I've just started playing Pathfinder after a 10 year hiatus from table top RPGs. I'm going to run my first adventure for a small group soon. I've got all the maps and tokens setup in RPTool's MapTool, an overhead projector, plenty of dice and pencils.
The one recommendation I'm looking for is a good electronic (spreadsheet, java app, local app) character sheet specifically for Pathfinder which includes all the skills, feats, spells, etc. There's a lot of recommendations in the forums over the years and I found a treasure trove of options. I'd like some guidance on which is most widely used these days, best supported, and perhaps integrated with MapTool/CharTool. Unfortunately, I found the CharTool pathfinder v6 config was incomplete or buggy.
Please educate me!
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As far as the best character tool I would honestly recommend Hero Lab. You're going to drop a good chunk of change out it and getting all the books you want to run your campaign, but its the best tool for character creation and has good pdf's generated by the program to use (either in print or digitally). It's not perfect, but does an incredible job. I doubt there is anything better for characters, but as I mentioned it isn't cheap. I dropped $70 when I bought it pickup the "books" I wanted (the core purcahse comes with just the Core Rule Book, additional rulesets and option from other books are in other packages you must pay for). Aside from the cost, I am in now way disappointed with Hero Lab.
As far as map tools...I don't have any recommendations.
I checked out the demo of Hero Lab and I was sold! $20 is peanuts and it does exactly what I want, manages accounting of stats, and tracks skills and spells. Thanks for the recommendation.
I already bought the Pathfinder hardcopy and PDF (to support the writers) and contributed some cash to MapTool. These tools make RPG'ing fun!
BTW, all these tools run great in Linux. Hero Lab uses Wine but otherwise works perfectly. MapTool is java so it just works.
As others have said HeroLab is the best option out there but there are two downsides, the first is the price (it's too expensive) and the second is it's license policies*. If you don't have issues with those two you should definetely buy it.
Other than that the spreadsheet linked by Greame is the best i have found (although it has that downside that it requires MS office).
Also you can check this simple editable pdf file.
*at least for me since i have two desktop computers, 2 laptops and 1 netbook, and being a computer science student means i tinker a lot with both the software and the hardware of my computers
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Has noone ever heard of PCgen???? It's a free to download Personal Character Generator that will work for nearly any d20 based system.
It's not perfect allthough I personally never found a flaw (yet) and it's possible to create your own or other characters in specific campaign complete with traits and specific source code like with or without Advanced players Guide or ultimate stuff. Everyone I know that plays Pathfinder and D&D before that uses it (all 9 of em). It's still being improved as it's opensource. I will check to see where I got it from, but I believe a google check on PCgen will do.
http://pcgen.sourceforge.net
and you should get straight to the download as well as the documentation.
It exports to PDF files and other formats. And has a lot of different character sheets. I personally prefer the blue_light_something character sheet because it's a nice format And I like the order in which your character is displayed.
And remember it's free and works like a dream (my opinion)
Has noone ever heard of PCgen???? It's a free to download Personal Character Generator that will work for nearly any d20 based system.
I've used PCgen for some time before I bought Herolab a couple of weeks ago. PCgen is nice for a character or two but for frequent use it has too many flaws and bugs. You need to know the rules well to work with it so you can spot and correct the mistakes of the program.
I've found way less errors in Herolab. In fact, those I found were just stuff I could fix by changing the (admittedly somewhat weird) presets for character building or things that I simply misunderstood in the UI. I can't think of a single real bug I've encountered in while building few dozen characters.
PCgen is nice for what it does but you definitely notice a difference between the open source PCgen and the "professional" Herolab.
I still often use Salamasht's editable sheet (and yes, I read edible at first as well) - I'm afraid I don't have a link at the moment to it. Lovely landscape format that can print into a booklet.
I used PCgen a couple (i think) years ago and i didn't like it, the fact that core books were missing was the least of my problems, the bugs, the slow proccessing and the unfriendly UI were much bigger issues. Still for a free open source program is ok.
@Blave, what flaws and bugs?
LOL, when I saw the title, I read it as "edible character sheets" and I thought "what a great new product idea!"
Kickstarter, here I come!
@Blave, what flaws and bugs?
- Eldritch knight levels not stacking with fighter levels for feat requirements. Never could take weapon specialisation for my fighter1/wizard 5/ek 3
- Eldritch knight getting his first bonus feat at the wrong level (I think it was level 3 instead of 1)- Battle oracle's weapon mastery granting all its bonus feats at immediately even at level 1. I think you could even select the bonus feats again manually.
- buffs or special abilities like power attack often not showing up correctly. Re-loding the character usually fixed that.
- sometimes after altering the skill points distribution I ended up with more skillpoints than I should have.
That's from memory. I'm sure there was more, but it's been a while since I used PCgen. A few of those might also be fixed already. I don't think I used the latest release last time, but it was no beta or release candidate.
All those are minor things, mind you. For actual play I wouldn't mind that. But I often build characters when I'm bored just to see what different classes and builds can do. And when I do that, I don't want to double check everything.
(I double check anything I actual play even with Herolab but it does seem to deliver significantly less errors.)
Has noone ever heard of PCgen???? It's a free to download Personal Character Generator that will work for nearly any d20 based system.
I did a side by side comparison with HeroLab and PCgen. I couldn't find any advantage that one had over the other. PCgen is quite a bit faster, though we'll see how it performs while MapTools is also running. Thanks for the recommendation.
As a caveat, when you load quite a few sourcebooks PCGen does slowdown. Hero Lab loads everything right upfront so no mater how ever many sources you are using speed of the program isn't impacted.
Also I have found that creating really new (ie clases / races / feats) it was cumbersome in Hero Lab, but that might just be from me not using Hero Lab for d20 systems, I use it for ShadowRun.
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There's web-based fillable sheets at pfrpg.com.au. Register an account, then click on Account, and there's a link there to create a character and host it there as well.
LOL, when I saw the title, I read it as "edible character sheets" and I thought "what a great new product idea!"
Kickstarter, here I come!
That's what I read too!
DM - "The Death Knight attacks. What's your armour class?"
PC - "You'll never find out! Nomnomnom."