to be fully implemented into the CB so I can view them anytime. I just can't do this at this time with the current build.
I don't care if that method exists, I just want to be able to have it the way that it was before. There were groupings, but they were much more logical/easy to remember. The other method presented of "by tier" just lumps them all into tier groups, with no subdivisions. It is a choice between two extremes: Over Structure (to the point that it is hard to figure out what category things go under), or No Structure (which is super hard on the eyes).
Overall I think that there just has to be a lot more usability testing involved here. Sure, some of the things are nice, especially for newer players, but my god some of it is so cumbersome that even someone who knows almost everything that has been published has a hard time getting things done fast. Sure, I can type all the names out, but that makes it a lot slower to compare the feats for their advantages each time if I can't just look at them side by side.
We also need all the other things listed in the know issues list.
I am reserving judgement - lets just get some of the big ones done quickly (and bug free!?!?)
1. Modular segments.
2. The ability to hide power/item cards.
3. The ability to have multiple weapons/implements listed on power cards.
I'd like to see this more than anything else ASAP.
1: Import character portraits. It may seem small, but I always have a character portrait in mind when creating a character and have often based entire characters off of a picture that I saw and through "that guy would be cool to play".
2: I have noticed that the character sheet doesn't list the quantity of carried items. For example I purchased over a hundred alchemical reagents to use for arcane rituals, but the sheet only lists that I have alchemical reagents and not how many.
3: A quantity listing under the shop tab. Back to the alchemical reagents for a moment, I would like to purchase over a hundred, but can only buy one at a time... Definately not going to happen.
Also I have yet to figure out a way to apply Weapon Shards to weapons in the new builder. In the old builder you'd by the weapon, then buy the shard, then right click the weapon to add the shard you bought to it. No right clicking so far in the new version. Can we get a check box or + button or something to add weapon shards?
Thanks.
Default character sheet (I hate that Essentials stuff to be honest - I want the 'character builder' set as default);
Advanced setup vs. that "what do you want to play? striker, etc..." - I want to be able to click new character; ranger, elf, etc, etc....
I would also add (under equipment) a 'search all' (I ABSOLUTELY HATE trying to find gear when my character recieves a magic item.... (is it here? nope.. Oh, here we go... oh guess not...)
EDIT: OOh, and add a 'new box' for items in your inventory that can make use of a given power: so say you have a +1 longsword, a +2 shortsword, a +1 battleaxe and a longbow; Twin Strike would actually say: +1 longsword damage = ... +2 shortsword damage = ... longbow damage = ... +1 battleaxe damage = ... It's really annoying that you have to create multiple character sheets for people (myself included unfortunately) that are too lazy to figure it out.
And as always: Give us an offline builder for when we're not able to establish an internet connection. This is a big souring point for me. (and don't give me any BS about how you can't do it; simply allow us to download all the database stuff; some html and a front end that has some sort of security features so no one can just upload the HTML to a website....)
I dont want this to sound rage-ish or flippant, but all I really request for features are:
1) The functions already present in the original, off-line version
2) The new material added in such that it can be used properly (for example the 3rd Assassin option, etc)
I hate to be a hater, and I am trying with all my might to not let the current state of CB turn me into one. But really, my wishlist of options is just the old list of options on the new engine.
Agree, no reason to realease the online version if you don't at least have the functionality of the previous.
I'm also really missing the campaign customization that allowed me to select what rules were applicable in our campaign.
Personally, I would take the current cb but I haven't really had the debilitating bugs everyone is talking about. I apparently don't make very interesting characters... or something.
Let me ask this: If the choice was no updates to the CB at all for over six months or a move to a CB with less features but with updates which would you choose?
Current CB. Especially now, since the community at large has discovered how to (relatively, damn is WOTC's XML confusing) easily modify it.
I'd like to see a way to store your character on your own computer and be able to read it if you don't have access to the internet at your current gameing location.
This request is already on a list being kept up by one of the VCLs. Essentially an offline XML character viewer.
i know it seems minor, but i would like the ability to change the portraits. The ones they have are ugly IMO. But that's just me :D
Definately needed !
Two possible solutions:
1) Use HTML5 API's to provide Offline Web application caching
2) Make the Silverlight web application package available for download to run locally in browser (It can be made as a Silverlight application utilizing the browser for presentation. I state this because many users are unaware that this is a possibility and would be the simplest for the Hasbro developers in the short term.)
The ability to add house rules to the "application" is also a requirement for a decent character builders. (the 3rd edition builder was better with that)
Sorry, but this current offering is somewhat better than E-Tools, even when there isn't, at the moment, any support for house rules. That isn't saying much there, E-Tools was unusable when it was first released by Fluid, and this whole situation reminds my of that major mis-step all over again.
thus far, I have five things that are needed to have this become at lease somewhat usable.
1- The ability to save character on our own d--- computer.
2- The use of all the rules from released material - we do not need specified campaigns for this thing, remove this.
3- Better GUI. Get serious with the presentation, use tabs instead of the varous pages, remove the choosing of the Roles at the beginning, have the Essentials choices be labeled instead of having the limiting branch at the very beginning.
4- A market place with adjustable pricing. Sometimes, pricing is role played or items are given (through the Parcel or from plot points) and this is not accounted for.
5- An offline viewer. This goes with number one. Useless if we can't save our characters.
4- A market place with adjustable pricing. Sometimes, pricing is role played or items are given (through the Parcel or from plot points) and this is not accounted for.
I'm not sure that something you can already do should be high in the priority list. You can add/remove items and manually adjust gold. Elegant? No, but functional.
I wasn't going to re-read the whole 30 pages and it may have already been mentioned, but I noticed that for any of a players powers you can look at the breakdown of stats when viewing the power (Magic Missile, or Twin Strike, etc.). There is no way to do this for Melee Basic or Ranged Basic where it breaks down your attack and damage bonuses. This is separate from the multi-weapon issue. The old builder had entries for MBA/RBA that you could click on. Perhaps put them on the powers page and make them so they can't be "deselected".
Same thing for Racial "powers".
Also, I don't know if it's been posted, but I'd love an export that is Forum friendly for posting builds and characters for approval/perusal/feedback/what have you.
I'm pretty sure the old "summary" feature has been requested.
Also, I don't know if it's been posted, but I'd love an export that is Forum friendly for posting builds and characters for approval/perusal/feedback/what have you.
I'm pretty sure the old "summary" feature has been requested.
So yeah, the old summary feature, the old entry by entry journal feature tracking XP and GP per session, the old character sheet as an option, the old ability to equip dragonshard augments to weapons, and the old ability to hide cards I don't need to print everytime I level (second wind, action point, utilities that don't change based on level/gear, etc).
Oh! And bring back the old init cards that used to be the first card everytime. Those are great for using to keep track of init and have skills/defenses/hp ready at a glance for DMs.
Don't know why all these great features got cut in the first place.
Also, I don't know if it's been posted, but I'd love an export that is Forum friendly for posting builds and characters for approval/perusal/feedback/what have you.
I'm pretty sure the old "summary" feature has been requested.
So yeah, the old summary feature, the old entry by entry journal feature tracking XP and GP per session, the old character sheet as an option, the old ability to equip dragonshard augments to weapons, and the old ability to hide cards I don't need to print everytime I level (second wind, action point, utilities that don't change based on level/gear, etc).
Oh! And bring back the old init cards that used to be the first card everytime. Those are great for using to keep track of init and have skills/defenses/hp ready at a glance for DMs.
Don't know why all these great features got cut in the first place.
I have to say I'm pretty torn about some of these features being in the CB. As you cross your eyes and try to imagine why I would say such a thing consider this....
Does the feature require some math to be performed involving all elements of the character?
CB:
Journal, XP, GP, Dragonshards
These either require math to be performed or data to be saved to the cloud.
Viewer:
Character sheet options, hide cards (second wind, action point), printing, which weapons/implements to display per power.
These options are presentational only and don't need to be in the CB.
I'd like to see them build a character "viewer" that replaces the old character sheet that partially fills the role of "offline use". Such a "viewer" could be platform specific (starting with Windows using .NET) and would be nothing more than an XML parser with presentation logic. As long as all the needed data is in the .d&d4e (XML) file you could use such a tool without internet access and at your game table for tracking HP, power usage, etc. Once we know what the new "format" is this could also be a community built tool, however that would suffer from lack of power descriptions (which were built into the "classic" CB).
I just want the options back I used to have.
Please consider taking a look at your code and seeing if it would be possible to make the Character Builder work with Silverlight 2. It shouldn't be too hard and it would allow all of us Linux users to use the character builder as well. More and more netbooks are running on the platform and it would be wonderful if we could use this application.
An option to change the campaign setting after the character has been created. Right now with imported characters and with existing characters there is no way to change from eberron to dark sun for instance. And no way to add things like a Darksun theme to a character you import from the old character builder.
More control over what weapon or implement you are using for calculating attack bonuses. Last night I imported a level 30 hybrid monk/cleric that is supposed to use a +6 accurate jagged dagger for its main implement (spent feats for the superior implement proficiency, versatile exterise light blade blades, and a feat for implement focus light blades) and hold a +5 singing stick of healing in his off hand (for the +1 bonus to ac and the +5 hp to heal powerss) and wear a + 4 symbol of divine light (for increased radiant vulnerability). When I try to equip both the singing stick and the dagger it assumes I want to make all the attacks through the singing stick and not the dagger, even though I spent three feats making my character more effective with the dagger. So either my attack bonus and damage is not calculated correctly or my AC/healing is not calculated correctly. And of course it thinks I need to use a hand to hold a holy symbol, where it obviously needs its own item slot.
I wish they would "fix" the size of the character sheets for printing. Went to try and print out character today using the new "Character Builder" sheet and after spooling the first 3 pages on the printer it was already up to 235 MB. That is an absolutely retarded file size for 3 pages. I have printed out 400 page pdf files that were smaller than that.
As I understand it, this is because they are printing to an "IMAGE" format instead of a text base format. Instead of printing the text into the PDF the CB is taking a "snapshot" of the character sheet and printing the image.
I wish they would "fix" the size of the character sheets for printing. Went to try and print out character today using the new "Character Builder" sheet and after spooling the first 3 pages on the printer it was already up to 235 MB. That is an absolutely retarded file size for 3 pages. I have printed out 400 page pdf files that were smaller than that.
As I understand it, this is because they are printing to an "IMAGE" format instead of a text base format. Instead of printing the text into the PDF the CB is taking a "snapshot" of the character sheet and printing the image.
Which I've also read on these boards is a product of Silverlight. Phrased differently Silverlight's (built in) print methods do this.
Silverlight.
That is all that is needed to be said.
Silverlight.
That is all that is needed to be said.
No, because there is nothing saying they can't implement their own "print" option that bypasses Silverlight, but that would be a "new feature" among many that people are asking to be added.
As many of you have expressed a desire for either added features, or for changes to existing planned features, I thought it would help everyone - the community AND WotC's Dev team - to have a consolidated list of feature requests for future consideration in the New Character Builder.
Let me be clear: this is NOT the place to rant about the direction that DDI and/or the CB are going in. If you're going to post here, please at least accept (however grudgingly) that the new CB is going to move online, and is likely going to stay there.
"Please don't make this change" - however its worded - is NOT a feature request, and will be ignored - and quite possibly reported for being off topic.
I'm going to assume that any features requested are *OPTIONS* (IE - "Give us the old character sheet" will be considered a request for that option, not as a feature that removes the Essentials Sheet, or the new sheet style).
I will be requesting this thread get stickied, and will monitor it for updates as well.
When posting a feature request, please try to include at least a couple sentences about why you want that feature, how you would use it, etc.
I'll try to list the feature requests I keep seeing in a sample format, to give some guidelines.
--------------------------------------------------
Requests listed in no particular order
1) Character Export (save to local PC)
The ability to retain control over one's characters is important to many users, both for backup purposes, as well as for being able to quickly transport their data to another location for quick printing.
Additionally, there are third party tools (like the HIGHLY popular iplay4E) that read .dnd4e files, and allow players to interact with that data. Exporting gives customers great flexibility and control. To this end, sticking with the existing .dnd4e format is also of high value.
While some changes are expected to the .dnd4e format (as is normal with new features being added like Themes), keeping to the same basic structure is important, as opposed to creating a wholly-new filesave format.
WotC has stated this issue has been given high-priority in the feature list, and we can expect to see it added early on.
2) Character Sharing (within the cloud)
Much like Character Export - many DMs like the option to verify character sheets, or even tweak them a little (as a storytelling tool) between play sessions. The option to share a character sheet (either publicly or to selected users/groups) would help facilitate this, and if done within the DDi Suite of tools, would save a few steps, as opposed to exporting the file, e-mailing it, re-importing it on the other end, etc.
Further to the issue of sharing - community site integration would also be a very welcome option, or at least using community groups to setup ACL permissions for who can see what characters.
Sample: If I start a "WolfStar's Thursday Night Game" group, I could share characters back and forth with others in that group - but not with the rest of the world.
PaoloM has said that this is something interesting that they are looking into.
3) Original Character Sheets
While the new style of sheet may be optimized, and the Essentials sheet may be another option - some people very simply prefer the classic 4E sheet as originally laid out in the back of the PHB, and as printed in the original Character Builder. These users would like the option of formatting their character sheets to print in that classic style.
4) SSL/TLS Security
[Description coming soon - I need to refresh my understanding of the isue]
5) More Storage Space
Many users are, to say the least, disappointed in being limited to 20 characters. Some users simply have more than 20 characters (especially DMs for the RPGA, who might manage and keep copies of characters for a large number of players) - others like to save their character at every level, in case they ever need to roll-back for any reason. The current limit wouldn't (appear to) allow for even saving a single character through all 30 levels
WotC has stated that 20 characters is just a starting number, and that useage will be evaluated in considering changing this limit going forward.
6) Character Summary
[description coming soon]
7) Editable Character Sheets (layout/design)
Similar to the request for the Classic 4E Character sheets - The ability to change the layout, add pages, and otherwise make a sheet that works best for the individual player is something that is much appreciated in the offline Character Builder. That functionality would be just as greatly appreciated in the new online effort.
8) Offline Viewer
The Character Sheet Viewer in the classic builder allowed users to check/uncheck boxes to track power use, and had other "interactive" features that made it a great way to track your character at the table on small computing devices (netbooks, iPads, etc). The new Character Builder's online-only feature will remove this option for many gamers who don't have wi-fi at their gaming table (be it in an FLGS, or in a basement where reception is poor, etc).
Users would appreciate an option to have a small Character Sheet Viewer for offline use that would simply read and interact with a created Character Sheet - without allowing any (permanent) edits to things like character stats/powers/equipment.
This way they can still take full advantage of the Builder at their gaming table.
9) Basic house-rule support.
User would like the ability to house-rule sheets that is, at an absolute bare minimum on par with what the classic CB offered. Many groups give things like free expertise and other bonus feats, so using the web-CB if it can't handle importing that will be a great impairment
10) Advanced house-rule support and custom content.
The ability to define new feats, items, races, etc.
While the content WotC puts out is fantastic, customers are also encouraged (especially in the Dungeon Master Guides) to go "off-roading" with their game - and to implement their own ideas into the game. The Character Build should fully support this kind of open play experience.
11) API Support
An API for (authenticated) 3rd party applications to directly pull character information from the cloud. Exporting to .dnd4e is essential, and applications like DMBS (which I rely on heavily) or iPlay4e can import those exported files - but it would be great if they didn't actually need to.
12) Character Sorting/Organizing
As many DMs keep digital copies of the characters for multiple campaigns (as well as designing some NPCs as full blown characters) the ability to divide their online storage area (using folders, labels, or other dividers) is being requested to help keep those files organized.
If the request for more storage space (#5, above) is put through, this becomes even more important, as the amount of data grows.
13) Native PDF Support
While it's been stated that users will be able to install a PDF writer, and then print their character sheets to PDF via those 3rd party tools, bringing that into the software as a native feature is something that would add value to the application - especially for users who may not be on a computer that's under their immediate control (Internet Cafes, hotels, borrowing another user's system), or who aren't tech savvy or simply comfortable installing more software.
14) Use the cloud to suggest build options
With WotC being able to data-mine builds that are stored on DDi - they should, in turn, be able to use that data to help suggest common/popular builds for new characters.
A character creating a new level / would be able to see the most popular options taken by players who have also chosen that race/class - or better still, as characters progress, what feats/powers/items players with similar builds (previously selected powers/feats/etc) chose at this new level.
Similar in nature to the well-known Amazon.com feature of "other customers who looked at "X" also looked at "Y" - it would help optimizers see popular/common choices.
15) Ritual Books (and similar)
For characters that make heavy use of Rituals (or Martial Practices, or Alchemy), having a mere listing of names, while helpful, leaves the players wanting more. With rituals and the like spread across multiple books, it would make these kinds of "extras" a lot easier to manage if all of their relevant information were available as part of the character sheet (casting times, durations, costs, effects, etc).
Notably - because use of these features fluxuates (from some users with only one or two rituals, to some with a near-library of them), printing this information should be an option not everyone will need the full details with every re-printing of their character.
A power-card style format seems to be a popular example for this kind of option.
16) "Future-Proofing"
While it's likely (hopefully?) far enough into the future that there are no current plans to change rules editions (5th Edition), many users are curious as to what plans WotC is, or will be making in regards to the new online Character Builder, when a new version of the game does release.
Will WotC continue, for a time at least, to offer access to the 4E toolset? Or will all support for 4E drop when 5E is (inevitably?) announced one day? Would a "last hurrah" offline version of the 4E tools be made available?
These decisions are a factor for many customers as to where they plan to spend their money going forward.
17) Lapsed-Subscription Access
"Read Only" access to an already-generated character sheet that's been stored online is being requested.
This would allow a customer the chance to print out a "fresh" copy of his character, even if - for whatever reason - he's not a current subscriber. Financial times are tough, it's not unlikely that customers might need to skimp for a month or two here or there.
Leaving them access to their existing work in these times would server both as great customer relations, but would also be a good enticement for them to re-subscribe. As new books/power/gear come out, seeing their character and daydreaming of the new things they could assign that character could be a strong emotional pull to re-subscribe at the earliest opportunity.
On the flipside, being locked out of their existing work will only cause disfavor toward WotC, and eventually "out of sight, out of mind" experiences could set in - leading customers to see that they don't really want/need/miss the online toolset.
Wolfstar 76,
Thanks for opening this thread. Please indulge me the opportunity to first of all tell you that I recently listened to the Podcast with Chris Champagne and I listened to him explain a bit of the reasons for the change to the new CB. I was a BIG fan of the old CB. But after listening to him, I understand I think a bit more why WoTC felt the need to go to this new version. As a burgeoning game designer myself, I know all too well the annoyance (and financial damage) piracy brings.
The summary you laid out at the beginning of this thread was fairly complete as far as I am concerned. Most of the things I would like to see in the new CB are included (plus a few things, I didn't consider). However, I would like to give you my "top ten" list just as more information you can add to the stew pot. A couple of new ideas that aren't in your list. As you read this, bear in mind that my group and I are primarily pencil and paper gamers. We used the Character Builder (and other insider tools) to save us prep time and keep our characters "up to date", print them out and play. When we are done, we update our electronic versions and print updated sheets for next time. Plus leveling is a heck of a lot easier using CB.
1. Ability to customize character sheet layout. This is numero uno on my list. I LOVED the ability to make my character sheet make sense for me. I could move this panel to page two, move this panel to page one, expand this section to include more data, etc and so forth.
2. Along with that, and something not on your list, I would like to be able to print out mulitple attack/damage worksheets as stand alone documents that would be able to be tailored for specific weapons--i.e. Column A is with the +2 longsword, Column B is the same powers but with the +3 Dagger, etc. As it is the Attack/damage worksheet got left out of new CB. I found this to be VERY functional during the game--especially with younger players.
3. Ability to print some, all, or none Power cards and magic items.
4. This would include the old character summaries, Action Points, Second Winds, etc.
5. Ability to customize magic items and print them (or not). We love to name our weapons--my son's character for instance has put his greataxe "Husker" to great use on many a monster. Sadly, under the new CB, "Husker" won't appear on anymore magic item cards. Plus as a DM, I like to be able to hand a magic item card to a player when their character finds it and I like to be named something appropriate instead of magic +2 longsword.
6. Houserules--We don't tend to use them often, but I know I would like the ability to have them reflected on the character sheets.
7. Ritual Books. GREAT idea. I am currently doing this myself for my players, but it would save a BUNCH of time if the program did it for me.
8. Character portraits. Nothing wrong with your artwork obviously (its awesome!), but I know MY players like to be able to scan their own artwork in and use it on their "official" character sheet.
9. "Combat sheets" an idea not listed on your summary. Basically a 3x5 card sized section of the character sheet that could be used to track initiative, healing surges, current hit points, daily power usage, etc during gameplay instead of writing/erasing your printed character sheet. This could be printed seperately (or not at all if so desired).
10. Last but not least--languages. The current CB cuts off after about two or three languages. If someone has taken the linguist skill there is nothing that shows what languages they took after the first three! Plus, if you are using expanded languages in your campaign, you might have a scholar that knows tens of different tongues. Currently, there is no way to reflect this.
Anyway, that's my input. I'm off the "go back to the old CB" wagon, by the way. I'm embracing the new. BUT, I would like to see it made better (as quickly as possible). Thanks for the info, Wolf.
Joel
I think that is a mistake -- the two functions should be separate, as there are cases where a player would want to export a character but keep it "in the cloud".
Examples:
1) The inevitable system glitch -- I can easily see a character file not being saved correctly but being deleted from the "cloud". Result? The character you meant to export is totally gone. On the other hand, if the program verifies correct export before deleting the character file from the "cloud", you would be unable to delete a character file that for any reason proves to be "unexportable".
2) Showing character to DM -- To do this, you would have to export the character and then re-import it. That gives the program two chances to mess up something that you never wanted to change in the first place.
While I very much appreciate the addition of an Export feature, it really should be a separate function from Delete and not a replacement for it.
This seems like an elaberate way to save a character.
Sorry, but I still think a direct save to one's own harddrive is in order, not the export/import work around. If it can't be done in Silverlight then a different programing standard needs to be used.
This seems like an elaberate way to save a character.
I think you're having a terminology problem here. When an application resides on your local computer then putting a file on your local disk is called "saving". When using a web application where the data is on a remote server then putting a file on your local disk is called "export". The only thing that changes is the context of the use. You could also think of it as "download" to a certain extent.
MOUSE SCROLL! for the love of god... silverlight must be able to listen to mouse scrolls.. please... please...
I'm wondering why Mouse Scroll isn't working for some people. It works fine for me, both in the feat window, and any other that has a vertical scroll bar.
Not working for me. Do you have your mousewheel set to a keystroke or something?
Yeah the mouse wheel works for me too. I'm using Win7 64bit/IE8 silverlight version: 4.0.51204.0.
A
1. Ability to customize character sheet layout. This is numero uno on my list. I LOVED the ability to make my character sheet make sense for me. I could move this panel to page two, move this panel to page one, expand this section to include more data, etc and so forth.
2. Along with that, and something not on your list, I would like to be able to print out mulitple attack/damage worksheets as stand alone documents that would be able to be tailored for specific weapons--i.e. Column A is with the +2 longsword, Column B is the same powers but with the +3 Dagger, etc. As it is the Attack/damage worksheet got left out of new CB. I found this to be VERY functional during the game--especially with younger players.
3. Ability to print some, all, or none Power cards and magic items.
4. This would include the old character summaries, Action Points, Second Winds, etc.
5. Ability to customize magic items and print them (or not). We love to name our weapons--my son's character for instance has put his greataxe "Husker" to great use on many a monster. Sadly, under the new CB, "Husker" won't appear on anymore magic item cards. Plus as a DM, I like to be able to hand a magic item card to a player when their character finds it and I like to be named something appropriate instead of magic +2 longsword.
6. Houserules--We don't tend to use them often, but I know I would like the ability to have them reflected on the character sheets.
7. Ritual Books. GREAT idea. I am currently doing this myself for my players, but it would save a BUNCH of time if the program did it for me.
8. Character portraits. Nothing wrong with your artwork obviously (its awesome!), but I know MY players like to be able to scan their own artwork in and use it on their "official" character sheet.
9. "Combat sheets" an idea not listed on your summary. Basically a 3x5 card sized section of the character sheet that could be used to track initiative, healing surges, current hit points, daily power usage, etc during gameplay instead of writing/erasing your printed character sheet. This could be printed seperately (or not at all if so desired).
10. Last but not least--languages. The current CB cuts off after about two or three languages. If someone has taken the linguist skill there is nothing that shows what languages they took after the first three! Plus, if you are using expanded languages in your campaign, you might have a scholar that knows tens of different tongues. Currently, there is no way to reflect this.
Anyway, that's my input. I'm off the "go back to the old CB" wagon, by the way. I'm embracing the new. BUT, I would like to see it made better (as quickly as possible). Thanks for the info, Wolf.
Joel
Funny thing is, all these features were in the old CB and were not incorporated into the new one. Why the heck werent they? If you are going to "update" a tool why take steps backwards and not give them in the new CB. Poor planning.
Poor planning.
This is a fresh perspective that I hadn't heard before. Thank you for being so bold and forward thinking. I am sure WotC will appreciate this data that you're sending them that they hadn't considered.
Thanks
Also, the whole, "pick a role" screen is annoying. I can see it for the "new/quick" one, but it's kinda moot for the custom one.
Third, Can you have the sub-menus (e.g. "Defender" is the class selection area, or "Heroic Tier" in the feat selection) start closed.
Example, his defenses and attack rolls are all x+yourlevel, his HP is your bloodied value, etc etc; if it just showed the actual value like it does on your power cards, I think it'd help cut down on administrative work for the player to have to keep track of those adjustments.
They're in for the Essentials Sheet, and they were in the old CB, So Im confused why they're left out.
2. All items, feats and powers should be organized in several different ways so that a user may find them in the way that works best for that user, not in the one way that some designer/programmer thinks we should find them.
-Allow Beast Companion stats to appear on your character sheet
-Fix the encounter cards so they don't cut off my second Augments every time the descriptions are too long
-Allow for multiple backgrounds (a character may be a burglar and from a circus)
And for the love of the Gods; have it save the character sheet for that character. (For whatever reason, it's really bugging me that I have to keep changing the character sheet from the Essentials (which is incredibly badly designed btw) to the non-Essentials character sheet.
So like...
use| name | attack | hit |miss |effect
[] | an at-will | 17 vs AC | 1d10+5 damage | |
[] | some encounter | 15 vs will | 1d6+4 damage and one ally gains a +6 THP | |
[] | daily power | 15 vs ref | 3d8+4 damge | half damage | the target is slowed (save ends)
I request a spread sheet option instead of power cards. Granted it won't have room for alternate weapons, flavor text, and such, but it'll be nice and streamlined, and you could fit alot more on a page this way.
So like...use| name | attack | hit |miss |effect
[] | an at-will | 17 vs AC | 1d10+5 damage | |
[] | some encounter | 15 vs will | 1d6+4 damage and one ally gains a +6 THP | |
[] | daily power | 15 vs ref | 3d8+4 damge | half damage | the target is slowed (save ends)
I second this and raise you this.
Power cards on off toggle
Power list on off toggle
Ritual cards on off toggle
Ritual list on off toggle
Magic items cards on off toggle
Magic item list on off toggle
Gear cards on off toggle
Gear list on off toggle
Or something like this.
Regards
Mellored's list wouldn't work with quite a few powers since Effect can come before Attack, and it actually has a meaning if it does.
Well it doesn't have to be exactly like my example, add comlum as needed.
Well it doesn't have to be exactly like my example, add comlum as needed.
I'm not sure it'd work even then. The attack column would be empty for all Utilities, for example.
Something quite like it would be using the monster statblock layout for attacks, though. Now that I could get behind.
Well it doesn't have to be exactly like my example, add comlum as needed.
I'm not sure it'd work even then. The attack column would be empty for all Utilities, for example.
Something quite like it would be using the monster statblock layout for attacks, though. Now that I could get behind.
Utility powers can get there own set of colums.
But yes, it needs some research before you can do it, and it may not work for everything (runepriest comes to mind), still, i think it would be a nice alternitive.
First, thanks to Wizard for adding the export option so quickly! However, I'd also like to see the export button while inside the character sheet so you can export export without having to return to the Home screen and load. Probably the best place would be the manage character tab changing the function to a "Save and Export" so you ensure that any updates are reflected in the file.
This is a case where I think their GUI design needs to re-evaluated. Clicking on "Home" should take you to the current "Load" dialog and the buttons for "New" and "Custom" should be moved there as well. A pretty screen with only 3 buttons is mostly useless. I file this under the "click thru" complaint of many here. Way too much clicking to do stuff.
Edit: Alternatively, they could put just the "New" button on the Load screen and then have the dialog where you pick your campaign and just "add" the "campaign" of "quick essentials".
Moving power cards around the page would be nice, or at least options on how to organize them (by type, usage, lvl, ect.)
Any word on when these changes are coming?
What changes specifically did you want? The best and most recent info will come from WotC_Trevor and will be posted in DDI General along with a "Broadcast" to your inbox/email if you have it configured correctly. Most recent info is community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/758...
Will there be a "Character Builder for Grown-Ups" released at a later date?
All the various requests for better functionality and better navigation are legitimate and important and I agree with pretty much everything to one degree or another.
I would like to have a "grown-up" option for the print out. A character sheet print out that doesn't look like it was designed by Fisher-Price. Something that offers customization in both information and layout. And for the love of Pete, there is no reason to use size 48 font on anything. We're not blind.
There are alot that give a +1/2 feat bonus to saving throws to/under specific conditions/circumstances (like Fated Survival, or Fearless Mind), that are just flat out worse then Resilient Focus.
Honestly i wouldn't mind them being removed from the builder/compendium all together, but since it's unlikely that will happen, a checkbox for "show obsolete feats" would be great.
My main 2 wishes for the CB is a way to post our work on the char op board sich as copy to clip board(so we can get feed back easily) and that it would have the New material if not one release date soon after ward (I went to make my char sisters and couldn’t make ether because there builds are not supported yet)
I would like to please request brief descriptions of skills and their use in the sidebar when making a character. This will make it easier for newer players to try to decide what skills they are interested in with more readily available information than the skill name.
Also I would like it if the math showing how attack and damage on attacks was more readily available, especially with basic attacks. The information shows up for other attack powers in the builder itself, but not on the character sheet, and it doesn't show up at all for basic attacks.
Lastly, ammunition doesn't appear in the marketplace at all, not of any kind, mundane or magical.
Thanks.
It would be invaluable to be able to enter an amount for some things in the marketplace. I don't have the time to buy 1,000gp of Residuum a gold piece worth at a time.
You can. It's in a really stupid place, but you can.
[sblock pic]
[/sblock]
You have to click on the quanity colum to change it.
But yea, i request you take out the quanity colum and add a quanity box.
For the Character Builder to be useful I need it to:
Show the math (frankly it's buggy and I don't trust it to add everything correctly right now... also, the math being visible helps teach new players how the game works and how the numbers are arrived at)
be faster (a character that used to take 5 minutes to make now takes 20 or 30... or more)
have a meaningful journal feature (seriously... what does it give you? 200 characters or so of space to keep a journal??? that's frankly pitiful -- playing D&D is about these journals, the growth of the character over time, not in powers, but in commitment to the character).
allow more than 20 characters (and it would be helpful if the 21st didn't automatically overwrite the 20th with no notice)
be available offline (I'm not always playing at home with an available internet connection - I understand your piracy concerns, and I share them... I have never stolen d&d access and I buy very nearly every book... don't punish me because you can't find a better way. Find the better way.)
have more character sheet options (preferably something comparable and as customizable as the old character builder had)
have power cards showing more than one weapon (and including the unarmed option for when the player is in that situation where their weapon is temporarily unavailable)
not be a step backward (less functional than the old character builder? Really? Why am I paying you to alpha test this?)
This new character builder shows a total lack of customer service understanding. And this aftermath represents an unforgivable lapse in communication. Why are these particular features missing? Why are you not talking to us? Why are you chasing away customers who have fought for you.... I used to tell people that DDI was ABSOLUTELY WORTH IT just for the character builder. And I'm not one of those people who used it as a substitute for the books. I can't say that anymore. With the cancelation of the compilations of the magazine articles, I'm frankly not sure it's worth it AT ALL.
Fix this. Do it soon. And tell us when we can expect the new character builder to work as well as the old one did... or if it won't why we should bother paying to keep paying for it. Do it soon. I'm patient, but my patience is not limitless.
So my number one feature request is, simply, make it accessible. I can't access my characters when I don't have access to the internet on a supported browser on a supported OS.
That leads very strongly into the real point - in this day and age where the smartphone (and smart pads, etc) are plain and simply ubiquitous, it seems to be that WotC is missing the point - I should be able to access all of that information from my smart phone (android, iphone, ipad, google tab, meego, blackberry, palm, WP7, whatever). I can access the compendium from my smartphone, why not the character builder?
Maybe that's a bit to much of a rant.
THAT is my number one wishlist complaint. What happens if you're at a Con to play the game, but for whatever reason, internet connectivity is not working? What happens if you're at home playing and for whatever reason, internet connectivity is not working? These questions seem to be so utterly fundamental, that I can't believe it wasn't asked.
Being limited to a single line for fields like "Session and Campaign Notes" forces manual copying of information each time the character is printed, making it virtually unusable. It also makes one wonder why there is so much space on the printed character sheets for these fields.
Multi-line Entry for Character Details
Being limited to a single line for fields like "Session and Campaign Notes" forces manual copying of information each time the character is printed, making it virtually unusable. It also makes one wonder why there is so much space on the printed character sheets for these fields.
Try + 0010 or 0013 (or 010 or 013) to put the carriage return or newline characters into the text.
Multi-line Entry for Character Details
Being limited to a single line for fields like "Session and Campaign Notes" forces manual copying of information each time the character is printed, making it virtually unusable. It also makes one wonder why there is so much space on the printed character sheets for these fields.
Try + 0010 or 0013 (or 010 or 013) to put the carriage return or newline characters into the text.
That seemed like a good idea (trying to code the CR or LF using ASCII encoding). Unfortunately, it didn't work for me. Of course, I could be getting the syntax wrong. Do you have an example that works for you?
Multi-line Entry for Character Details
Being limited to a single line for fields like "Session and Campaign Notes" forces manual copying of information each time the character is printed, making it virtually unusable. It also makes one wonder why there is so much space on the printed character sheets for these fields.
Try + 0010 or 0013 (or 010 or 013) to put the carriage return or newline characters into the text.
That seemed like a good idea (trying to code the CR or LF using ASCII encoding). Unfortunately, it didn't work for me. Of course, I could be getting the syntax wrong. Do you have an example that works for you?
Arrrgggg....it ate part of my post and I didn't look...<alt> + 0010
(thought it was a stupid html tag)
So we could be looking at 4 - 6 months before we can add extra feats or our own portraits? I'm very disheartened at this prospect.
Depens on what you looking for. If you just want an extra feat, or to put your own custom text in, it seems likely to happen in 2-4 months.
Portraits are more of a legal issue, and i've got no expertise in that area. But it would probably take 1-2 months to impliment.
Actually integrating custom feats.... Well i wouldn't hold your breath.
I'd like to see more stuff in the Adventure Tools, specifically a place for Traps/Hazards that can be easy to use like the Monster Builder complete with the stat-blocks, level, etc. Have it so that traps/hazards are part of the suite with a very very comprehensive list, which is updated when new traps/hazards are placed in Dungeon and Dragon magazines, and/or other authorized and published D&D materials.
I'd also like it to allow others to make custom traps/hazards and be able to easily share them with fellow DMs who use the suite of tools and pay for the service. I know you can look things up in the compendium, but it would be much more realistic in the adventure tools, and having monsters, traps, and hazards all in one place would be pretty dang nice in my opinion.
1) Customizable portrait like the old character builder had.
a) Should not be limited to the very limited selection of art D&D allows you to use currently.
2) Have the power cards after the character sheet make some sense in how they are ordered.
a) My preference is by type (at will, encounter, daily) and then by level. For example, all encounter powers should be grouped together and then put in order of level. Encounter level power level 1, followed by the next level and the next, etc. Currently my powers are printing out all over the place and its really distracting mid-game. The old character builder did this reasonably well.
3) Show the math behind the totals in the powers somewhere.
a) I liked in the old character builder, how it would show the breakdown off to the side on the screen. Don't think it needs to be done on the character sheet.
4) Bring back the old character sheet. I do not like the new ones, the old one (from the 4e PH or the old character builder) were perfectly fine.
They are an option in the Dark Sun Campaign setting, yet are still not available for players to choose. The Dark Sun Campaign section has extinct races available, which are only available as options to a player if the GM agrees, just like Divine Classes. Yet, if a GM allows divine classes in their campaign (which is stated as an option in the official the rulebook), we can't use the character builder to create the character and have to make them by hand.
Either that or allow the Dark Sun Campaign specific elements to be in the Home Campaign section of the builder.
The old CB did this and I loved the feature. I know many didn't realise it was there, but it was a very handy feature for me.
The new character builder only lists powers for the main hand and I guess this applies to weapons too.
It would be nice to have the possibility to set a quantity when buying something from the marketplace. My char bought Residium for 500 GM the last session and in order to add it to my D&DI character, I would have to buy 500 times Residium, that means I have to click 500 times the button. Perhaps this is a bug, I am not sure.
It would be nice to have the possibility to set a quantity when buying something from the marketplace. My char bought Residium for 500 GM the last session and in order to add it to my D&DI character, I would have to buy 500 times Residium, that means I have to click 500 times the button. Perhaps this is a bug, I am not sure.
I couldn't find residium, but when you do find it in the marketplace click in the Quantity column and change the quantity to 500.
But anyway, when they fix this, they can also add an option to set a quantity when selling items. Or did I miss something again?
On the character sheet it would likely be reflected as the bag followed by the items in the bag
Bag of Holding (Heroic Tier)
500 gold coins
Tent
50' Silk Rope
Bedroll
Kzorith
Hmm, you are right. I haven´t noticed that before.
But anyway, when they fix this, they can also add an option to set a quantity when selling items. Or did I miss something again?
No...I don't see a way to select a quantity when selling/removing items.
3) Original Character Sheets
While the new style of sheet may be optimized, and the Essentials sheet may be another option - some people very simply prefer the classic 4E sheet as originally laid out in the back of the PHB, and as printed in the original Character Builder. These users would like the option of formatting their character sheets to print in that classic style.
[...]
7) Editable Character Sheets (layout/design)
Similar to the request for the Classic 4E Character sheets - The ability to change the layout, add pages, and otherwise make a sheet that works best for the individual player is something that is much appreciated in the offline Character Builder. That functionality would be just as greatly appreciated in the new online effort.
8) Offline Viewer
The Character Sheet Viewer in the classic builder allowed users to check/uncheck boxes to track power use, and had other "interactive" features that made it a great way to track your character at the table on small computing devices (netbooks, iPads, etc). The new Character Builder's online-only feature will remove this option for many gamers who don't have wi-fi at their gaming table (be it in an FLGS, or in a basement where reception is poor, etc).
Users would appreciate an option to have a small Character Sheet Viewer for offline use that would simply read and interact with a created Character Sheet - without allowing any (permanent) edits to things like character stats/powers/equipment.
This way they can still take full advantage of the Builder at their gaming table.
These. Everything else you mentioned needs to be implimented as well, but these are an absolute must. Especially about the Offline Viewer. As it is now, this new CB is pretty much worthless for actual game use.
These. Everything else you mentioned needs to be implimented as well, but these are an absolute must. Especially about the Offline Viewer. As it is now, this new CB is pretty much worthless for actual game use.
As a DM I didn't like the fact that the old CB had a "Character Viewer" built in that was useful at the game table. Laptops are a HUGE DISTRACTION from the game. Let them make a viewer for handheld devices that can lay flat on the table and not be like a wall between me and the player or between players.
There are three options about how to get power descriptions into such a viewer:
- Embed that data into the viewer (this is how CCB worked)
- Embed that data into the character save file (this is my preferred method, but WotC could be concerned about their IP in plain text - solution is to encrypt the text)
- Look up that data from the compendium (uggg...internet access required)
These. Everything else you mentioned needs to be implimented as well, but these are an absolute must. Especially about the Offline Viewer. As it is now, this new CB is pretty much worthless for actual game use.
As a DM I didn't like the fact that the old CB had a "Character Viewer" built in that was useful at the game table. Laptops are a HUGE DISTRACTION from the game. Let them make a viewer for handheld devices that can lay flat on the table and not be like a wall between me and the player or between players.
There are three options about how to get power descriptions into such a viewer:
- Embed that data into the viewer (this is how CCB worked)
- Embed that data into the character save file (this is my preferred method, but WotC could be concerned about their IP in plain text - solution is to encrypt the text)
- Look up that data from the compendium (uggg...internet access required)
Perhaps no one has mentioned this, but making the CB usable in the many varied ways we want to use it is key. Some want an off-line viewer, some don't, so it should be provided for those who do want it. And on and on - there should be multiple ways to accomplish needed tasks. For example, feats should be grouped in two or three different ways to make them easy to find whichever way you decide to search for them. There should be no attempt at a "one size fits all" type of solution, but provide flexibility so that you have many "sizes" included on one product.
I liken this to the many ways that one can Copy and Paste in Microsoft Word, for example. You can (at least) use a right-click, use keyboard shortcuts and use the menu. There are probably at least one or two other ways, too. A beginner can use the menus, a more proficient user can use "right-click" and an expert can use keyboard shortcuts. This is the correct model where every user can use the method he/she find most suitable.
edit: Oh yes, and intuitivenss is important. The CB should be intuitive to use.
Perhaps no one has mentioned this, but making the CB usable in the many varied ways we want to use it is key. Some want an off-line viewer, some don't, so it should be provided for those who do want it.
I'll take exception to this. Just because we want it does not mean it should be provided. I want a million dollars, but I don't see anyone "providing" that to me. To me this is an entitlement point of view. "I want, therefore I'm entitled to ..."
And on and on - there should be multiple ways to accomplish needed tasks. For example, feats should be grouped in two or three different ways to make them easy to find whichever way you decide to search for them. There should be no attempt at a "one size fits all" type of solution, but provide flexibility so that you have many "sizes" included on one product.
I liken this to the many ways that one can Copy and Paste in Microsoft Word, for example. You can (at least) use a right-click, use keyboard shortcuts and use the menu. There are probably at least one or two other ways, too. A beginner can use the menus, a more proficient user can use "right-click" and an expert can use keyboard shortcuts. This is the correct model where every user can use the method he/she find most suitable.
edit: Oh yes, and intuitivenss is important. The CB should be intuitive to use.
Was any of the rest of this a response to my post in some way?
As a DM I didn't like the fact that the old CB had a "Character Viewer" built in that was useful at the game table. Laptops are a HUGE DISTRACTION from the game. Let them make a viewer for handheld devices that can lay flat on the table and not be like a wall between me and the player or between players.
Guess you're not a fan of DM screens then?
Perhaps no one has mentioned this, but making the CB usable in the many varied ways we want to use it is key. Some want an off-line viewer, some don't, so it should be provided for those who do want it.
I'll take exception to this. Just because we want it does not mean it should be provided. I want a million dollars, but I don't see anyone "providing" that to me. To me this is an entitlement point of view. "I want, therefore I'm entitled to ..."
It should if we're paying for it. That's not entitlement, that's just good business: If you want people to give you there money, you give the people what they want. Case in point: People liked the old CB. Alot of people got DDI accounts for that feature alone. Wizards than decided to pull it and replace it with a new version that people don't like. Now people (myself included) are canceling their DDI subscriptions and asking for their money back because they don't think this version is worth it.
As a DM I didn't like the fact that the old CB had a "Character Viewer" built in that was useful at the game table. Laptops are a HUGE DISTRACTION from the game. Let them make a viewer for handheld devices that can lay flat on the table and not be like a wall between me and the player or between players.
Guess you're not a fan of DM screens then?
I DM standing most of the time so even if I used one (which I usually don't) it would not be a barrier to LOS between me and my players. Also laptops are distracting for more reasons than being a barrier.
Perhaps no one has mentioned this, but making the CB usable in the many varied ways we want to use it is key. Some want an off-line viewer, some don't, so it should be provided for those who do want it.
I'll take exception to this. Just because we want it does not mean it should be provided. I want a million dollars, but I don't see anyone "providing" that to me. To me this is an entitlement point of view. "I want, therefore I'm entitled to ..."
It should if we're paying for it. That's not entitlement, that's just good business: If you want people to give you there money, you give the people what they want. Case in point: People liked the old CB. Alot of people got DDI accounts for that feature alone. Wizards than decided to pull it and replace it with a new version that people don't like. Now people (myself included) are canceling their DDI subscriptions and asking for their money back because they don't think this version is worth it.
You're acting like there are no other factors involved in the decision to supply a product or not. If I want a prostitute and I'm willing to pay for it then should some pimp go out and force some woman to do that job for me? I know that's an extreme example, but you seem to be saying that if you have money and you want to spend it, then whatever it is that you want should be provided and that is just absurd on it's face. THIS is exactly the entitlement attitude I'm talking about.
(I'm so sorry)
I am well aware that a +2 pencil will beat the AC of most papers that one might print a character sheet on (assuming you have proficiency), but it would be nice to have a typed item card for the shield I made out of the slain dragon's head. I know my friends and I aren't the only ones who make custom magic items almost every session. Maybe all enemies carry level-appropriate, cookie-cutter "common," "uncommon," or "rare" magic items in your games, WotC, but I doubt it.
I am surprised the "houserule" options were not the #1 priority.
#1 in front of what exactly. Crashes? Stability? Core functionality? Bugs? Missing features?
I am surprised the "houserule" options were not the #1 priority.
#1 in front of what exactly. Crashes? Stability? Core functionality? Bugs? Missing features?
Hmm, I'd say it should probably go in this order:
Houserule options, then all that other stuff. #1 priority usually means it goes in front of everything else. That's not to say your concerns aren't important. They are marketing this product, so it better have some polish and work at least 97.4832% of the time.
It's stable enough to the point where I might think about releasing it with beta in the name. As for core functionality, it does what they want it to do: allows people to play at official RGPA events. I don't play D&D at the varsity level, I play with my friends for funzies. That means rules are more of suggestions, and if my character sheet on the old builder didn't say "Houseruled" instead of "Legal" for at least 10 different reasons, I was doing it wrong.
To be honest, if the builder was made my way, it would probably be a blank template where I could write whatever I want, wherever I want. Maybe that shouldn't be an option, and I'm just weird for wanting that. If that's the case, that's cool. It's the "requested features" board, right? What harm could requesting something that sounded simple enough to me do?
You're acting like there are no other factors involved in the decision to supply a product or not. If I want a prostitute and I'm willing to pay for it then should some pimp go out and force some woman to do that job for me? I know that's an extreme example, but you seem to be saying that if you have money and you want to spend it, then whatever it is that you want should be provided and that is just absurd on it's face. THIS is exactly the entitlement attitude I'm talking about.
That's not what I'm saying at all. What I'm saying is that if Wizards wants people to keep paying for their product, then they need to develop a product that people are actually willing to pay for.
So I'll just put in my request for something as simple as letting us print the character sheet you got us used to in the first place. I won't be foolish enough to ask for anything that could be customized even only as much as the character sheet in the CB you took away from us.
Now I'll go scream my profanities out the back door till I feel better.
It's stable enough to the point where I might think about releasing it with beta in the name.
As of this past release, i agree. It's stable enough for them to start adding houserules. But really, you need to be able to build a character before you can build a character with houserules.
You can already have custom ability scores.
Custom items are on there list of things to do next.
Custom feats will probably come out the month after that. (Custom powers?)
Then, i'm gunna toss my vote for an offline/customizable character viewer/sheet.
And for the love of Moradin Corellon and any other god you care to name I DO NOT NEED A POWER CARD ON EVERY CHARACTER SAHEET TO TELL ME WHAT MY MELEE BASIC AND RANGED BASIC ATTACK ARE
Rant over
I'd like to see a WishList option. Too many times I find myself looking through the list of feats and powers and having to write down which ones I might want. If there was a way to send over the potential choices to a WishList for future consideration, that'd be marvelous.
A quick search through this thread did not yield any results for what I'm about to propose. So please forgive me if this has already been presented.
I'd like to see a WishList option. Too many times I find myself looking through the list of feats and powers and having to write down which ones I might want. If there was a way to send over the potential choices to a WishList for future consideration, that'd be marvelous.
Great idea. It should be possible to send that to someone else's account and also print it out as it's own page to hand to one's DM. The latter should be very easy to implement
I'd really like the character sheets and character sheet viewer from the old character builder.
I'd like the old Character Builder myself, or at least a character builder that is built for customers rather than for WotC 'anti-piracy' nonsense...
The ability to create a Campaign File (e.g. the .dndcamp file in the offline CB) and distribute it.
- It should show up in the Campaign list for the "build a custom D&D character" option in some way (either added to the list of published ones, or a "user created" button to select from among home-brew campaigns uploaded).
- This would cover not just creating and adding house-rule material (as already mentioned by others), but the ability to limit access to existing material (e.g. I don't allow the Eberron dragonmark feats in my campaign).
- It should also include the ability to set some of the Optional Rules like Inherent Bonuses.
- It should also be able to create a custom version of a published campaign setting - e.g. creating a personalized Dark Sun campaign setting that starts with the Dark Sun options already set and can then be edited by the DM.
-- More than 20 characters storable somehow, somewhere, someway.
-- Some way to "hide" power cards. I'm tired of having to print out action points, magic items, etc over and over.
-- Miss the mouse scroll. Maybe its just me, but every time I try and grab and drag the scroll bar I have to do it twice.
-- Multi-instances. More than one D&D player in the home, it would be nice to multiple copies open at the same time.
-- Response speed. Maybe this is my imagination, but it seems slower than when it first came out.
MAC user here -- love that it actually works on a MAC.
They exists when you Import an exported PC from the old CB.
Sound like an easy fix here to re-establish royalties of these missing Features.
Thanks
Plague
a charater sheet where numbers are actualy explained again like in old sheet. Not just a end result with no explination. can just be a option to click and then u get all the numbers added in on a sheet if one so wants to.
A place to make own addidions to background
option to use no picture
That u can actualy can choose paper size when printing instead of having to print to pdf as letter size and then print out
option to use no picture
Already added.
-- Miss the mouse scroll. Maybe its just me, but every time I try and grab and drag the scroll bar I have to do it twice.
I'm pretty sure the mouse scroll works in firefox and chrome if you want to make the switch. Additionally, try updating your silverlight client and try again. Being a mac user, I doubt you get automagic microsoft updates (it was a microsoft update that seemed to resolve the issue in other browsers).
I know 40 pages would be hard to go through but could we get a compiled list of requests so we can say "Yeah! I want that too!"
My requests:
Ability to add free feats, skills, and powers.
The ability to copy a power card and set it up for different weapons and modifiers (Example: Power Attack) - This can be a simple misc box for both attack and damage that we can we fill in with a way to add a reason.
The ability to filter out books and mag content that the GM does not want in their campaign.
Inherent Bonus Modifiers
Pack animals (Yeah I know... I can dream)
I know 40 pages would be hard to go through but could we get a compiled list of requests so we can say "Yeah! I want that too!"
That's a good idea. I'll help if someone organises it.
cheers,
Durn
Make of that what you will. And maybe have a cursory read of the forums before you ask questions ;)
I would really appreciate a greater variety of PC portraits. Better yet, I'd like to upload my own, like in the offline cb.
cheers,
Durn
I would love this feature, too. Currently I have to print to PDF, and then replace the portrait on all the pages in Photoshop, and then reassemble the PDF. Not fun, especially when I have to redo all of it every time I level up a character.
I have the following suggestion for a character sheet addition that I have found extremely useful. I think powers (including item powers!!) should be listed in three ways:
1. By frequency of use (At Will, Encounter, Daily) organized as they are now by attack powers and then utility powers.
2. By action type (Immediate Interrupt, Immediate Reaction, Free Action, No Action, Move Action, Standard Action). This is extremely useful in managing my turn during any round.
3. By trigger for all powers that have a trigger of any sort - even things that happen automatically such as, say, Death Saving Throw modifications. This is extremely useful due to the many, many conditional actions powers/properties in this edition of D&D. An example of this would be to list all things that happens when one's PC is bloodied and what happens when an ally is bloodied and what happens when an enemy is bloodied (assuming anything happens due to a power or property of some sort). It is extremely difficult to keep track of it all.
I use lists like this, and, while useful, they are subject to error since I have to manually produce the list. It would be far better if the Character Builder produced this list instead, though I do understand the difficulties involved since the data structure might not quite support this as some powers/properties may only listed as plain text that would have to be parsed for key words.
I included an attached example from my 21st level monk; I will show part of it here (standard actions are not listed as I have no real trouble keeping track of those). I started doing this as I kept needing to know my options for the various types of actions (as in, "Hmmm... I still have a Minor Action available this turn, is there anything I could do?" or "I just got hit with a Critical Hit for a lot of damage, do I have an Interrupt that can help?").
There could be errors in here, but it still serves as an illustration of what I have in mind:
- Actions {Key: At Will, Encounter, Daily (Item) Power}:
- Free (no trigger)
- No Action: Fly Speed 10 - must end turn on slid surface or fall
- Immediate Interrupts/Reactions and Triggered Free actions:
- Flurry (1/round) (all adjacent targets, + 11 damage (2 +5 Will +2 Crashing Tempest, +2 Ki Club), and slide 1 to adjacent or, if not target, slide 1 any direction (Free after a hit) Centered Breath Flurry of Blows
- Extra use of flurry if hit with OA. (Free Action Reaction) (Elusive Action Ki Focus)
- When affected with Dominated condition that a save can end, can make a saving throw (Torc of Bin A’kin)Can’t be forced move, shift instead Grasp the Wind
- +4 to attack or save if I miss Human Heroic Effort
- Start turn immobilized, restrained or slowed. End the condition. Sundered Chains.
- Me or ally subject to an effect a save can end. Make a saving throw (+2) (Oghma’s Uninterrupted Study)
- When an attack misses and still causes damage, take no damage. (Torc of Bin A’kin)
- Minor:
- Shift Two Squares (Davros Elden’s Defensive Step)
- Make a Divine Rage attack. Divine Rage
- +4 bonus to skill checks for self and allies for one skill of choice (Oghma’s Revelation)
- +2 power bonus to all defenses Centered Defense Stance
- Use healing surge plus 4d6 on self or ally within 10. Healing Word
- Regain hit points as if he spent a healing surge. Resist All 4 until end of encounter (must be bloodied) Undimmed Sun
- Choose an enemy. For the rest of the encounter, the enemy does not benefit from concealment, total concealment, cover, superior cover or invisibility against me. (Hoof of the Wolf)
- Move:
- Swap places with target Dragon’s Tail
- Jump +5 power bonus, running start, no speed limit Crane’s Wings
- Speed +2 Dancing Cobra
- Climb speed 7 (11 with Incredible Stride), cannot end turn hanging under overhang Spider Technique
- Ignore difficult terrain but move at -2 speed. Move across any horizontal surface 3” ot more wide w/no check.Perfect Balance
- Fly at speed, first square, no OA Whirlwind Kick
- Jump +5 power bonus, running start, squares adjacent pot landing square are rough terrain until end of next turn Titan’s Step
- Teleport self and ally speed + 2 squares Divine Sun
- Speed +2 Furious Bull
- Fly @ speed. Land at end of turn. (Davros Elden’s Aerial Step)
- Move twice speed (20) . (Torc of Bin A’kin)
- Free (no trigger)
It's annyong to pick "+1 feat bonus to saving throws" only to later find "+2 feat bonus to saving throws".
Or "+1 feat bonus to fort/will/ref" vs "+1/2/3 feat bonus to fort/will/ref".
Or "+1 feat bonus to hit when..." vs any Expertise feat.
You probably don't want to delete them since you want to maintaint compatibility, but moving them to their own section would make the other's cleaner.
More character display options (so that I don't have to kill a few trees every time I print out a character):
- Ability to remove unused text blocks and unused power cards
- A cleaner character sheet - there are great independent ones out there that display in two pages what the character builder shows in three!
- Pulling in own character portraits
For my characters, all these extra weapons being displayed is a lot of clutter.
"Ability to add free feats, skills, and powers.
The ability to copy a power card and set it up for different weapons and modifiers (Example: Power Attack) - This can be a simple misc box for both attack and damage that we can we fill in with a way to add a reason.
The ability to filter out books and mag content that the GM does not want in their campaign."
The ability to filter out books and mag content would be very nice, as every DM I've had has not allowed the magazine content.
Also, I really would like to be able to print out Item cards, like I could w/ the older CB. This new browser version printed out what my damage was on the Melee Basic Attack power card, but not that the weapon had a property of Brutal 1. And since I couldn't edit the cards, I couldn't type it on it before it printed.
The single biggest thing keeping me from switching to the OCB completely is the lack of a journaling function comparable to that from the LCB. Much of my play is LFR, and I've used the journal function from LCB to track what has happened in all the mods played, along with gold/xp/treasure rewards. Something similar would be grealy appreciated for the OCB.
It'd be useful to have Melee and Ranged basic attacks listed as powers on the power selection screen to double the check the math for them (attack and damage bonuses).
Also- the option to display on the character sheet Grab, Bull Rush and Charge as a power card- some characters are built with the idea of using one or more of these options frequently, so having items and feats pre-calculated would be useful.
The ability to edit item and power cards would do wonders for DMs who have created custom items and powers. Pick a bonus for the item (if it has one) so the program can do the math, but allow the name and description to be edited by the player.
I'll admit I haven't looked at the CB very recently, so I'm not sure what other features to ask for. On the other hand I need to sit down and update some monsters for my game Saturday, using the offline buggy tool, unless the online Monster Builder has been significantly updated.
Edit: If we're going to go crazy with wishful thinking suggestions, one I would like to see is the ability of a DM to create a white list of all the options allowed in the game by going through and clicking a check box next to various feats, races, backgrounds, sourcebooks, or what have you. This would create a file of settings you could email to your players so only the allowed choices would be available in the builder. Doing the initial setup would take some time for the DM, but it only needs to be done once for a given campaign. That lets me include genasi, but not drow, minotaurs but not shardminds. I can say "no psionic power source" while allowing other options from PH3.
Better yet would be the option to include free feats in the white list /DM campaign customization. I can tell it to give every character Weapon / Implement expertise and Parragon defenses for free at the beginning of the game. That would be awesome.
Eliminate Microsoft Silverlight Requirement / Make HTML+AJAX. One of the most obvious deficiencies of the Character Builder and Monster Builder is that it's impossible to use them on tablet computers (and to some extent, smart phones, though that may not be practical). Millions of people use these things and they are more convenient to plop down on you game table than a laptop. It would be trivial to implement these applications in a fashion that would work amply well on iOS and Android devices (which is really the whole market, as of this writing).
I agree. They could very well have done it with just regular HTML, Java-Script, CSS, PHP, or other server side scripting and SQL. Why they didn't is a mystery to me...
Thanks.
Improved marketplace, which I know you are working on (low hanging fruit for the win!).
An option to add/print Journal pages, similar to the offline builder. Shouldn't be too hard to do, since the data still exists in the .dnd4e file.
A sub-screen on the Power selection page that includes Basic Melee and Basic Ranged Attacks - give these options a check box to include in the print-out of the character sheet so that the space can be saved (particularly useful for characters that have a power that can be used as one of these two options, but also good to save space when the basic attacks are on the front page of the character sheet).
Companions!
- related: "power cards" for companions, summons, familiars, etc. (just referred to as companions herein, for simplicity) Just like the Character Summary card, but with the defenses and hit points of the summons, should be room on it for the companion's basic attacks. This would be invaluable for many builds (Druid, Wizard, Beastmaster, Sentinel) and could be expanded for future uses.
An option to add/print Journal pages, similar to the offline builder. Shouldn't be too hard to do, since the data still exists in the .dnd4e file.
This is a bad assumption to make, that becuase the "journal section" still exists in the XML export file that therefore there is a field in their online database for that data to be stored. Your character is not stored as XML on their servers (I have no proof of this, but I'd be aghast if they're not using some sort of SQL DB). All this really proves is that they reused the XML generator portion of their code from the old CB and now you have a section with no data in it.
An option to add/print Journal pages, similar to the offline builder. Shouldn't be too hard to do, since the data still exists in the .dnd4e file.
This is a bad assumption to make, that becuase the "journal section" still exists in the XML export file that therefore there is a field in their online database for that data to be stored.
I may have to double check, but I am fairly sure that I have imported an off-line Character Builder with journal entries into the on-line version, and then exported that character to the old CB, and the journal entries were still in-tact. If I am mis-remembering, you have an excellent point, and hopefully they can do something to fix that.
Main thing I'm looking for in the online is the ability to access it on my mobile devices/work PCs. Can't install silverlight on those and remoting into my PC at the table takes too long and is unwieldly. Wish I could get it on my iPad. At least I can use the compedilum on the iPad. That has been a god send, less books to carry to the table.
Maybe its a request for a different type of tool, but as a DM I'd like the ability to print a quick summary of all my PCs for my own reference. I have all their characters under my account so the ability to make a quick AC, Fort, HP, etc print out for combat tracking would be nice. Guess that might be some thing for a DM Toolkit.
Main thing I'm looking for in the online is the ability to access it on my mobile devices/work PCs. Can't install silverlight on those and remoting into my PC at the table takes too long and is unwieldly. Wish I could get it on my iPad. At least I can use the compedilum on the iPad. That has been a god send, less books to carry to the table.
If you have their characters under your account you are in violation of the EULA and therefore they could suspend your account if they wanted to. I'd suggest not admitting to doing that on their forums...
If you have their characters under your account you are in violation of the EULA and therefore they could suspend your account if they wanted to. I'd suggest not admitting to doing that on their forums...
They export the .dnd4e file and I import it. How is that a violation?
If you have their characters under your account you are in violation of the EULA and therefore they could suspend your account if they wanted to. I'd suggest not admitting to doing that on their forums...
They export the .dnd4e file and I import it. How is that a violation?
Don't pay any attention to that. Lokiare is acting like Chicken Little and trying to armchair quarterback the "is or isn't it legal" debate of what you can and can't do with your account. As long as you're not giving out your password for your account, you should be fine. That is probably oversimplified, but it should be close enough for most cases. Anything more is just paranoia or an attempt to scare the masses.
Being there is some 43 pages and i just don't have to the time right now to skim the posts this may have been covered elsewhere, BUT, an option i would like to see either on the character sheets page or the character builder final page (where you save it) or something a Slider Bar much like the current Monster "viewer" so you could build your character out to 30 and then just slide the bar to the level you need. I think at first this could be independant of gear cause that would cause some serious complexity, but maybe in the future an option to lock in gear per level as well.
I thnk that with the current builder structure (how its laid out by level) it should be fairly simple to add that scale or roll back feature, that way when i went to print out my character i select the level of adventure an bamn my character is good. If i'm leveling up i raise the level with a simple click and everything is already worked out ahead of time. just buy some gear and off we go again.
If you have their characters under your account you are in violation of the EULA and therefore they could suspend your account if they wanted to. I'd suggest not admitting to doing that on their forums...
They export the .dnd4e file and I import it. How is that a violation?
Don't pay any attention to that. Lokiare is acting like Chicken Little and trying to armchair quarterback the "is or isn't it legal" debate of what you can and can't do with your account. As long as you're not giving out your password for your account, you should be fine. That is probably oversimplified, but it should be close enough for most cases. Anything more is just paranoia or an attempt to scare the masses.
I suggest you go back and read your EULA. Your not allowed to even make characters for other people. Even if they live in the same household. If you are passing .dnd4e files around and they are not directly accessing your account, then you may be in the clear...
As to listening to Kenjoon. Apparently they have something personal against me and either spam the report button every time I post or they try to start an argument in every thread I post in. I'd do some research yourself, I was just giving a friendly warning...
If you have their characters under your account you are in violation of the EULA and therefore they could suspend your account if they wanted to. I'd suggest not admitting to doing that on their forums...
They export the .dnd4e file and I import it. How is that a violation?
Don't pay any attention to that. Lokiare is acting like Chicken Little and trying to armchair quarterback the "is or isn't it legal" debate of what you can and can't do with your account. As long as you're not giving out your password for your account, you should be fine. That is probably oversimplified, but it should be close enough for most cases. Anything more is just paranoia or an attempt to scare the masses.
I suggest you go back and read your EULA. Your not allowed to even make characters for other people. Even if they live in the same household. If you are passing .dnd4e files around and they are not directly accessing your account, then you may be in the clear...
As to listening to Kenjoon. Apparently they have something personal against me and either spam the report button every time I post or they try to start an argument in every thread I post in. I'd do some research yourself, I was just giving a friendly warning...
Just so I know I'm reading the same EULA you are Lokiare, please provide a link. I did find a EULA on Wizards site here: wizards.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/... I couldn't find a "last updated" anywhere on the page, but the wording of it tells me that it is the EULA for the offline character builder as the text reads that
2. Grant of License; Intellectual Property Rights. Subject to your compliance with this License, during the license term Wizards grants you a non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-assignable limited license to personally use the Software on one (1) computer which you own or is under your personal control.
If I'm to believe this document then we all have purchased a web service that we can't use anywhere but at our own personal computer which defeats the purpose of a web service. I did find this:
4. Copyright and Trademark Notices:
All contents of the Software are ©2008 - 2009 Wizards of the Coast LLC, P.O. Box 707 Renton, WA 98057-0707 USA. All rights reserved.
which tells me that the document hasn't been updated since 2009 sometime and can't possibly apply to the online CB because it didn't even exist at that time. So if you have some other EULA you'd like to wave around feel free to link it.
I have no problem with you personally and have never used the report button as long as I've been here. What I have a problem with are your snide comments and attempts to misrepresent your opinion as fact. Or as in the case above, take a EULA for the offline CB and try to apply it to the online CB which is a totally "new" product which would require a "new" EULA.
Just so I know I'm reading the same EULA you are Lokiare, please provide a link. I did find a EULA on Wizards site here: wizards.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/... I couldn't find a "last updated" anywhere on the page, but the wording of it tells me that it is the EULA for the offline character builder as the text reads that2. Grant of License; Intellectual Property Rights. Subject to your compliance with this License, during the license term Wizards grants you a non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-assignable limited license to personally use the Software on one (1) computer which you own or is under your personal control.
If I'm to believe this document then we all have purchased a web service that we can't use anywhere but at our own personal computer which defeats the purpose of a web service. I did find this:4. Copyright and Trademark Notices:
All contents of the Software are ©2008 - 2009 Wizards of the Coast LLC, P.O. Box 707 Renton, WA 98057-0707 USA. All rights reserved.
which tells me that the document hasn't been updated since 2009 sometime and can't possibly apply to the online CB because it didn't even exist at that time. So if you have some other EULA you'd like to wave around feel free to link it.
I have no problem with you personally and have never used the report button as long as I've been here. What I have a problem with are your snide comments and attempts to misrepresent your opinion as fact. Or as in the case above, take a EULA for the offline CB and try to apply it to the online CB which is a totally "new" product which would require a "new" EULA.
As that's the only EULA available its the EULA that applies.
"or is under your personal control" lets you use it on another persons computer as long as YOU are the one using it. The part about non-transferable covers not using it on another behalf. Its pretty clear cut, any lawyer will explain it to you this way.
I'm merely pointing out violations to the people that keep telling me my 'dipping' twice a year caused WotC to take the actions they did. I'll continue to do this until Muddbunny gets a WotC representative to comment on it one way or the other...
As many of you have expressed a desire for either added features, or for changes to existing planned features, I thought it would help everyone - the community AND WotC's Dev team - to have a consolidated list of feature requests for future consideration in the New Character Builder.
Let me be clear: this is NOT the place to rant about the direction that DDI and/or the CB are going in. If you're going to post here, please at least accept (however grudgingly) that the new CB is going to move online, and is likely going to stay there.
"Please don't make this change" - however its worded - is NOT a feature request, and will be ignored - and quite possibly reported for being off topic.
I'm going to assume that any features requested are *OPTIONS* (IE - "Give us the old character sheet" will be considered a request for that option, not as a feature that removes the Essentials Sheet, or the new sheet style).
I will be requesting this thread get stickied, and will monitor it for updates as well.
When posting a feature request, please try to include at least a couple sentences about why you want that feature, how you would use it, etc.
I'll try to list the feature requests I keep seeing in a sample format, to give some guidelines.
--------------------------------------------------
Requests listed in no particular order
1) Character Export (save to local PC)
The ability to retain control over one's characters is important to many users, both for backup purposes, as well as for being able to quickly transport their data to another location for quick printing.
Additionally, there are third party tools (like the HIGHLY popular iplay4E) that read .dnd4e files, and allow players to interact with that data. Exporting gives customers great flexibility and control. To this end, sticking with the existing .dnd4e format is also of high value.
While some changes are expected to the .dnd4e format (as is normal with new features being added like Themes), keeping to the same basic structure is important, as opposed to creating a wholly-new filesave format.
WotC has stated this issue has been given high-priority in the feature list, and we can expect to see it added early on.
2) Character Sharing (within the cloud)
Much like Character Export - many DMs like the option to verify character sheets, or even tweak them a little (as a storytelling tool) between play sessions. The option to share a character sheet (either publicly or to selected users/groups) would help facilitate this, and if done within the DDi Suite of tools, would save a few steps, as opposed to exporting the file, e-mailing it, re-importing it on the other end, etc.
Further to the issue of sharing - community site integration would also be a very welcome option, or at least using community groups to setup ACL permissions for who can see what characters.
Sample: If I start a "WolfStar's Thursday Night Game" group, I could share characters back and forth with others in that group - but not with the rest of the world.
PaoloM has said that this is something interesting that they are looking into.
3) Original Character Sheets
While the new style of sheet may be optimized, and the Essentials sheet may be another option - some people very simply prefer the classic 4E sheet as originally laid out in the back of the PHB, and as printed in the original Character Builder. These users would like the option of formatting their character sheets to print in that classic style.
4) SSL/TLS Security
[Description coming soon - I need to refresh my understanding of the isue]
5) More Storage Space
Many users are, to say the least, disappointed in being limited to 20 characters. Some users simply have more than 20 characters (especially DMs for the RPGA, who might manage and keep copies of characters for a large number of players) - others like to save their character at every level, in case they ever need to roll-back for any reason. The current limit wouldn't (appear to) allow for even saving a single character through all 30 levels
WotC has stated that 20 characters is just a starting number, and that useage will be evaluated in considering changing this limit going forward.
6) Character Summary
[description coming soon]
7) Editable Character Sheets (layout/design)
Similar to the request for the Classic 4E Character sheets - The ability to change the layout, add pages, and otherwise make a sheet that works best for the individual player is something that is much appreciated in the offline Character Builder. That functionality would be just as greatly appreciated in the new online effort.
8) Offline Viewer
The Character Sheet Viewer in the classic builder allowed users to check/uncheck boxes to track power use, and had other "interactive" features that made it a great way to track your character at the table on small computing devices (netbooks, iPads, etc). The new Character Builder's online-only feature will remove this option for many gamers who don't have wi-fi at their gaming table (be it in an FLGS, or in a basement where reception is poor, etc).
Users would appreciate an option to have a small Character Sheet Viewer for offline use that would simply read and interact with a created Character Sheet - without allowing any (permanent) edits to things like character stats/powers/equipment.
This way they can still take full advantage of the Builder at their gaming table.
9) Basic house-rule support.
User would like the ability to house-rule sheets that is, at an absolute bare minimum on par with what the classic CB offered. Many groups give things like free expertise and other bonus feats, so using the web-CB if it can't handle importing that will be a great impairment
10) Advanced house-rule support and custom content.
The ability to define new feats, items, races, etc.
While the content WotC puts out is fantastic, customers are also encouraged (especially in the Dungeon Master Guides) to go "off-roading" with their game - and to implement their own ideas into the game. The Character Build should fully support this kind of open play experience.
11) API Support
An API for (authenticated) 3rd party applications to directly pull character information from the cloud. Exporting to .dnd4e is essential, and applications like DMBS (which I rely on heavily) or iPlay4e can import those exported files - but it would be great if they didn't actually need to.
12) Character Sorting/Organizing
As many DMs keep digital copies of the characters for multiple campaigns (as well as designing some NPCs as full blown characters) the ability to divide their online storage area (using folders, labels, or other dividers) is being requested to help keep those files organized.
If the request for more storage space (#5, above) is put through, this becomes even more important, as the amount of data grows.
13) Native PDF Support
While it's been stated that users will be able to install a PDF writer, and then print their character sheets to PDF via those 3rd party tools, bringing that into the software as a native feature is something that would add value to the application - especially for users who may not be on a computer that's under their immediate control (Internet Cafes, hotels, borrowing another user's system), or who aren't tech savvy or simply comfortable installing more software.
14) Use the cloud to suggest build options
With WotC being able to data-mine builds that are stored on DDi - they should, in turn, be able to use that data to help suggest common/popular builds for new characters.
A character creating a new level / would be able to see the most popular options taken by players who have also chosen that race/class - or better still, as characters progress, what feats/powers/items players with similar builds (previously selected powers/feats/etc) chose at this new level.
Similar in nature to the well-known Amazon.com feature of "other customers who looked at "X" also looked at "Y" - it would help optimizers see popular/common choices.
15) Ritual Books (and similar)
For characters that make heavy use of Rituals (or Martial Practices, or Alchemy), having a mere listing of names, while helpful, leaves the players wanting more. With rituals and the like spread across multiple books, it would make these kinds of "extras" a lot easier to manage if all of their relevant information were available as part of the character sheet (casting times, durations, costs, effects, etc).
Notably - because use of these features fluxuates (from some users with only one or two rituals, to some with a near-library of them), printing this information should be an option not everyone will need the full details with every re-printing of their character.
A power-card style format seems to be a popular example for this kind of option.
16) "Future-Proofing"
While it's likely (hopefully?) far enough into the future that there are no current plans to change rules editions (5th Edition), many users are curious as to what plans WotC is, or will be making in regards to the new online Character Builder, when a new version of the game does release.
Will WotC continue, for a time at least, to offer access to the 4E toolset? Or will all support for 4E drop when 5E is (inevitably?) announced one day? Would a "last hurrah" offline version of the 4E tools be made available?
These decisions are a factor for many customers as to where they plan to spend their money going forward.
17) Lapsed-Subscription Access
"Read Only" access to an already-generated character sheet that's been stored online is being requested.
This would allow a customer the chance to print out a "fresh" copy of his character, even if - for whatever reason - he's not a current subscriber. Financial times are tough, it's not unlikely that customers might need to skimp for a month or two here or there.
Leaving them access to their existing work in these times would server both as great customer relations, but would also be a good enticement for them to re-subscribe. As new books/power/gear come out, seeing their character and daydreaming of the new things they could assign that character could be a strong emotional pull to re-subscribe at the earliest opportunity.
On the flipside, being locked out of their existing work will only cause disfavor toward WotC, and eventually "out of sight, out of mind" experiences could set in - leading customers to see that they don't really want/need/miss the online toolset.
I've just resubscribed BECAUSE of the web app migration. I think it's a great direction to go, but I have one detail that I miss from the standalone app. I used to be able to select which rulebooks I wanted available when I made a character. It seems that there isn't an easy way to do this anymore. I would really love to see that feature reintegrated. Since I haven't played in 2 years, I'm not too certain about all this "Essentials" stuff, and it's more of a pain in the butt to have to manually look through all the options.
Sorry if this has been brought up before, but I didn't see it on the first post, and didn't want to read 40+ pages of postings.
Please turn it into a card again.
As many players have groups with characters rolled both via essentials and std 4e, it makes sense for essentials characters inventory to have access to all items - not just the really really short list from the essentials books. Getting an item for your essentials character that isn't in the database is frustrating.
I'd like to reiterate this issue. I created an Essentials character (so that I could see how Essentials plays) and it's flagged all of my characters as Essentials, so none of my chars have access to the full list of items. Can we make an "Essentials" checkbox so that you can restrict access for your newer players and avoid overstimulation, as well as be able to award essentials characters with items that exist in pre-built adventures?
- The ability to add in free feats (we hand out an Expertise feat and Improved Defenses for free in my group)
- A character sheet that isn't awful
- A builder that isn't absurdly slow
One easy feature please! Ability to import own artwork for character portraits. My daughter is a budding fantasy artist and has done fantastic illustrations of her character, but we're stuck with the library of WotC images. Please?
Otherwise really enjoy the CB, makes DnD much easier.
Cheers.
Is there any way to see a complete list of weapons or armor in the new CB? I realize that there are only a handful of weapons that are truly "optimal", but I appreciated the ability of the old CB to see a complete list of what was available (especially for deciding whether or not to take a superior weapon feat). If not, that's something that I'd suggest they reintegrate into the online CB.
Uncheck the Show Suggested Items box
Hiya,
One easy feature please! Ability to import own artwork for character portraits. My daughter is a budding fantasy artist and has done fantastic illustrations of her character, but we're stuck with the library of WotC images. Please?
Otherwise really enjoy the CB, makes DnD much easier.
Cheers.
Seconded
Hiya,
One easy feature please! Ability to import own artwork for character portraits. My daughter is a budding fantasy artist and has done fantastic illustrations of her character, but we're stuck with the library of WotC images. Please?
Otherwise really enjoy the CB, makes DnD much easier.
Cheers.
This is about the one thing I'd love to see in the future. Being able to put our own character portraits into our offline character builder sheets was such a nice touch, and it would be great to see the feature return in some way.
Please implement custom portraits and create more character sheet options.
Thank you.
I would just like to add my voice to those asking for custom portraits. We could do this in the Offline CB, but you removed this feature in the online CB? Why? Why build a online CB with less features than the old one? And I'd also like to agree that the character sheet options are terrible. Two pages was managable, but now we need to print out three or four pages for the same information.
Please implement custom portraits and create more character sheet options.
Thank you.
Yeah, I'd also like to chime in on that. I spent hours and hours cropping every single art release from Dragon and Dungeon, as well as a bunch of other art that fit, so that I have a huge library of art for character portraits that just feels like a huge monument to wasted effort now. That's really my only complaint about the new system.
And I'm just hoping all this isn't falling on deaf ears, really. The builder is essentially the same as it was about six months ago when I subscribed.
Not sure if this is the place to ask but when will the Cunning weapon be able to be afixed to Superior implement staffs? It's available for Superior implement daggers but not staffs?
My second request is for a character journal to track our characters advancement. We had it in the old downloadable version, but it's not in the online version. I don't mind if you make that a secondary app, but I'd love to have a character journal for my characters...
And as a final request, more character sheet printout styles. I like the old download style character sheets, but that style of sheet is not available in the online version. I liked how it included the math for everything so you could see if your armor got added in to your AC.. and what didn't get added in.
Boojum the brown bunny
Many users are, to say the least, disappointed in being limited to 20 characters. Some users simply have more than 20 characters (especially DMs for the RPGA, who might manage and keep copies of characters for a large number of players) - others like to save their character at every level, in case they ever need to roll-back for any reason. The current limit wouldn't (appear to) allow for even saving a single character through all 30 levels
WotC has stated that 20 characters is just a starting number, and that useage will be evaluated in considering changing this limit going forward.
The limit of 20 is very small, and I keep waiting for this to increase .. it has not been an issue for me until now; and now that I've hit this limit it's beginning to impact my ability to DM and also join a new campaign.
Please increase this to 30 at the least. That is a nice number for quite a few reasons!
Being able to create a item card would be awesome. My DM likes to make up items, and while that's super cool and amazing, it isn't very useful if I can't add it to my online sheet.
Should I take this to mean that they STILL haven't allowed adding custom feats/powers/etc or anything house-ruled?
Come on. D&D is about making your game your own. So sad that I could do it in the old version, but it STILL isn't available online?
So sad that I could do it in the old version
Are you saying you could do that in the offline version? Items, too?
So sad that I could do it in the old version
Are you saying you could do that in the offline version? Items, too?
In the old version of the CB, you could create houserule items, and you could re-name powers and magical items and stuff. I had a player who was a Minotaur Thunderburster Warden, he re-named all of his powers to better fit his theme of "Warcraft Minotaur Cheiftan".
I don't recall if you could create full-on custom magical weapons that showed up properly (as in, had a card with the attack bonuses and damage and powers), but I do know that you could make a "card" for the item so that you knew you had it, and it would show up on your inventory/card sheets.
I DO know you could house-rule feats, either creating new feats, or taking feats you didn't actually qualify for.
To be honest, the lack of houseruling is the entire reason why I stopped paying for DDI.
If my DM wants to give me a ring at level 4 that's a Legendary item, I should be able to put it on my character sheet.
It's also hard as a DM when your players are using a character sheet program, and you can't give them a special item since they can't house-rule it, so they have to write it down, and will eventually forget they have the item.
I still like paying for DDI, as the compendium is the handiest thing the DM has at his disposal, and not having to worry about saving my files to my laptop and the desktop is nice, but sometimes I kinda wish that I could get a bit more out of it.
Thanks for the tip, though. I'm gonna fiddle with that and see what happens.
What SUCKS is that, compared to the old character builder's Ferarri in terms of customization and overall performance (yes, it did have issues, but so does the new one), I feel like the new CB is like a Vespa.
Also, not playing, so I don't need compendium access.
Customizable Weapons:
The CB should have a customizable weapon choice. It should be a feat choice, i.e. superior weapon, and then you have to choose proficiency, damage die, 1 or 2 weapon categories, special features (brutal, high crit etc) and then melee or range. This is easy to implement since this only appears on character sheets, can be implemented using menus, the groups are already programed in, the weapon dies are set already etc.
My biggest request is to let us use our own artwork. As a bit of an artist I like making portraits of my characters and would like to use them on the character sheets rather than what is provided.. and what everyone else is using.
My second request is for a character journal to track our characters advancement. We had it in the old downloadable version, but it's not in the online version. I don't mind if you make that a secondary app, but I'd love to have a character journal for my characters...
And as a final request, more character sheet printout styles. I like the old download style character sheets, but that style of sheet is not available in the online version. I liked how it included the math for everything so you could see if your armor got added in to your AC.. and what didn't get added in.
Boojum the brown bunny
Yep. I might actually use the old system just for those reasons. Half of the fun of DnD is charactor development. I don't want a canned character. Let me make my own.
1. More descriptions on the "load character" screen. I created similar characters for different campaigns, so adding the campaign in the description would be helpful.
2. Custom portraits.
3. An editable notes area. All I've seen are one-line text boxes, but no paragraph sections for further notes.
4. Native export to PDF.
That said, as a former user of the offline builder, I don't play regularly to justify a monthly subscription. I created some first level characters for the latest Encounters sessions, but I likely won't be leveling them up with DDi.
What I would like to see added:
1. More descriptions on the "load character" screen. I created similar characters for different campaigns, so adding the campaign in the description would be helpful.
Agreed. It would be nice to see a bit of campaign notes, or just a short blurb in general. "This is for the upcoming game that Jim is going to run" "Potential candidate for NPC" etc.
Has any admin or anyone from the Wizards company / Dungeons and Dragons company replied as to why we can't add a picture into the profile of the character? Is it just that they don't want to or is it a copyright thing? Is this a viable option in the future? The pictures that are available work, but not for every class and every theme. If there is a set group of pictures for the character builder, make a set group of pictures for each class and each theme for each race. Seems... logical?
Just a quick question,
Has any admin or anyone from the Wizards company / Dungeons and Dragons company replied as to why we can't add a picture into the profile of the character?
No such answer has been provided.
Is it just that they don't want to or is it a copyright thing?
See previous answer.
Is this a viable option in the future?
Viable, yes. Likely, no.
The pictures that are available work, but not for every class and every theme. If there is a set group of pictures for the character builder, make a set group of pictures for each class and each theme for each race. Seems... logical?
My personal belief is that if this is a legal issue of some sort (WotC is worried about art assets being stored on their servers for which they don't own the rights) then there will never be an "official" statement from WotC on the matter because they sure aren't going to discuss any such legal type decisions.
I would like it if the OCB did not automatically pick default choices when races and classes have an option in the custom character builder.
For instance, lets say I am making a half elf templar. The OCB will automatically pick Knack for success over dilletante, turn undead over healer's mercy or punish the profane, divine fortune over favor of the gods, and healer's lore over battle cleric's lore.
Then I have to backtrack and go hunt down these options when I notice that it picked the wrong one for me, which is what it does most of the time. Please let us pick up front instead of having to go back and fix lt later.
Second (or third, etc.) this - it really is a waste of paper, printer ink, time and especially ... my money because there isn't any way to hide cards
I realize that many of these have already been mentioned. Just wanted to have my say.
-- Some way to "hide" power cards. I'm tired of having to print out action points, magic items, etc over and over.
But I would like the option off being able too add 'illegal' elements: such as giving everyone an epertise or tribal feat for free.
I would also like to be able to edit the text of items (so I can make custom ones)
I've got to say i'm a big fan of the new character sheets - it makes everything a lot clearer for my players.
But I would like the option off being able too add 'illegal' elements: such as giving everyone an epertise or tribal feat for free.
I would also like to be able to edit the text of items (so I can make custom ones)
I second this. I'm new to DDI but I was under the impression that at one point you were able to add stuff "illegally", and there was just a disclaimer or some sort of symbol that showed that the character was not legal.
Perhaps if there was some sort of layout so if, for example you wanted to add a new magic weapon, you could fill in the essential qualities of the weapon such as prof. bonus, weapon dmg and enhancement bonuses so it could still add everything up for all your powers and such but leave special abilities to be typed out by the creator. Something like if you create a new monster in monster builder and create new attacks and abilities.
I just want to be able to customize like we did in 3.5
-Creating our own class with its own powers
-Creating our own race with its own racial abilities and attributes
-Uploading our own picture for our sheets
-Creating our own powers we gain over the quest
-Creating custom weapons or editing/adding an effect to a weapon
-Writing in our own backstory
-Creating our own feats
-Create our own deity
I just want to be able to customize like we did in 3.5
-Creating our own class with its own powers
-Creating our own race with its own racial abilities and attributes
-Uploading our own picture for our sheets
-Creating our own powers we gain over the quest
-Creating custom weapons or editing/adding an effect to a weapon
-Writing in our own backstory
-Creating our own feats
-Create our own deity
Most of that stuff isn't 3.5 specific. You need the sames things you did then. I.e. your DM's permission, and a pen.
Oh, and You can "upload" pictures now.
I just want to be able to customize like we did in 3.5
-Creating our own class with its own powers
-Creating our own race with its own racial abilities and attributes
-Uploading our own picture for our sheets
-Creating our own powers we gain over the quest
-Creating custom weapons or editing/adding an effect to a weapon
-Writing in our own backstory
-Creating our own feats
-Create our own deity
Most of that stuff isn't 3.5 specific. You need the sames things you did then. I.e. your DM's permission, and a pen.
Oh, and You can "upload" pictures now.
Unless he's referring to the (3.x ?) book "Powers and Options" in which case he'll have to wait for an equivalent book to be published for 4e for such to be in the builder.
Option B: Write his own builder that uses his own DB and he can put whatever he wants in it.
Can you put the animal copanions there, please?
Everything is poorly rendered, badly aligned, weirdly spaced. The equipment guy silhouette thing on the second page -- what is that? Seriously. Text butts up against things all over the place. Whatever that curvy/pointy shape thing is supposed to be, it's really not worthy of getting slapped on everything. And the fonts. Optima and what, Verdana? Why?? The text in the background of a bunch of fields isn't helping legibility either.
Again, the old sheets weren't amazing or anything, but they were fine. You still have them on the site to download as a PDF. Why can't you apply that style in the online CB?
I just want to be able to customize like we did in 3.5
-Creating our own class with its own powers
-Creating our own race with its own racial abilities and attributes
-Uploading our own picture for our sheets
-Creating our own powers we gain over the quest
-Creating custom weapons or editing/adding an effect to a weapon
-Writing in our own backstory
-Creating our own feats
-Create our own deity
Most of that stuff isn't 3.5 specific. You need the sames things you did then. I.e. your DM's permission, and a pen.
Oh, and You can "upload" pictures now.
Unless he's referring to the (3.x ?) book "Powers and Options" in which case he'll have to wait for an equivalent book to be published for 4e for such to be in the builder.
Option B: Write his own builder that uses his own DB and he can put whatever he wants in it.
Option C: He could post his list of requested features in the forum thread titled " Directed Discussion: Online CB - Requested Features ".
Oh wait... thats what he did.
Here are three changes I would like to see to the Chracter Builder please:
• iPad App. This would be awesome in so many ways.
• Being able to arrange the power cards in any order you like. Our group is not crazy about cutting them up as cards.
• Also having it to were the bottom of the character sheets are not cut off when you print them out (it is not our printer or settings doing that).
Thank you and keep up the good work \m/
Also the ability to create custom Epic Destinies. The stock ones are all good and everything except through the telling of the story in my game we have "found" another one that several players have found their character's qualified for and decided to take. Importing to OCB removes all of that content which took years of play to create. Needless to say that would be a requirement for me to use this online tool.
I will not appologize if these have been mentioned already, WOTC needs to parse the list and consolidate into a complete list of feature requests in the first few posts so we can all read the consolidated list and see that our suggestions either made the list or not.
I'm tired of reprinting cards I don't need because it's not worth the time in Photoshop to edit and rearrange the cards for the money I would save on printing.
Also, the Companions print view really needs a better layout. It would be nice to havce a stat block for a familiar that was the same size as a power card.
TEMPLATES. Please allow us to apply templates to our characters. I would like to be able to apply any of the templates that are out there for a character. I mean, What if a Party is attacked by Lycans, and one character is bitten, and contracts the disease, the adjustments would be annoying to track on your own if your using the CB. Make it easier for us, please.
There are 50 Pages of Posts so I have not read them all. If my request is already been done, then my apologies.
TEMPLATES. Please allow us to apply templates to our characters. I would like to be able to apply any of the templates that are out there for a character. I mean, What if a Party is attacked by Lycans, and one character is bitten, and contracts the disease, the adjustments would be annoying to track on your own if your using the CB. Make it easier for us, please.
Templates are only for NPCs, not PCs. If you somehow get a template, you cease to be a PC.
And BTW, lycanthropy is not a communicable disease.
I don't know if this has been mentioned before; but I would love a way to export my Character sheet to pdf once I have created it in the tool. If nothing else I would like the option to view my sheets and reprint as needed without having to go onto the web tool and load everything up and then load it
I don't know if this has been mentioned before; but I would love a way to export my Character sheet to pdf once I have created it in the tool. If nothing else I would like the option to view my sheets and reprint as needed without having to go onto the web tool and load everything up and then load it
PDFCreator set at 150 dpi is your friend.
Because ink's expensive, I would really like an option to print out a minimalist character sheet. Try and fit everything on one page, grouped by at wills, encounters and dalies, without the fluff.
And in black and white!