Character Generator

[Arakor]

I've been browsing around the web, and I've only found one excel-based Character Generator for True20.

The True20 Unofficial Character Generator (http://groups.msn.com/True20UnofficialCharacterGenerator) looks nice but there's been little or no traffic since Nov 26, 2005. Not only that, but the rules appear to be based on Version 1, and some of the calculations are off.

So I got the creative bug, and decided to code a new Character Generator. It's in Excel, and contains all Backgrounds from both the Core Rules and Bestiary. The main sources of inspiration and/or plagiarisation for the code are the D20 Heroforge utility and the UT20CG.

Basic Instructions:
All boxes for entry are shaded yellow, calculated fields are shaded blue.
Fields are either manual entry or dropdowns in the field.

Rules Tab
Enter the names of the Narrator and Campaign. The remaining fields will modify certain calculations on the Character Sheet. Use the dropdowns to modify these values to taste.

Note that the Skill Familiarity dropdown doesn't do anything yet.

Character Tab
Enter the Character and Player names. Select a Gender. Enter a Description and Age. Select a Background, Virtue and Vice. Enter your Quirks and Flaws.

Select the levels for each of your Abilities. Your Racial Modifiers will automatically added. Select your Best Save for any Expert Role. Finally enter any additional Languages.

On this page, when you have more than 6 levels, the Ability gains will be highlighted. Select each additional Ability and the effect will automatically calculated.

Roles Tab
For each level, select the Role for that level. This will automatically calculate your individual saves and attack bonuses. It will also show the number of skill ranks for each level.

Feats Tab
Select a feat for each yellow dropdown. If you select a Feat requiring specialisation, enter it into the field next to the dropdown.

Skills Tab
On here, you're interested in the yellow fields only. For first level skills, you need to select which skills are Trained or Untrained. Trained skills will automatically insert at full ranks, and at the top of the 1 column will count down the skills remaining to be allocated. For the other columns, enter the number of ranks required in the skill, the counter at the top shows the ranks remaining to be allocated.

The Talent column allows you to specify the +2 for Talented feats, or the +3 for Skill Focus. Misc is for magical items, etc. At the moment, Skill Training isn't implemented for calculation.

Powers Tab
Select the appropriate Power name from the Dropdown. Select whether it uses your full character level rather than your Adept level (think Darf Elf Shadow Shaping). Select the governing ability of this power and enter any Misc bonuses for things like Supernatural Focus or Supernatural Talent.

Combat Tab
Select whatever Armour you're wearing and any Shield that you're using.
Select up to three different Weapons and enter any magical Acc bonuses.

Character Sheet Tab
Use this Tab for printing out the sheet. It is optimised for A4 but should fit onto Letter.

I'm looking for people to Beta-test this and see what they think. There is also a blank version of the Character Sheet Tab available for download.
http://www.larter.org.uk/doku.php/true20/downloads

[Bedford]

In the Character Details section, you have WIS twice. You need to make the first WIS into CON.

[Malthusian]

Power Save Difficulty doesn't show under Powers on Character Sheet.

There should be a way to enter a Background type other than those found in the books.

[EDIT]After some thought, maybe adding a seperate Background tab would be better. This should allow users to enter ability adjustments, bonus feats, favored feats, and/or bonus skills for the backgrounds available for whichever setting they're using (ie, True Force, AoO, RiTA, Caliphate Nights, etc), instead of the somewhat genre-specific backgrounds prefigured into the generator.

I realize it might be a bit more work on your part, but it would make the character generator accessible to any genre, just like the True20 rules themselves.[/EDIT]

Otherwise, looking good.

[Arakor]

In the Character Details section, you have WIS twice. You need to make the first WIS into CON.

Well spotted. I've made the change and a new version will be uploaded shortly.

[Arakor]

Power Save Difficulty doesn't show under Powers on Character Sheet.

Yes it does. Shows at the top of the column above all the powers. However it doesn't add the Key ability to it because it's the base save difficulty which is used as the DC for fatigue saves. I need to add another column to the character sheet for this to be added.

There should be a way to enter a Background type other than those found in the books.

[EDIT]After some thought, maybe adding a seperate Background tab would be better. This should allow users to enter ability adjustments, bonus feats, favored feats, and/or bonus skills for the backgrounds available for whichever setting they're using (ie, True Force, AoO, RiTA, Caliphate Nights, etc), instead of the somewhat genre-specific backgrounds prefigured into the generator.

I realize it might be a bit more work on your part, but it would make the character generator accessible to any genre, just like the True20 rules themselves.[/EDIT]

Otherwise, looking good.

I have made a modification to allow the addition of Traits into the Feats Tab. Also where the dropdowns were restricted to the values in the list, I've now opened them to accept any entry.

I'll look into making the Backgrounds data editable to allow that but don't expect anything too soon.

[Arakor]

Okay, Version 0.5 of the Character Generator has been uploaded.

http://www.larter.org.uk/doku.php/true20/downloads

[Arakor]

Okay, Version 0.6 of the Character Generator has been uploaded.

http://www.larter.org.uk/doku.php/true20/downloads

As a question, does anyone want an additional sheet that allows the character details to be compressed into a statblock similar to that found in the Bestiary??

[True20Chick]

Yes, I do! That would be great!

An abbreviated stat block instead of a full-page character sheet would be good for NPCs and such.

I've looked this over, and I rather like it. Good job! I'll certainly be using it.

[Arakor]

An abbreviated stat block instead of a full-page character sheet would be good for NPCs and such.

Okay, I'll look into coding this. Initial impressions are that it's not an easy task to concatenate the lists together.

I've got a newer version (0.7) which hasn't been uploaded yet. It adds a Background Tab which allows for custom backgrounds, custom traits and custom modifiers.

[True20Chick]

Okay, I'll look into coding this. Initial impressions are that it's not an easy task to concatenate the lists together.

No biggie if it can't be done. I appreciate what you've done already!

I know just enough about Excel to realize how complex things like this are, so kudos to you! My mind boggles when I see stuff like this!

[Arakor]

Okay, I'll look into coding this. Initial impressions are that it's not an easy task to concatenate the lists together.

No biggie if it can't be done. I appreciate what you've done already!

I know just enough about Excel to realize how complex things like this are, so kudos to you! My mind boggles when I see stuff like this!

Version 0.8 is now available from the usual place. (See link in my .sig)

New additions this time round:

An NPC StatBlock Tab. Creates a stat block similar to the Bestiary format. Doesn't add the specifics about various traits, nor does it list powers at the moment.

Added Caliban and Necrite as backgrounds. Reworked the Backgrounds Tab so that overtyping the name defaults to 0 across the stats. Some backgrounds have traits in their entries but these fields can be overtyped.

[Malthusian]

You've done great work on this. It's just what True20 needed.

Sorry to be nitpicky, but could you also add a Blank in the weapons, shields, and armor listings?

Thanks

[Arakor]

You've done great work on this. It's just what True20 needed.

Why thank you ... feedback is alway appreciated. If there are things missing or some of the numbers come out wrong, I need to know about it.

Now that the majority of the stuff is bedded down, the next major revision will be to move all the calculations to a separate page and moving the individual data pages into the pages that actually reference them.

Sorry to be nitpicky, but could you also add a Blank in the weapons, shields, and armor listings?

Care to explain this?? If you delete the contents on the cell then nothing is referenced. Or are you asking for a blank line so that you can enter a custom weapon similar to the custom Backgrounds??

[Malthusian]

Care to explain this?? If you delete the contents on the cell then nothing is referenced. Or are you asking for a blank line so that you can enter a custom weapon similar to the custom Backgrounds??

Oops, sorry. I'd like a blank line so that I can enter custom weapons and such. I'm trying to use the generator for True Force and my own homebrew, Rebel Space. Both have stuff not listed in the core True20 book.

Another question, how do you add background bonus skills to a character?

[Arakor]

Care to explain this?? If you delete the contents on the cell then nothing is referenced. Or are you asking for a blank line so that you can enter a custom weapon similar to the custom Backgrounds??

Oops, sorry. I'd like a blank line so that I can enter custom weapons and such. I'm trying to use the generator for True Force and my own homebrew, Rebel Space. Both have stuff not listed in the core True20 book.

Not a problem, it means I need to edit the Weapons List, and modify some of the calculations on the Combat Tab.

Another question, how do you add background bonus skills to a character?

Agh! I thought that something was forgotten. Let me look into it. For the moment, you can add them manually.