Generate This!

I don't know if any of you out there are players of the hit DnD 3.5 update that is Pathfinder, which incidentally is awesome, but if you are, I recently discovered an online Character Generator that I highly recommend.


This is a very big deal, because I generally shy away from character generators.  I find them to be unnecessarily confusing and tedious - usually just a bunch of drop-down boxes and text areas to fill in stats that you still have to look up and figure out yourself.  I find it much easier to write in pencil on a sheet of paper while flipping through books and PDFs and rolling dice.

However, this character generator is not only extremely functional, but it has the cleanest interface I've ever seen in a character generator.  Furthermore, it has all the options built in.  It keeps track of when each class gains certain powers.  You can easily multiclass and the system handles it just fine.  You can pick powers which show up in the interface, powers relevant to your class, so you don't have to wade through a whole slew of lists to find what you're looking for.

The layout is very solid in that it does not try to reproduce the exact look of a paper character sheet.  Instead it lays out the information using the technology of basic website design.  There are different tabs for different sections of the character, slots that reveal and hide only when you need them to, and the end result just looks very clean and friendly and usable.

Furthermore, once you generate your character you can download a PDF with all the stats to print or store on your laptop.  Awesome.

The website is still in beta, but it's already looking quite solid.  I'm excited to use it to easily generate some NPC characters for my upcoming campaign.  And I'm very excited to see this site grow, smooth out what bugs there are, and add more and more options for varied character development.  (Right now there just exists the core races and classes.  Perhaps someday the more advanced character classes, or even custom classes / races will be an option.  Who knows?)

check it out at http://venturecaptain.com/