New Character Builder
I just spend about half an hour creating random characters with the refurbished, online-only Character Builder, and I have to say that I like it a lot more than the other one.
Don't Like
Like
Don't Like
- Takes about as long to load as the other Character Builder (and the loading image is grainy).
- Backgrounds are no longer organized by terrain or race. You can uncheck Name Only and filter results by the skills, location, race, etc, however.
- Double-clicking de-selects options; I preferred it when I could right-click.
- Choose For Me is still wonky: it gave me a 20 in an ability score when I made a tiefling psion, which is generally not a good idea, but when I rolled a changling rogue (artful dodger) it gave me an 18 Dexterity, picked Intelligence for the racial bonus (boosted it to 12), gave me a Strength of 14, and a Charisma of 11 (boosted to 13 by racial mods). What. The. FUCK?
- There's a delay when you increase/decrease ability scores using the plus/minus buttons. While minor, it adds up if you are trying to buy a stat up to 16. Thankfully, you can key in a value instead.
- Crashed after I'd completed my second character (loaded up again alright, though).
- The Marketplace graphic looks grainy, too.
Like
- Layout and image usage usage looks a lot better, and it seems a lot friendlier to new people (or those that don't keep up as much with the game).
- You can sort classes by role, power source, primary ability score, or book.
- Classes and races have descriptions; you don't have to click on them to get the gist of what they're about.
- Mannerisms and traits are in step 3, not consigned to some easily overlooked tab at the ass end of the application.
- Dark Sun themes are in.
- Choose For Me picks skill that you'd probably pick yourself.
- Portraits can be sorted by race or class.
- Buying equipment is much easier, as you can filter items by category, specific item, rarity, keyword, and level (or level range). If you want to shop for stuff you can't use, uncheck Show suggested items at the top.
You can't upload your own custom portraits. Like Wayne Reynolds art for your character image? Too bad.
ReplyDeleteAbility scores doesn't generally seem to be the only place where a click causes long (up to 20 second) delays -- so far while choosing powers, backgrounds, and browsing magic items I have experienced the same.
The power cards are ugly.
It's like browsing a tutorial *every* time. Enough "what's your play style" horse shit, just give me a list of classes.
Cons (for me anyway)
ReplyDelete-can't have my sheets like before, have to get used to a new layout
-and even worse, can't put my character sheet sideways. It takes less space on the table when space is premium
-printing is slow, 5 pages in 1 min.. i saw my spooler go over 120megs for the print job! wow..
-psionics At-wills are WAY to small to read with the augmented 1/2 info
-again, no modifications can be done (add/remove power cards etc..)
I'll see the rest of the cons the more i play with it.. but Morthos, the Revenant Tiefling Ardent will be old-school CB for now.
@19charisma: I do like WAR and Komarck. :-( Liz and myself noticed some delays, and on her PC it kept crapping out (though to be fair she generally gets poor connectivity; I only had one crash on my PC).
ReplyDelete@Francois: Haven't seen how the new layout works to make a call, but I also preferred sideways sheets. Josh couldn't find his +2 shockweave armor, so it might also be missing some stuffs. :-/
I also noticed that if you choose to build a "quick" Essentials character that it strips away race options. Boo.
ReplyDeleteJust used it for the first time. Really enjoy the way it gives me a list of races I should pick based on my class. Only real problem I had was when I went to clikc save, it came up with an error message and forced me to exit the builder. Didnt get to keep that character. I can see that really messing me up if I spend a lot of time making a high level character.
ReplyDelete