Character Managers?

[lazarus]

What HERO (5th ed preferably) Character creator/generator/managers are there out there?

Preferably ones that are as close to free as possible, as I have, well, no budget for this kind of thing.

I've used Hero Designer 2 ... and would buy it if I could (just because it has Linux support ...)

Thanks,
Laz might write his own...

[Killer Shrike]

HD2 is my recommendation.

[lazarus]

I can't afford HD2 right now ... and probably not in the near future.

Which is why I was wondering about alternatives :-P

Laz thinks he'll have to write his own.

[Killer Shrike]

Let me put it this way. If you spend even 5 hours making your own then you are valuing your time at $10/hr.

To get something equivalent in value to HD it will take you much more than 5 hrs, even assuming you are a programming wizard and can key quickly. And if you are, then your time is definitely worth more to begin with.

So, basically, if you are considering writing your own, it really is more cost effective to just buy HDv2. :D

[lazarus]

good point ... but having a lack of income (but only for another two weeks!) kind of hinders purchasing power :p

[Lord Liaden]

There are variety of spreadsheet programs and record sheets on this page (http://www.herogames.com/FreeStuff/csheets.htm) of the "Free Stuff" section of the website. You may find some of them useful.

You might also get some use out of fellow board member nyakki's Random Character Generator (http://www.trimira.com/hero_stuff/hero_stuff.html) website for Champions and Fantasy HERO. Even though it's a random generator, it has quite a few customizable options.

The same website lets you download nyakki's "Hero Helper" software, which may do some of the things you want.

I hope those are some help to you. :)

[lazarus]

I'm still tempted to write my own "Character Manager" ... what better way to learn chargen than to write a program to do it?

The only issue I'm having is this: I'd write it in Java to be cross-platform, and work on my Linux boxen. Ok, that's fine. HOWEVER, HD2 is in Java as well, and I can't think of any way to make mine look significantly different from theirs. HD2 just seems to have the UI _almost_ to perfection ... which I wouldn't be able to compete with.

Perhaps I'll just write a perl script to take a bunch of HD2 character files and amalgamate them into one GM Sheet?

Does the XML output from HD2 have an XSLT sheet associated with it?

Are there any things with HD2 that you don't like which you think could be done better a different way? (If there are ... I might just write "Sidekick Character Manager" anyway)