my name is Tobi from Vienna and in the last years as a DnD DM I more than once ran into the situation of introducing new people to the game. So I built and helped building a lot of characters, because lets be fair - it’s fucking complicated, (even with tools like DnD Beyond) if you have absolutely no clue about the game so far, it can be overwhelming. So I came up with the idea of creating some kind of form I could give new players so they can fill this out and I can create a character for them by that. Well that idea escalated quickly and today I officially launched the beta version of my DnD Character Builder for absolute beginners (and lazy people). It will guide you through the character creation process by asking simple questions and filtering the content considering your answers. So you have much less to read and can focus more on what feels right.
I really put a lot of efforts into having the texts as beginner friendly as possible and have always an ‚roll playing explanation’ that tells you how this could look like in the game and an easy to understand ‚mechanical description’. Also I created a help section that explains regular used terms more deeply.
So if this somehow sounds interesting to you, or if you think you know someone who could profit from it, feel free to check it out or send it to your friends.
Also if you find any mistakes or miss any features, please let me know!
I was looking for something like this back when there were more new players’ games I was running. I did miss some of the options, like it didn’t recommend human for a medium sized sorcerer, but I guess if I was a new player I probably wouldn’t know and care.
You say it’s a beta version, not sure if that means you want feedback, but I think the translation isn’t working properly yet. The pop-up asking me to rate was at a weird time when I tried to download the PDF character sheet and I might have given a rating accidentally?
When I hit print/save as PDF it automatically started printing - that’s probably a me-issue and not a builder-issue but thought I’d point it out
I might have overlooked it, but I do think it would be helpful to note somewhere what the source material is (e.g 2014, 2024, which SRD, something like that) - just so that if a new player shows up to a table the DM can just look at the sheet and see it says “2014” instead of having to read the entire thing
But even without this stuff, honestly, I think is so cool. I will definitely recommend.
(Attaching screenshots of the German stuff in the English version)
Thank you so much for your feedback! That’s exactly what beta version means for me! I am expecting a lot of things not do be perfect, because it’s a big project and I am all by myself so there will be a lot of fixing and improvements happening in the next weeks or so! So thank you a lot!
Really cool stuff, I can imagine it was a lot of work! And I love the character sheet layout.
A few technicalities: it seems that it forgets at some point which language I choose - e.g. I switch to english on the landing page, but the character creation begins in german. And I’m not sure what the difference between light and dark modes are, it did not change much for me - but it might be a me issue tho.
After choosing standard array, it does add the race points, but you can’t chose where to. I did test for druid and it added the +2 to Cha, which is not intuitive. It would be cool to add another layer to make sure they are where the player wants them to be!
working through the feedback right now. so as far as I see it - if your species gives you a choice where to add additional ability score improvements (which should be only variant human and half elf) there is an additional screen to choose where to put the other two. its basically the next step. In your case it seems you either had a tiefling or a half elf and in each cases the +2 on charisma is coming from the rules of the species.
hi, as i am working through the feedback i can let you know the issues with the german / english should already be fixed or will be fixed with the next deploy, later tonight.
coming to the light and dark mode - its actually not supposed to be a dark mode but more like a high contrast mode for people with visual disabilities, but its on my list to make it better !
Since 2020 with the release of Tasha’s Cauldron this is more flexible.
From TCE page 8:
If you’d like your character to follow their own path, you may ignore your Ability Score Increase trait and assign ability score increases tailored to your character. Here’s how to do it: take any ability score increase you gain in your race or subrace and apply it to an ability score of your choice. If you gain more than one increase, you can’t apply those increases to the same ability score, and you can’t increase a score above 20.
And most races released after already have it in their descriptions in this manner. Aarakocra, Aasimar, Bugbear, Centaur, Changeling, Deep Gnome, Duergar, Eladrin, Fairy,… and many more have ASI to chose instead of fixed assignments.
In VALUE and outside of it, I personally did not encounter the “old” pre assigned ASIs in the last 5 years. Every table plays different, but I would consider that a relatively universally acknowledged change.
Also if you are intending to make it compatible for 5.5e there will be a slightly different system but it will have choose able ability scores too.
