Johnny Angel's page

Are there NPC creation rules similar to the ones for the old 3.5? I'm not seeing any such in the Core Rulebook. Back when I made an Excel chargen for the original Pathfinder, it could also be used to implement the subsystem designed specifically for quick-and-dirty NPC generation and generate a stat block you could bring to the table.

I'm looking at the prospect of putting together an Excel chargen for Starfinder, but I'd want to start from scratch because the previous one was built on Office 2003, and it seems like it'd be better to make a clean start. So, you know, it'd be a lot of work.

Since I have a netbook these days, I had planned to make a version of the character sheet designed to be used at the table by those with such a machine handy. There are various other issues taking up priority, but one big issue for your purposes is that I just can't find a way to get sCoreGen to work on OpenOffice. One barrier I just can't get past is the fact that there is no equivalent to the ability to just insert a return character into a generated text string that will then function as a return in the display of the text.

I guess we must be lucky.

Indeed.

Look at what the bard can do at 12th level:

Soothing Performance (Su): ...quivalent to a mass cure serious...removes the fatigued, sickened, and shaken conditions...requires 4 rounds of continuous performance...all targets that remain within 30 feet throughout the performance.

Look what a Cleric can do only one level later in 1 round where it will be useful in combat right when it's needed the most:

Cure Serious Wounds, mass as a standard action

Freedom's Call (Su): ...30-foot aura ...allies within this aura are not affected by the confused, grappled, frightened, panicked, paralyzed, pinned, or shaken conditions.

Freedom's Call seems like a perfect idea for a bard ability, but it's given to the cleric at 8th level. I only cranked it up to 13th to include Cure Serious, Mass for the total package. The closest equivalent for the bard is more permanent, but less broadly useful and clearly designed to be used after the party no longer needs it quite so desperately. The difference between the power allowed to the bard and that allowed to the cleric seems stunning. And to think they removed Song of Freedom, which allowed the bard in a rare pinch to take the place of a scroll that doesn't get a share of the XP.

Ah, here we are again. Playing a bard is like being a Cub's fan. You'll be disappointed every time, but you keep coming back.

I'm glad to see that Paizo has allowed the bard to eventually become a skill monster. But I'd like to address this notion that one should be grateful for out-of-combat abilities at the cost of being feeble in combat.

In general, if a skill is not useful in combat, it isn't useful.

Yes, yes. I know. It's all really about the roleplaying. But, seriously. If the bard's skills were actually effective, it would mean a lot more work for the GM. You wouldn't walk into the carefully planned ambush, because the bard would have seen through the kindly old lady's facade. Encounter difficulty would drop precipitously because the bard played up on tensions among mixed groups of bad guys, or because the bard negotiated a surrender or mutiny among the battered remnants of the necromancer's minions.

Yes, there may be certain junctures in the module where it tells the GM what can be gained with a Diplomacy check, or Gather Information, or something. You want your social skills maxed out at that point, because if you miss that chance, you won't get another to use it until the next module. And anyway, if the GM wants you to know a piece of information he'll get it to you whether you've got a bard in the party or not. And if he doesn't, you're not going to get it until he's ready to give it to you. Plot, after all, is not just about who does what. It's about who knows what and how they found out, and your GM is not going to let you ruin the surprise he's got waiting for you no matter how much combat usefulness you sacrificed to get that knowledge.

Maybe you're lucky enough to have the kind of GM who can re-organize the story around your bard playing both sides against the middle, or revealing the traitor too soon, or managing to disguise yourself as the baron long enough that the kingdom-unifying wedding actually takes place. But I'll bet you that that GM will decide the success of your efforts based on player creativity, even if the player's character is a beefy sword jock who can scarcely remember to keep breathing in-and-out. In fact, that GM will be the type who disdains the very idea that your success in social situations should be decided by a die roll.

So, for the GM who won't let you do anything useful outside of combat, the points you spent on social skills are wasted. For the GM who does, the points you spent on social skills are wasted.

But suppose you find a balanced GM. He'll let you walk into town and start working the locals. He'll let you play enemies against eachother. He'll let you realize the barmaid is a doppleganger. And all of this taking your actual sky-high skill ranks which are your compensation for being so marginal at everything else. Imagine the eye-rolling from the other party members who really want to get on with the part of the game they're good for, and probably won't let the bard take center stage anyway -- and all it takes is one stroke of the sword to put the situation back in their court, with the bard pushing his minor buffs and trying to keep out of the way once again.

The bard is at best designed for a game nobody ever plays. And if the game did start playing in the bard's arena, he would be nerfed ad hoc by a conspiracy of the GM and the other players. All the other character classes are designed for the game as it is actually played.

Pathfinder isn't. PF might be combat-heavy, but it is a full-fledged RPG. And that means that it has to work outside of combat.

The re-tooling of spells that I suggest for the purpose of eliminating unusable granularity would not interfere with that at all. You can put up a wall to flummox a rival, or quench the whole party's thirst,ect., without resorting to the grid -- and the important thing is that you can do that without having to know what precise quantities are involved, because outside of combat it's not critical. But in combat, you need to know how many squares are affected and in what way, which is something that has to be figured out, instead of something that is specified in the spell description. Therefore, the problems of using a rule like a wall made of so many 1-foot cubes in combat is not made up for by any benefit you get out of combat.

It's possible that you may have a player who wants to pull something tricky, like forming a wall in the shape of an egg to plug a bend in a corridor in such a way that it will be physically impossible for a giant to smash that plug, and your player can work out the math to show what volume of stone it would take to do that. Long before the calculations are done the GM will have decided 'yay' or 'nay.'

Even if we still wanted to make it possible to specify volumes of stone that can be created, in case of something tricky the player wanted to pull off, we can still retool the spell so that the units involve will be convenient in both SI and Imperial. But given that the equivalent in game scale to a 1-foot cube is 40 cubic centimeters, the math gets more bothersome in SI, which seems like a shame given that the vast majority of the time all you really need to know is how hard it will be for somebody to break or go over that wall.

You can still walk 3 feet in one direction. Or an inch.

Does your GM keep notes on how many inches away you have to be to trigger a trap?

I played D&D without a battlemat for years, and back then those increments still didn't matter because you ended up having to describe your location in terms of landmarks, and even then we'd get jammed up because everybody had a different idea where everybody else was. Not using the grid didn't make it more immersive, it made the scene more nebulous. We'd all be imagining a different battle scene. In those cases, measurements as low as 3 feet were even less significant than they are using a battlemat, because nobody had anything like that specific an idea where everyone was.

It's a game, nothing else. It isn't supposed to be a model of a "real" world.

A roleplaying game is.

If you're looking to eliminate rules that make D&D unreal and boardgame-like, start with hit points.

You confuse convention with rule. The game doesn't say you use up the whole 5' square. It suggests that if you use a battlemat, assume that a medium-size character is assigned a 5' square. Because people don't stand still during a fight.

It's a simplifying assumption that works well in running a combat. That's a good thing. But you yourself don't seem to like to admit any new simplifying assumptions to make the game run smoother.

Pathfinder doesn't require squares, or a mat, and never will.

So, when an enemy casts a fireball on the paladin, does the rogue who may be around twenty feet away nursing his last hit point -- the one his mama gave him -- take the GM's word that he's within the area of effect?

The designers of Savage Worlds defines the game scale as 2 yards, which is most people couldn't distinguish from 2 meters on sight. According to a forum post at PEGINC, the rationale was that humans get up to about six feet, and people are supposed to be able to lie prone in those squares. Fine by me.

Oh, and here's a suggestion, for people like KaeYoss who find that a 'square' is one abstraction too far -- the Roman reckoned a 'passus' to be 5-feet, and didn't have battle grids to consider. Our modern word is 'pace' which we know historically was used to refer to the ordinary experience of moving on the ground. So, why not list speed in paces? Seems to solve both those problems.

You call it "getting ahead". I call it "dropping the ball". Squares are for board games, where the rules are arbitrary.

They don't belong in roleplaying games, which attempt to recreate "realistic" tales in a "realistic" world.

The ways in which every RPG sacrifices realism for playability are so innumerable that it's a little hard to credit that the difference between calling a unit of board space 5' or 1 square is what will break the illusion.

"Your speed is 6 squares" is not adequate for that. Unless you use a battlemat (something that no RPG requires), they are, in fact, meaningless.

That movement and position happens in gradations of 5' is also meaningless. I have these 1-foot square tiles in my kitchen and I've tried standing in the middle of a 5-by-5 area and picture myself managing to punch somebody in the middle of the next one. It's absurd. But it's a convention we accept because it's playable.

But I'm really not concerned about whether you define it as a 'square' if that's what's bothering you. That's just a matter of taste. I myself don't like seeing game space described 'inches' as is done in Savage Worlds.

But what I'm talking about is that for example if we define a magically created wall in terms that don't directly translate to game scale, then we aren't adding realism, we're adding either extra complication or more likely vagary. Keeping track of most things that are finer than game scale is the equivalent tracking insignificant digits in science. The consequences in gameplay are just going to get rounded up to 5' squares anyway, so why define spells in units that make it a whole other step to figure out how many squares are affected?

Will you be making a macro to allow only legal Pathfinder Society builds once version 2.0 of the Guide to Pathfinder Society Organized Play is released in the next few days?

It certainly should be possible to have a macro put all adjustable settings to Pathfinder Society standards, and other functions in the spreadsheet inform users when they've made selections for which they are not eligible. Enforcement is another thing, though, unless you want to distribute a special edition in which all the sheets are password locked and none of the backend can be unhidden.

I will be certainly be updating the Pathfinder RPG version of sCoreGen to the final core standards. Hopefully there will be a vibrant "spot the differences" thread here on the Paizo boards as there was between Alpha 2 and 3.

My Pathfinder chargen allows you to use either SI or "Imperial" units, though there is no established standard for what the equivalents should be. I've been meaning to get around to pushing for commonsense standards for RPGs to make them friendlier to metric conversion.

Basically, I apply the following assumptions:

• The game will never scale with the real world unless you want a really complicated game.
  
• What really matters is that the measurements given are 1) convenient to use and 2) convey a subjective sense of scale.
  
• The 5' standard is arbitrary and selected for convenience. The SI analog in both mathematical convenience and subjective sense of space is 2 meters.
  
• Likewise, map scale is a matter of playability rather than real-life precision. If you ever need to know how big your barony would be if you put it on earth, you can dig into the complications then.
  
• Thus, you might as well use the convenient assumption that 1 mile is 2 km.
  
• If you ever need to know how many game squares are in a mile, you'll find it convenient if a mile were defined as 5,000 feet (as apparently the Romans did). This is doubly convenient, because it is the same number of combat squares as the 2 km map unit.
  

That's the easy stuff. Most matters of scale are easily dealt with by the following assumptions:

• 5 ft = 2 m = 1 combat square
  
• 1 mile = 5,000 ft. = 2 km = 1,000 combat squares
  
• 2 lbs. = 1 kg
  

Easy as pie to use. You can eyeball conversions, though it would be nice to reform the weights of all the item tables so that the arbitrary chosen units were all equally convenient converted to either pounds or kilos.

Where it gets complicated is certain spells that specify units like gallons, cubic feet and inches. But most of these specifications are superfluous, because they are more specific information than you need, and getting information you need from that data requires math that will slow down the game. For example, you don't need to know how many gallons per level Create Water makes. What you really need to know is how many people or horses you can sate with that water, or how much of a game-scale space you can fill, etc. You don't need the number of gallons except as a way to find out something else. You also don't need to know how many foot-cubes of wall you can create. You need to know how hard it will be to get through -- hardness, hit points, height, all of which will have to be worked out based on the unit given instead of being the units given themselves.

4th edition got way ahead of the game on this. Very little in spell or power descriptions is expressed in terms that don't directly apply to game scale. But to do it for 3.5 or Pathfinder RPG edition would mean re-writing a number of spells, which I hope to have time to do one day.

This will help a lot. I of course want to buy a copy right off the shelf from my local retailer as I did with the Beta version, not only to support them but to encourage the idea that Paizo's materials are worth stocking. But I figured the PDF would end up being nearly the price of the heftable version, but since I've been working on a spreadsheet to assist with character creation, I really need to be able to search and to copy-and-paste text.

The ten-dollar price fixes my dilemma. I can justify buying them both. Thank you very much.

Unfortunately, it is highly problematic to produce a version of the spreadsheet for Open Office if for nor other reason than that Open Office doesn't reproduce one simple function that works in Excel does not work in Calc. You cannot insert a Return character into a text string by using a formula. If you know a way around this, please let me know.

These people seem to have done some work to get Dragonstar up to 3.5 at least. Among the things that they've taken into account are the fact that by 3.5 weapons need to be divided into light/one-handed/two-handed. They've also converted magic items to 3.5 specs.

http://hastur.net/dragonstar/wiki/Version3.5

Someone has started a Yahoo group on a PfRPG conversion of Dragonstar:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dragonstar_reloaded/summary

Well, let's briefly map out what such a conversion would require:

Races
-----
Most of the standard races merely have extra abilities added that aren't powerful enough to worry about balance. Some get bonuses in skills that aren't in the Pathfinder RPG (or even D&D 3.5) or have been changed, but you can almost eyeball most of that. You can pretty much just append the new abilities to the ones granted by PFRPG.

Classes
-------
Standard Classes - Although most of the classes have been significantly altered for Pathfinder RPG, I don't see any problem arising from just playing the Pathfinder RPG version of the core classes. If all characters are from space you can assume everyone except Barbarians and Monks do not get the Technical Proficiency. A cleric's deity must be chosen from the Unified or Dualist pantheons. Just use Survival as the basis for the Ranger's Pathfinding ability, or ignore it even.

New Classes - Pilot and Mechanist lack the nifty optional features of the Pathfinder RPG, so they would take some work to convert over using Pathfinder base classes as a guide.

Prestige Classes - The modifications of the usual DMG prestige classes should be a cinch as an adjunct to the PFRPG version of them. The new ones will require some work to give them the feel and utility of the Pathfinder ones.

NPC Classes - The PFRPG version should simply replace the ones listed, with the modifications to the skills taken into account.

Skills
------
Big changes here, both from the 3.0 rules the original was based on and to the consolidated skill list of Pathfinder RPG. A conversion should create a skill table that codifies decisions about what to keep and what to change. I won't go into all the changes I would make, since this is an outline of a conversion project, but an important consideration, in the spirit of PFRPG, is not to add new skills whose functions could be folded into another skill.

Feats
-----
Obviously, the feats need to be re-adjusted for the different skills available. The list needs to be combed through and the ones that are made redundant by PFRPG rules need to dropped. I question the value of feats like Aircraft Piloting and Starship Piloting. Do we need feats whose function is to enable characters to use the skills they've spent points on?

Equipment
---------
Most of this can be used as is, or mutatis mutandis.

Combat
------
PFRPG doesn't have rules for Autofire or Suppressive Fire, but the ones in Dragonstar seem usable enough and don't contradict the PFRPG way of handling things.

Magic
-----
PFRPG changes mostly deal with polymorphing-type spells and instant-death spells. Looks like you can just add the new spells from Dragonstar to your list and viola.

Vehicles
--------
There are no real vehicle rules in Pathfinder RPG, so you won't run into trouble there just using whatever you decide the equivalent skill checks would be.

Summary
-------
Convert? What convert? Most of this stuff is ready-to-play with the exception of some changes that are easily spotted and worked around. Write up a succinct list for your players of what changes apply between the Starfarer's Handbook and PFRPG, with an emphasis on the skill list and feats list changes.

I use a spreadsheets for character generation, and the Pathfinder RPG sheet I make can be found here:

http://chargen.motime.com/

If I were running a Dragonstar game in the PFRPG system, I would edit the data in Pathfinder-sCoreGen and adVance for Dragonstar specifications. That way, you can just send a copy to your players and it will help them negotiate the alternate ruleset in character creation without having to juggle two books and your explanatory note. Most of the changes that would be necessary can be put into the all-text data tables in sCoreGen and thus easily transferred from one version to the next as the spreadsheet gets updated.

Does anyone know of any non-excel generators for PF RPG?

So far, attempts to convert sCoreGen to OpenOffice have been frustrating. The big stumbling block seems to be that it doesn't let you generate text strings the way Excel does. Otherwise, the formulas seem convertable enough. But for now there's not much I can do to improve compatability for Mac and Linux users. You might want to check out PCGen now that it has Pathfinder datasets and could use the feedback.

Someone at the ENWorlds forum had a pretty good start on an OpenOffice version with some fancy use of visual basic, but I haven't seen any news on this project in a while.

JohnnyAngel does good work. =P He should probably think about having a paypal donation link somewhere.

That's nice of you to say, but I couldn't hope to provide a commercial level of service. There is a guy on these boards who sells his PFRPG-compatable spreadsheet, and I assume one of the things you get for the money is less reliance on community feedback for bughunting.

I added the Dervish class in the Class Abilities and Class Matrix sections. Works like a charm! :)

I'm always happy to hear that people are finding it moddable, since that is central to the design principle.

I noticed that this generator had the double armor penalty for swim still, that's gone right?

Not that I know of, but I have been corrected on points like this before.

Gnome-eater wrote:

Any chance at a stat block? :)

Sure I will add this on, I know this can be very helpful to DM's. I'll add it on next week.

It might make your life easier to adapt the sCoreGen method, changing out your references for the ones used there. It has the advantage that for one, it's already coded. It's also set up to handle different markup languages and even make it relatively easy to add new ones. Feel free to gank whatever you need and modify it to suit your own design goals.

If we can get the USA to switch to metrics as the baseline, then we can switch Pathfinder over. But until that happens, we can't really do that.

What I propose is that we establish a standardized system of conversion between the two systems expressly for gaming purposes so that units are broadly interchangeable between systems of weights and measures. The biggest part of this would be the easy method I have already proposed: 1 kilo to 2 poundss, 2 meters to 5 feet, 2 kilometers to 1 mile. As I have said, real-life equivalencies aren't really the point. I realize that space is precious, but largely this would amount to an extra column if you wished to list them both in, say, a chart.

I would like to see both units listed, but I think there's a more fundamental issue that needs to be tackled for the good of the gaming community. First, as I have said, we should try to get the gaming world to adopt a standard of conversion between the two. But even more fundamentally, we should tweak what's already given in order to eliminate any sources of difficult conversion. Again, real-world equivalencies don't matter as much as these two issues:

1) That convenience in calculation is maintained on both sides of the conversion, and between them.
2) That any game-mechanical effect is the same in either case.

Temperature
I don't consider any temperature ranges outside of human experience to be relevant to the game until a standard is worked out as to how many joules it takes to do a hit point worth of damage and what the melting point of mithral is. Any place where temperatures outside the experiential range are given, it's fluff rather than crunch, and even within that range the actual numbers have no game mechanical effect. So, just list the alternate units in parenthesis.

As a side note, for those who don't have an intuitive grasp of degrees Celsius, this rhyme will help:

30 is hot,
20 is nice,
10 is cold,
0 is ice.

If your refrigerator is functioning properly, it should be between 1 and 5 degrees, and if your body is functioning properly it should be around 37 degrees.

Distance
The 5-feet to 2-meters standard covers the most vital issue just fine, and a version of it is outlined here:

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/rg/20040323a

But for creatures whose footprint is less than one square, the only thing that matters is how much of a regular game square they take up. This is an issue which Skip Williams did not take up in his Going Metric column. When you get down to tiny creatures, you're dealing with a fighting space of 2.5 ft^2, which in this system converts to 1 m^2, which is 1/4 of a regular game square in either system.

The next step is 1 ft.^2, which is 1/5 of a square. This is a matter which deserves some re-thinking, because if there's any point to sub-dividing the fighting space, it's a point that is undermined by problems that are going to arise if you ever need to scale down to 1/5 of a square, and then match up the foot print of 1/4 of a square. I won't come up often, but there's no reason for it to be an issue at all. Simply scale down by a divisor of 2 each time.

That's easy enough and will disrupt nothing, but add convenience. For the rare times when you actually need to see how pixies and cats can fit into a melee with ogres, it'll save lots of headaches and as an added benefit the conversion will be more convenient.

And other distances are merely numbers designed to give a general idea of the size of something and will never be specifically important. Some are so trivial that even a consistent conversion is unnecessary. PFB 116: "The stoppered container is usually no more than 1 inch wide and 3 inches high." Those are made-up numbers of about the right proportions. Might as well make it 3 cm by 8 cm -- not an accurate conversion, but the same rightness of proportion, and the numbers are just as convenient. But for anything that might make a difference in game mechanical terms, both sides should be scalable accurately.

For the purposes of hit points of materials by thickness, the numbers of hit points per inch are made up and don't represent anything real. Optimizing this could be handled by the expedient of converting the number of hit points per inch by 3 if we want it to match with the map scale (3.33 would be more accurate, but messier), or simply by 2 to make it easier all around. Those numbers given for hit points per inch aren't meant to be scaled up to hit points per 1/60 of a square, after all. There's no equivalence to be preserved.

Some spells which specify inches are similarly not necessarily meant to make a game mechanical difference. Feel free to point out where non-map scale distance measures in any spell would make a difference in how an encounter played out in a game where the GM wasn't uncommonly fastidious. And a GM that picky will be driven to the nuthouse by the assumption that the same size coins in different metals weigh the same amount and so won't be availble to run anyway.

Volume
Spells produce volumes that don't convert well between English and metric. You get a lot of 1-foot cubes, which is close enough to 30 liters as to not matter, but if you can imagine it making a difference in map scale, then the spell description should be changed to something that works well on that scale. Instead of cubes whose sides are 1/5 of a map square, we should have cubes that are 1/4 of a map square. For liquid volumes, just treat a gallon as 4 liters. This works out to almost the right weight for water even on the 1 kg/2 lb. scale, which is the substance whose weight you're most likely to need to calculate.

Again, those numbers of units that spells produce are made up numbers that don't matter most of the time in game terms, so why not replace them with made up numbers that don't matter and are convenient on both scales?

This is preliminary in scope and open to some debate, but even if you don't put out a version of the game that includes metric equivalences, at least you could adjust certain things to make conversions easier, and from here on in design new rules with convenient conversions in mind. Paizo is in a better position to do such a service to the gaming community than anyone else.

Since the actual temperature range has no game mechanical effect, it's not as big an issue to me as the insistence on using feet and pounds, but I do think it's a shame that a game with international appeal insists on using a system of weights and measures clung to only by Myanmar, Liberia and the U.S. I have heard that in Germany they have an edition of D&D for which the 5-foot step is a 1.5-meter step. 1.5 meters is closer to 5 feet than the 2 meters used in d20 Star Wars, but 2 is a much more convenient number to work with, and there's little to be gained from trying to preserve accuracy from something that has no real world accuracy to begin with.

As an American, I have observed how people will get huffy and sullen if you ask them to work with a system they're not used to just because it's simpler to use. So, I'm not proposing that RPG companies should do their rules in metric by default. But I do think they should design with conversion to metric in mind. The weights of objects are at best approximations of real-world weights, rounded to the closest convenient numbers. Why not use number that would be convenient in both systems? Generally, I use these conversions:

1 kg = 2 lbs.
2 m = 5 ft.
2 km = 1 mi. (and for convenience I assume a mile is 5000 ft.)

Again, real-world equivalencies don't matter. What matters is whether the subjective correlative is about right.

At some point I plan to put out a version of the SRD that has everything converted to convenient metric measures.

Just port it over to OOo, then people could use your proggy on any platform.

I've tried that. A number of formulas that aren't even complicated get horked in the transition.

I've got this one I've been working on...

Pathfinder RPG Character Sheet v.0.4 (xls)

Nice design on that front sheet. But what's with the Personality save? That doesn't seem to be a rule in Pathfinder Beta.

Unfortunately, OpenOffice seems to have a lot of compatibility problems with it, though I'd love to make it available on that platform. As much as I'd like to support the platform, I've been avoiding the potential logistics problems of maintaining two versions.

Or perhaps a system of "Virtual" perform skills (every 5 levels or so, he gets to add a new performance type to his main perform skill, so at 15th level, a bard would be equally good at song, dance, oratory, and wind instruments, for example).

I think something like this would be a pretty good solution just because some of the 3.5 stuff out there has Perform type requirements. Several magic items in the Magic Item Compendium not only have Perform type requirements, but some require you to make checks in those perform types to use them. No other class is so throttled on access to magic items designed for that class. By way of analogy to cleric domains, I've never seen a Cleric item that required access to a specific domain.

On the other hand, having the bard abilities split like that is nifty. But the consequence amounts to having the option to trade away some of your powers in order to maintain one extra skill. That might be worth it for some character concepts, but it's otherwise not very tempting. I would be tempted to simply house-rule it something like this: 2 performance types at 1st level, and extra one every so many levels. The problem with that is that it's then not clear why it needs to be a skill at all. You no longer make a perform check to use the associated powers, though you can do so to earn money as a street musician (the utility of which drops off quickly after, say, 0th level). Okay, some magic items out there require perform checks. But otherwise Perform as a skill acts only as an opportunity cost and not a usable gameplay mechanic.

I've put together an Excel-based character generator specifically configured for the Pathfinder RPG playtest. Check it out if you get a chance:

http://chargen.motime.com/

Thanks for the plug. Unfortunately, I see from your stat block that I've left in a few errors in the stat block formatting. I've fixed them for the next release, so thanks also for the bug report. Here's a more correct version, using the BBCode:

STRATOS KOPTEROS
Male human Wizard 3
LG Medium humanoid
Init +5 ; Senses Perception +0 (+3 to opposed checks in dark or shadows)
==DEFENSE==
AC 15, touch 11, flat-footed 14 (+4 armor, +1 dex)
hp 18 (3d6)
Fort +0, Ref +2, Will +5
Defensive Abilities Dodge
==OFFENSE==
Spd 30 ft./x4
Melee Dagger (melee) +2 1d4-1 19-20/x2
Ranged Dagger (thrown) +2 1d4-1 19-20/x2
Ranged Shortbow +2 1d6 20/x3
==STATISTICS==
Str 9, Dex 13, Con 8, Int 19, Wis 15, Cha 14
Base Atk +1, Cmb +0
Feats Dodge (PFB 85), Improved Initiative (PHB 3.5 96), Scribe Scroll (PHB 3.5 99-100), Weapon Finesse (PFB 97)
Skills Appraise +8, Knowledge (arcana) +10, Knowledge (architecture and engineering) +10, Knowledge (history) +8, Knowledge (religion) +10, Linguistics +9, Profession (advocate) +8, Profession (bookkeeper) +6, Profession (teacher) +6, Spellcraft +10
Languages Common
SQ Arcane Bond, Diviner's Fortune
Combat Gear Dagger, Shortbow

And of course I'll also need to get the page number references up-to-date.

I debated just modifying Spell Forge, but currently it's not set up for the alternate rules that Pathfinder requires, and for all the effort it would have taken to make the adjustments for compatible I could instead build a spreadsheet from scratch, which I was going to want to do anyway because the idea is to create a modular, modifiable spreadsheet for managing a spell list in a Vancian magic system. Spell Forge, on the other hand, is admirably exhaustive in covering D&D 3.5, but you couldn't easily make it a d20 Modern spell list manager, for example.

I've gone ahead and implemented the Beta changes to the Pathfinder edition of adVance (which happens to currently be the only edition of adVance), and it should be more-or-less functional, so I'm releasing it. Let me know if it gives you any troubles:

The sCoreGen Project

I'm working on my own spell list manager spreadsheet, which was already not ready for public release even before Beta. I'm working on the needed changes even now, but basically it uses the forms (and even some of the tables) from SpellForge. The advantage it has over SpellForge is mostly that first of all it will be Pathfinder compatible, and second it'll be more customizable.

Setting it to allow you to select and list the bonus spells for Sorcerers and Wizards as well as for the Clerics (whose spell-like abilities are now being listed as actual bonus spells) will be straightforward enough, but updating the page references and going through the grind of checking to see if these spells are changed in a way that needs to be noted on the sheet will be quite a grind in itself.

Here's the updated Beta Change List:

Pathfinder Alpha 3 --> Beta

Some updates listed actually refer to my spell list manager project which is not ready for public release. Also note that some of the changes have not been implemented in Pathfinder sCoreGen (my Pathfinder chargen project) because they have impacts that are too vague to encode, or otherwise need clarification.

ACROBATICS (JUMP) SPECIFICATION
Beta Chapter: 05 - Skills
Beta Rule
Creatures with a base land speed above 30 feet receive a +4 racial bonus on Acrobatics checks made to jump for every 10 feet of their speed above 30 feet. {Penalties for slower creatures not mentioned}
NOTE: Needs clarification. Specifies "base land speed" therefore perhaps not including bonuses from bonuses above racial base.
Source: PFB 54-55
SRD Rule
If your speed is less than 30 feet, you take a -6 penalty for every 10 feet of speed less than 30 feet. If your speed is greater than 30 feet, you gain a +4 bonus for every 10 feet beyond 30 feet.
Source: http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/jump.htm
Alpha 3 Rule
Did not mention modifiers to jump checks based on speed.
Source: PFA3 54-55
sCoreGenStatus: Updated
Credit: Shadowdweller @ PaizoBoards

SHIELD MASTER PRE-REQUISITE CHANGE AND NERF
Beta Chapter: 06 - Feats
Beta Rule
Prerequisites: Improved Shield Bash, {ect}
Benefit: You do not suffer any penalties on attack rolls made with a shield while you are wielding another weapon. Add your shield’s shield bonus to attacks and damage rolls made with the shield as if it was an enhancement bonus.
Source: PFB 94
Alpha 3 Rule
Prerequisites: Deft Shield, {ect}
Benefit: You do not suffer any penalties for fighting with two weapons, so long as one of those weapons is a shield. Add your shield’s magic bonus to attacks and damage rolls made with the shield. In addition, you do not lose your shield bonus to your AC.
Source: PFA3 72
sCoreGenStatus: Needs Clarification
Credit: Yrtalien @ PaizoBoards

KNOCK - NERF
Beta Chapter: 11 - Spells
Beta Rule
When you complete the casting of this spell, make a caster level check against the DC of the lock with a +10 bonus. If successful, knock opens up to two means of closure.

Needs clarification: A bonus to the caster level check or a bonus to the lock's DC?
Source: PFB 244
SRD Rule
Automatically works on up to 2 impediments.
Source: http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/knock.htm
sCoreGenStatus: Needs Clarification
Credit: hogarth @ PaizoBoards

RANGER - ARCHERY STYLE FEATS CHANGED
Beta Chapter: 04 - Classes
Beta Rule
Choose from a list, with more items added to the list at 6th and 11th levels.
2nd: Careful Targeting, Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot, and Rapid Shot.
6th: Exact Targeting and Many Shot.
11th: Pinpoint Targeting and Shot on the Run.
Source: PFB 36
SRD Rule
Get the following automatically at the given ranger level:
2nd: Rapid Shot
6th: Manyshot
11th: Improved Precise Shot
Source: http://www.d20srd.org/srd/classes/ranger.htm
Alpha 3 Rule
Choose from a list, with more items added to the list at 6th and 11th levels.
2nd: Careful Targeting, Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot, and Rapid Shot.
6th: Exact Targeting and Many Shot.
11th: Pinpoint Targeting and Shot on the Run.
Source: PFA3 36
sCoreGenStatus: Needs Clarification
Credit: sCoreGen

I have created a chargen spreadsheet, which at the moment is up-to-date for Pathfinder Alpha 3. I'm working on implementing the changes for Beta, but in the meantime, you could see if this will help you at all:

http://chargen.motime.com/

Hmmmm... Given that Careful Targeting and Exact Targeting have been nixed, that makes the entry on the Ranger's style feats an error, since it still mentions both of them.

Because I'm working on a Pathfinder chargen spreadsheet, I need to be able to keep track of changes in Beta. This thread will be very helpful. If it's worth anything to you, I have generated a spreadsheet to help track changes and allow me to export them as a list.

Changes Log

This contains most of the items mentioned in this thread, plus a couple others I've run into. Items which have been skipped were ones whose references were too messy to track down for the time being, since I'm trying to be specific about what the rules are and where they can be found for comparison. I've also listed whether or not the changes have been implemented in my sCoreGen character generator for Pathfinder.

Yeah, but I recall there was more than that. For one thing, I'm pretty sure I read that PCGen will be supporting Pathfinder as well as other more commercial outfits. But I will definitely check out HeroLab.

I have created a chargen spreadsheet specifically for the Pathfinder RPG. Currently it is up-to-date for Pathfinder Alpha 3, and I'm working through the changes in Beta. It should speed up the character creation process, and even the generation of NPCs to save the GM prep time.

http://chargen.motime.com/

I read somewhere that other chargen packages are planning to support Pathfinder eventually, but I don't know when.

I also just noticed that racially-derived hp are not being imported into the character sheets, even if they're calculated into the total on the Class page. And the statblock generator doesn't seem to be functioning.

Whoops. The hit points should show up now in the next version. But what are you seeing with the stat block? Is it not updating at all? That is, still just showing Dwarf like the other text boxes?

Con bonuses are not multiplied by the number of monster HD.

Fixed in the current version.

Skills that are duplicated both by class levels and racial skill make the skill name turn red. I don't know why that is, but it doesn't seem to affect the actual calculations.

Ah. That would be because the racial levels are not being counted in the maximum ranks buyable calculation. The color change is just a warning, but I've fixed the next version to add the racial hit dice to the maximum number of ranks.

I still see only the dwarf racial info on the "Back" page and the "Race & Stats" page.

I did forget to re-protect the Race & Stats sheet so that modifying the textbox wouldn't cause the formula to be overwritten, but otherwise I'm not having any trouble getting this to change when I change the character's race.

There's also a beige-shaded Point Buy field that shows up in the middle of the text block on "Race & Stats".

That is weird. Here is what it should look like:

As I implement different monster races in this testing, is there a way to easily import these into future versions, or get them to you to be added as well? In most cases, the races I'm adding are ones that have been used in Pathfinder adventures, and so I figure I can't be the only one interested in seeing them included in the chargen.

Things that are pure text can easily be copied over. Things that require calculation are more complicated to transfer over. What adventures are you working with?

If I try to do a fighter 1 / Wizard 3 character, appraise is a cross class. It is cross class regardless of whether the fighter is at level 1 or level 2.

Under those conditions, I'm showing it turn up as cross-class for the one fighter level and class for the two Wizard levels. However, if you put a rank in it in your fighter levels, then the +3 bonus kicks in when it becomes a class skill during your Wizard levels, even if you don't actually put a rank in it during those levels. That's an interpretation of how the rule is supposed to work, but the thrust of it is that if any of your classes has it as a class skill, you get the class skill bonus if there are any ranks in it at all.

Also, it does not seem to pick up the fighters armor proficiency for the "arcane armor training" feat.

It seems that I misspelled "Proficiency" three times. It should now detect it correctly as per the next update.

I'm adding in planetouched and some other things, and as I get a slow grasp on how things operate within the sheet, I was wondering if you are looking for people to help you with implementing other functionality?

I'm always happy to hear that it's friendly to modification. I suppose that enough mistakes have been caught that it's time for me to get down to writing a design document that will explain how it works so that other people can more readily customize it or even suggest ways to improve the efficiency of the design. It could be stripped of its particular content and be used as the core of other people's campaign-specific spreadsheets.

The new functionality really in need at this point is actually a separate spell-list manager spreadsheet. I've considered just adding the new spells from Pathfinder to the HeroForge sheet, but for one thing it isn't set up for the Pathfinder changes to cleric domains, and for another thing it isn't nearly as friendly to modification as I would like. But it does have the advantage that the spells from all the WotC sources are already in place. However, I can always just gank their big table and use it as the foundation for my own sheet.

Any way to get a link on the main page to check for updates? While I use the sheet a lot, I don't often check to see if it's got a new version out, but a nice button on the front page would really help with that.

You mean on the spreadsheet itself? Because I have no influence over the website here. But the blog forum I use to post announcements allows for RSS or Atom feeds. I don't use either of these systems myself, but apparently it'll alert you when a new post has been made in the blogs or other web pages you're watching.

it always shows the dwarven racial abilities even if I change the race.

Sadly, this is an issue with Excel. In order to avoid the problem with long text ceasing to word wrap in a cell however large, I have to put it in a TextBox gadget. The TextBox has an advantage in that you can copy-and-paste from it, but it has an irritating vulnerability that if you make any changes inside the box, which you can easily do accidentally, the contents of the cell that fills the box becomes filled with the new text rather than the formula that used to point to the text you mean to generate.

You only need to open a copy fresh from the archive to get this reset. I can stop this from happening by protecting the sheet, but I usually leave sheets unprotected because I'm constantly having to mess with the formulas. I'll go ahead and protect the sheet so that the text boxes can't overwrite formulas in the next release.

When creating a 2nd level elf ranger I only see the bonus feats for the two fighting style. Is there a switch to change the default to the archery feats?

The list does default to one just so it won't be empty. I'm fixing it so that the cyan dot doesn't light up until you specify your fighting style on the Specifics sheet.

When I set up a first level fighter to dual-wield short swords I set the main hand weapon to Use Field to Two-Weapon Primary (light Secondary) then I set the off-hand weapon Use Field to Two-Weapon Secondary it then adds 1/2 my str mod to damage for the off-hand weapon.

Looks like I was doing it backwards. It should allow only half your strength mod to offhand damage. Fixed.

Also (this is more a features request then a bug) it would be nice to have an other option on the language so that you can write in non standard languages such as Varisian.

I haven't built in a mechanic specifically for it, but you can overwrite the names of any of those listed languages and if you set it as Known, it'll show up by the new name on the back of the character sheet.

I will tell the players in my PBP to use this program, if they wish to. Will give you feedback.

Terrific. Be sure to download the latest version, especially if anybody was going to play a gnome or a hobbit. In this version, I might even have weapon auto-resizing working right.

The monsters section outlines the different types, which would be sufficient to recreate feats, skills, BAB and saves for any SRD monster. Special abilities would have to be done manually. The only thing that would need to be altered in the skills section would be that any skill with a rank is considered a class skill.

I've implemented something like what is needed before, though actually I'm not sure that spreadsheet wouldn't be good enough for these purposes. The problem is in assigning CR value to special abilities. Grim Tales has a system for this, and that's what I used for XenoForge. But I also used that system for assigning CR value to monster type by hit dice and size, which Pathfinder seems to do differently.

I was making a monk, unarmed strike is not on the weapon focus list.

Fixed. The generated list was offset by one row.

Something's weird with exotic weapon proficiency. I am making a fighter 3 w/ ewp (bastard sword), weapon focus (b. sword), and using a mwk weapon. His attack *should* be +8 w/ Str 17 (+3 BAB, +3 Str, + 1 mwk weapon, +1 weapon focus) but I'm only getting it at +4.

Fixed. Pretty silly really. I had cells that generated the information and I had cells set aside that needed to display the information. I just never linked them.

Silly errors, but in my defense there are a lot of little things going on. And, I'm working at a computer security firm and I can tell you that major companies with huge teams of programmers let slip errors that can allow a perfect stranger to brick your hard drive and possibly impregnate your cat, and those companies charge money for the service.

Now I've implemented NPC classes and a stat block generator. Nothing is set in stone about which feats, class abilities and racial traits count as Special Attacks, Defense Abilities or Special Qualities, but I assigned them where it seemed roughly appropriate. Mostly I was working on getting the mechanics to work, leaving the details for later.

I implemented a handful of markup standards, including one specifically for this BBS. Chequez vous:

FATHER MOREHAMMER
Male dwarf Adept 3
LN Medium humanoid
Init -1 ; Senses Perception +0 (+2 taste-based, +2 touch-based, +2 on unusual stonework.)
==DEFENSE==
AC 13, touch 9, flat-footed 14 (+4 armor, -1 dex)
hp 20 (3d6+6)
Fort +3, Ref +0, Will +5
Defensive Abilities Hearty, Defensive Training, Stability
==OFFENSE==
Spd 20 ft./x4
Melee Mwk Warhammer +2 1d8 20/x3
Special Attacks Hatred
==STATISTICS==
Str 10, Dex 8, Con 14, Int 9, Wis 15, Cha 9
Base Atk +1, Cmb+1
Feats Armor Proficiency (Light) (PHB 3.5 89), Martial Weapon Proficiency (PHB 3.5 97)
Skills Heal +7, Knowledge (religion) +3
Languages Common, Dwarven
SQ Darkvision 24 m, Keen Senses, Adept Familiar
Combat Gear Mwk Warhammer, Masterwork Chain shirt
Other Gear Pitons x4, Rope, Holy Symbol, Backup Holy Symbol

Pathfinder-sCoreGen-b09

There seems to be an issue with armor affecting skills. I'm seeing a -5 penalty check for "mental" skills like appraise and teach.

Fixed, probably. If you were wearing at least chainmail and you picked the Armor Proficiency (Medium) feat, it detected the feat correctly. But if you got Medium Armor from a class ability, it would have failed to detect it. Seems that I mispelled 'Proficiency' once, and copy-and-pasted it a few times. When not proficient, the ACP applies to all skills.

Well, that should be fixed. Kind of a silly mistake there. The sheet will take some re-packing before the next upload, but it shouldn't be long. I've just done NPC classes, and I'm working on a stat block generator. The tricky bit with that is that sorting out Defensive Abilities and Special Attacks requires mechanics I have made room for but haven't implemented yet. I may just skip that bit and put out a basic stat block first, then fill in the details later. There is no hard-and-fast rule about what belongs in those slots, so I'll have to grind through the list of all feats, class abilities and racial abilities and pick.

Obviously I've been immersed in the character creation bits, so I haven't studied the whole document. How exactly does the Pathfinder monster generation differ from standard d20?

Oh, and does anyone know of someplace where they've released a template for the Pathfinder stat block?

I'm currently working on implementing this support in PCGen, as well as the dataset.

Out of sight. If you build it, they will come.

I was talking about the fighter's Armour Training, not the feat Arcane Armour Training. A fighter's Armour Training is always active. It can be found on page 27.

I'm not sure what I was thinking with the way it was arranged, but it should be fixed now. Also, this called attention to the fact that Armor Training seems to have changed since Alpha 2, the version under which I started this project. Someone else pointed out that I had Hobbits wrong, which turned out to be for similar reasons.

Actually, several races gain free real proficiencies: Elves, for example, gain longbow (and composite longbow), longsword, rapier, and shortbow (including composite shortbow)

These as I understand it are the ones that races get just outright for membership:

Weapons that have the race mentioned in the name are considered martial rather than exotic for that race, but they are not actually free for the race.

I think the child entry is misplaced (and are used when the Aged entries should be used instead.

They're sorted alphabetically so that I can use the VLOOKUP function to find the appropriate entries using the name of the age category

Also, the physical penalties are -1, -3, -6 (the penalties stack).

Interesting. I was melding the fantasy game with d20 Modern for compatability (for one thing, the d20 Modern version had a 'child' category, which the fantasy game does not). But I see now that d20 Modern was a lot less punishing to the aging. Categories were cumulative there, too, but only at -1 per shift. Well, that's modern medicine for you. Somehow way better than the *POOF, YOU'RE HEALED* system. I'll set the adjustments to the fantasy standard, though. Good catch.

So now hopefully I can actually post the announcement before any new bugs are announced:

Pathfinder-sCoreGen-b06

It'll take me a bit to get the next version uploaded, but I have changed several things based on this feedback. Thanks, everybody. Below is my more detailed response.

If each spreadsheet is used independantly, even at only 5 megs per file, we're talking 75 megs of space, plus NPC's.

It may just be a style of doing things, but generally, my group doesn't consider anything like 75 megs significant.

In Pathfinder, it's not called point buy (probably for some copyright reasons or something), but purchase.

I suspect Point Buy is a generic gaming term not subject to the OGL agreement.

And (another minor thing): Put in an "other" option, to show people right there that they don't need to use point buy/purchase.

I figured in those cases people would just put in what they rolled. But I could add "Roll" as an option, just so people don't feel obligated to pay attention to their point cost.

Maybe you can even work in the elite array somehow (which I guess would be very helpful for GMs)

Consider it on the list. I had something like it in Star*Forge.

Can you work in an option for accurate translation of weight (i.e. 1 lb = 0.45359237 kb)? Not a big issue really.

Probably that would not be optimal. It's not as though the weights from the SRD are precise to begin with - they've been heavily fudged to give convenient numbers. There is no particular precision to the original numbers, so the added precision would be illusory at best. The rule of treating 1 kilo as 2 pounds is close enough to reality and results in numbers just as convenient as the ballpark round figures used in the SRD.

I guess a custom entry would be too hard?

For example, my houserule is that you get average HP rounded up (i.e. d8 becomes 4.5 rounded up, in other words 5) plus con bonus, and double con bonus on level 1…
In the case of HP, you could also have a drop down list to select full, average, average rounded up, 3/4, and full (or something)

I think it needs to be split up into two options: The rule for first level, and the rule for subsequent levels.

" Custom races/Changed races. Of course, this is beyond the scope of a simple generator, but still, it would be neat to add it in one day.

I had an elaborate set up in my Star*Forge sheet for adding custom races, but for this project I tried to just make the Races sheet, and other things affected by race, easier to edit.

" The way favoured classes work: It's another of these custom things, but I guess that a lot of people will either not use them at all or go a different path (like +1 skill point instead of +1 HP)

At some point I'll probably want to start a thread on house rules to see if I can't accommodate such differences, but I hope that the operation of the sheet is sufficiently understandable that people with some Excel savvy can see a way to implement things themselves. I felt like Hero Forge, for all that it was elegant, was not friendly to customization.

Age: Height and Weight are rolled, why not age? It could be at least an option.

Already implemented, but I'll put in a note to make it clear that the dice to roll aren't indicated until you select your 1st level class.

Unless Alpha changed those and I didn't see it, there seems to be something wrong with the values. How do you convert inch to cm? The values seem to be off a bit.

The rolling method is not converted from Imperial units, it's rolled natively in cm and kg. Check out part 3 of the WotC article on Going Metric:

(Especially elves are a lot taller in PF than in 3e)

Thanks for pointing this out. I'll look into it.

The Misc Mod isn't used at all. Do I have to enter that somewhere else?

It was for future expansion, but I've just set it to display what you enter on the Magic Adjustments sheet, which is a holding place for what will eventually be a system for equipping magic items.

They only work if you enter them in the next screen, but it doesn't say so.

That page is mostly for a starting character, but I do find it handy to leave it as some place to get a summary of the circumstances affecting your stats. I try to make all spaces you should fill in with text or numbers show up in light blue or light yellow. It's slightly different on the Skills sheet, however, where non-class shows up as white and class shows up as light yellow.

This one goes for all fields where you have to roll something: What about a [Roll] button? Could be very useful here…

What about a [max out] Button for skills? It would automatically fill up the lines with ones (or maybe more than that, if you skipped the skill for a level or two)
Also/Alternately, have a drop-down list of all skills (mark class-skills), and let you select stuff there to max out with a button…
An export function would be nice - especially for those who don't have a pdf writer. It would export the front and back sheets (and, if applicable, the sheets for bard, barbarian and cleric) into a fresh excel sheet, replacing everything with values (so there's no formulae on it).

For now I'm putting off working on features that would require macros. They're nice, and my Star*Forge sheet is full of them, but they can add a surprising amount of size to the spreadsheet and may affect compatibility with the Macintosh. I'd also like to have the sheet usable by Open Office's Calc, and that package is a beast for which any shortcuts I could take would save the user headaches.

Maybe you should lock those bonuses the character can't get yet. Or, better yet, have a "strict" option where such choices can only be taken after the character has a right of it. That would also go for levels (after necessary XP have been accumulated) and the like…

Also, I can choose feats several times, including stuff you shouldn't be able to choose more than once.

Generally, I haven't gone in for stopping a user from taking options they're not eligible for. Anyone who is inclined to take options they're not eligible for would probably also just write down whatever the hell they feel like on their character sheets. Such people have less use for a spreadsheet than people who would simply find it handy to have a guide to what options were available. So, I have the sheet designed to show what slots open up, and where appropriate indicate when an illegal option has been chosen. I leave it up to the user not to do the electronic equivalent of just writing down whatever the hell they feel like writing on their character sheet.

Could you give an option to either list the feats alphabetically or in the 3e "tree view"?

Hero Forge and Modern Heroes both implement something like this, and I haven't entirely abandoned the idea of going with this because it is an elegant solution, but my own method pays of in customizability. You add a feat in an all-text sheet, and if it needs dynamic text you add code for that on another sheet where the spreadsheet can detect and implement it. It all gets sorted into the pull-down menus without using macros. The tree view would require a good deal more fuss to customize.

Finally, a standard package would be really great (though they will probably be more work than it's worth - still, should you be bored one day...)

It could be handled the way the guy who did the Mutants and Masterminds sheet did, by having a version downloadable for every archetype. A thought for future development.

Weapon Focus

I saw that you have to choose between shortbow and composite shortbow. Shouldn't that be one focus? (same for all stuff concerning composite bows)

My impression has been that the rules do work that way, because they bother to specify that elves are also proficient with composite shortbows, implying that if they didn't say so it wouldn't apply. Personally, I think they ought to be considered equivalent proficiencies. As part of fixing a problem with daggers, I'm implementing a mechanic that will take care of this.

Another part that concerns a lot of the stuff here: What about custom entries? If I have access to, say, spell compendium, then I might want something from there.

This one is pretty easy to customize, because it's just a table of text, which I'm now moving to the Rogue Talent sheet for more convenient finding for editing. Put in the names and page reference of the alternate spells you want in the tables between B28 and C93.

I think you forgot to add the effects of Armour Training, especially alpha 3's increased max dex bonus. The decreased armour penalty does show up on the sheet, I think, but not here in the combat section.

Because it requires a Swift Action to activate, it's not always on. So it doesn't get listed as a permanent adjustment. But I have just implemented a reminder that will appear in the Conditional Modifiers box on the front sheet if you have the feats. I don't see a change to the dex mod tied to that feat in Alpha 3.

Additionally, exporting it to pathfinder format stat block would really rock.

Implementing NPC classes and stat blocks is the important next step, to allow the GM to generate NPCs in a pathfinder native environment. Seems like this will really help with the playtesting.

* Why not open source it so more people can contribute?

I actually think this is effectively the same thing. Anyone can unhide the data sheets and make modifications, and I've designed it with modification in mind.

* Why not just use PC gen and add data files for the Pathfinder rules?

I hope someone does, but I have found that adding even new gear is cumbersome in PCGen, and adding new rules implementation is a nightmare. With Excel, you can just add a forumla.

It looks like there may be a bug on the back sheet for the school powers for the wizard... it'd be nice if instead of all the powers in a block there was either a minimum lvl required to use them in quotes or they were added when you reached the appropriate lvl.

Yeah, I goofed here. It should only display the powers you can currently command. Fixed.

there seems to be a bug with the first weapon on the combat sheet, it's not adding damage to the box, just leaving it blank.

It seems to be detecting the dagger as ranged, but not thrown, so a strength modifier is not being applied. Is that what you're referring to? I've just set it up to list melee and thrown daggers as separate weapons, but I'll probably eventually just have it detect the difference between a weapon that is throwable and one that is only used thrown.

[W]hen I put a dagger there for Skaven the halfling, it didn't auto size in the first box, but did in the rest.

I'm not seeing an inconsistency, but I have found that there was a problem with the way it was handling that, so maybe what I did there fixed your problem.

An amazing bit of work. The only major missing piece I have found is how to select spells known.

That's something that's probably best handled with a supplemental sheet. I'm in a quandry as to whether to build a spell list manager on my own, or modify SpellForge to include Pathfinder changes as well as new Pathfinder spells. In either case, I'll probably be ganking their main spell table.

* Composite bows have nowhere to indicate their strength bonus, thus, damage is off.

Implemented.

Also, the composite shortbow looks like it's not using the dex bonus of the character I'm making. (should be +3 but is +0).p

I'm not seeing any problem with the dex bonus not adding in. What's your character class? Maybe there's a problem with detecting your proficiency. That should be a difference of 4, but something else could be throwing it off as well, so I might have two problems that need fixing there. If you could give me some more details, I could see if I get the same results you're getting.

* There's nowhere for magic items like bracers of armor or rings of protection. I found that adding just the bonus to an undefined piece of armor or shield provides the bonus, but this only works if both slots aren't already filled with real gear.

I've added new spaces to fill these in -- armor, natural armor and deflection mod.

Good stuff, keep the updates coming! Could it be left more open for homebrew campaigns, or the addition of house rules?

I'm emphasizing customizability over completeness. Hero Forge is quite complete in terms of WotC sourcebooks, but that results in it being huge, and it's kind of hard to shoehorn special campaign rules. I hope it's already fairly easy for those with experience with Excel to figure out how things work, but the long-term plan is to write a document fully explaining how I implemented things so that people can make just the changes they need.

Don't take pointing these things out as bad criticism

Not to worry.

* Racial weapon proficiencies... you don't have the column filled in on the Weapons sheet.

I do have some filled in for Dwarf, Gnome and Half-orc special weapons.

* Racial weapon proficiencies... on the LittleBox sheet, you have an error in the formula to determine proficiency. Using the AND where you do means that the race not only has to have an entry in the racial column (as noted above) but must also have Martial Weapon Proficiency.

The rule for those weapons is that they are considered martial rather than exotic for their own race, so that's what that represents - you don't get them for free, but you can get the proficiency if you are proficient with all martial weapons. But now that you mention it, I realize I haven't implemented it for the Martial Weapons feat itself so that you can select it if you actually take the feat. Now it's done.

* Mighty Composite bows - this will take significant changes to the weapon table, so I didn't fiddle with it under the assumption that you will fix it. :)

I figured it was best to do it through adding another listbox in the weapons selection sheet. Should work now.

I did use a "Save Character" feature on my Star*Forge sheet, stealing some code from Hero Forge. It was convenient because it made it less cumbersome to email your character to the GM. But many kinds of updates to the spreadsheet made previous saved characters incompatible with newer versions, and it never really worked properly on the Macintosh. Also, these days most of the e-mail systems our group uses handle the 3 megs that the file Zips down to pretty well, so it seems easier just to maintain a copy of the spreadsheet for each character.

Just making sure the thing works correctly is the first concern, but I am interested to know if people are actually using the save feature extensively in Hero Forge. I myself just open a new copy for each character even with Hero Forge's 20 megs to reckon with.

Options: It'd be nice to know what the character point values are for low/standard/high/epic

Yeah, that can be readily fixed.

Options: Not sure what fps vs.SI means under the Weights and Measures pulldown.

"fps" is foot-pound-second, or what is called "Imerial" or "English" or "American" measures. There is no general agreement on what to call it, but among the choices, foot-pound-second has the advantage of being descriptive of what you're getting.

SI is the International System of Units, aka "The Metric System." I personally feel it's important to support gamers who, like myself, prefer the metric system.

I have made this more explicit.

Races & Stats: Only human is available

Races & Stats: Not sure what the "identity" field is for/

Do you get a scrollbar? Human is alphabetically last, so all the other entries are higher up and nothing would appear higher up. I suppose I could just preset Dwarf as the default and then all the other races should appear below, but in the meantime I'm interested in seeing if it's just not letting you scroll up.

Feats: It would be nice to get a feat calculator so we know how many we can choose.

On the Feats sheet, as well as on the Specifics, a cyan dot should appear to the left of any listbox for which you are eligible to make a selection. You make choices until you run out of cyan dots. If you make a selection in a listbox in which you are not eligible to choose, a red dot appears instead. If you choose a feat for which you do not meet pre-requisites, a red X appears on the other side of the feats listbox.

Specifics: Like this page, seems to work well. I might call it something like "Class Features"

I called it "Class Specifics" in my old Star*Forge spreadsheet. This time there are more than class details being selected there - alignment, and human and gnome specifics. Ironically, calling it "Specifics" may not be specific enough. But "Class Specifics" was too specific.

It looks as though HeroForge will be going 4e. I'm sure somebody will work on a dataset for Pathfinder in PCGen. I actually find it easier to work in Excel. I have recently put together a spreadsheet that will aid in Pathfinder character creation, and I'm trying to get people to help test it out, so feel free to give it a look:

http://chargen.motime.com/

One of the advantages to my particular project is that it's available when the alpha testing is still taking place, hopefully facilitating the player end of that process.