Computer aided character design

You may have guessed from the title that this post is about computer programs, possibly on the internet, that step a player through the character creation process and that output a character sheet. It’s not really about the programs themselves, but focused more on the effect they have on the game.

I first encountered computer aided character creation when I started playing Dungeons and Dragons 3^rd edition. There was a CD in the back of the player handbook that had a nicely presented program that I played around with but that I didn't make serious use of.  I think at the time, pen and paper was more convenient, I knew the rules inside out, so the program didn't really add anything to my gaming experience.

A number of years later when the D&D 3^rd edition campaign I was playing in switched to 4^th edition I used computer aided character creation as I didn't own the 4^th edition books and had decided that I wasn't going to keep up with each new edition as it was released.

Right now, I'm running one Pathfinder campaign and playing in another, and since I have the books, I'm back to pen and paper, while most, if not all, of the other players are using PCGen to create their characters.

The main benefit that I can see with computer aided character creation is that it allows players who don’t have the relevant books to easily create their characters before the game. It also can produce some very nice, easy to read character sheets. From my limited experience it also greatly expands the amount of material available to draw from when creating a character. This is something of a double edged sword however, as it gives the power gamer more scope to find exploits within the rules and forces the game master to specify which resources can be used if they want to have access to the entire rule set being used in the game.

I am aware in my game of one instance where a character had a feat on their character sheet that was not legal. This was discovered when it became obvious that he had suddenly acquired a huge advantage over the other players, and I had to tell him to rebuild his character without it. Has this occurred with the characters of other players, but with more subtle results? Maybe, I have no way of telling without going through all my players character sheets to check, a task I have little enthusiasm for.

I'm also not entirely confident that bonuses to skill checks and such are always correctly applied, especially conditional modifiers; this seems to have arisen in my group on at least one occasion. I think that players should be able to explain the bonuses they have and be able to calculate them themselves. This brings me to an issue that arises most commonly with players who aren't fully conversant with the system they’re using and the one that causes me the most concern. The description on the character sheet of an ability/power/feat/skill may not include a complete description of the rules associated with it, leading to the incorrect use of said ability/power/feat/skill.

If your group creates characters together, having one or more players engrossed in their laptops at the time would of course be detrimental to the experience.

In my experience with creating 4^th edition characters, I found that I would tinker with my character, swapping feats and powers to observe the results and make better choices for my character. This could lead to players indulging any tendency towards min-maxing that they might possess, but it seems unlikely that most normal players will suddenly transform into power gamers as a result.

In conclusion, I think that as long as everyone knows from which sources rules are to be drawn from, and those rules are close at hand should an adjudication be required, computer aided character creation is a positive thing. Especially when it allows players who would otherwise struggle to get a copy of the book to engage in our glorious hobby.