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Icosahedronal Character Creator Version .26
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Intro
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What the heck is an Icosahedron you might wonder. It's the name for the 20 sided polyhedron. See,  this really large roleplaying game company (owned by an even bigger game/toy company) has this interesting policy towards their game system. It seems anyone can use it and use the name of it on the product, as long as they abide by some restrictions. Unfortunately, those restrictions basically consist of not describing how characters are made or advance in levels. Which sort of defeats the entire purpose of a Character Generator. So, I can't mention the name apparently.

I also apparently can't use the rules for that from their most popular game, since that is not considered 'Open Content', and they aren't in the rules that are 'open'. So, I created my own mechanics for that, which while completely different, have the same net result. You really still need to go buy the 3rd Edition Player's Handbook to fully understand and use my program.

It's written in Visual Basic 6.0, so you'll need some form of 32 bit Windoze (or something that can run 32 bit Windoze programs), plus the VB 6.0 runtime library. I don't use any custom controls or the like, so you just need that. 

I say 'help', and call it 'no frills', because it doesn't do 100% of the job for you. And quite honestly, my character sheet sucks. I would suggest, you create a character using my program, then enter the info into a character sheet. There are some really nice pdf ones where you can actually enter the information. Pretty slick. 

If I can figure out how to export to something like that, I'll give it whirl. But right now, it just exports to a plain old text file. 

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Disclaimer:
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This is still a pretty early version, and it has only been tested by me. So there might be bugs I didn't notice. It's been safe for me, but you use it at your own risk. 



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Features
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What it does do:
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Rolls the dice for stats by several methods, and applies race modifiers for stats

Keeps track of skills, including half-ranks for cross class skills, as well as which skills are class, cross class, or not allowed. 

Rolls Hit Points, including the constitution bonus

Calculates Base Attack Bonuses and Saves

Keeps track of feats a character has

Allows leveling up in a class

Save/Load characters from disk

Print out characters to a really crappy char sheet

Keep track of special abilities for each class 

Tells you have many spells a day a char can cast if he can cast spells

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What it doesn't do:
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Add the bonuses from Feats to the relevent skills/stats/attack bonuses, saves, etc

Keep track of exp...

Allow leveling down...

* Keep track of what spells a character can and can't cast

Keep track of class requirements (including prestige)

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So..what's the point then
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Well, many of the things it's missing are easy to keep track of by the player. But most of those would have greatly increased the programming needed.  Also, they would have reduced the customizabilty of this program.   

Almost everything is customizable. So you can add your own races, classes, skills, feats, etc. That's good to customize it to your campaign, as well as for other games based on a 20 sided dice which should soon be hitting the market. (A couple in November).

As time goes by, I'll likely add support for most of the things missing. At least the ones marked with an asterisk. But no promises. 

I'll also be improving the things that do work. And adding idiot proofing.


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Using the Program
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The Basics
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Run the .exe

You start up with a screen asking you which world to load. You just click on which rules you want, and it goes to the main screen.

You're now at the main screen. No character is loaded, so you can either load one using the menu, or create a new one.

To create a new one, just either hit the roll option under the menu, or assign the scores yourself. The ability score total is kept, if you want to use a points method. 

Once the stats are okay, pick a race. Just use the combo box. The same with alignment 

Then you should level the character up. To do this, double click on the class the character wants to level up in in the list box entitled 'Classes' (It's in the top center).

The character has now gained a level in that class. Right now the level limit in a class is 20. But there is no character level limit. 

When a character is leveled up, the character is given the apropriate amount of skill points. You can then buy skills.  To buy a skill, simply double click on the skill you want to buy in the list box. There are three radio buttons labeled "Class","Cross Class", and "Prohib" (for prohibited).  They will change depending on what that skill is for the current class. There is also a free button that will let you buy extra skill ranks.

Right now, it doesn't check for the max rank. It would be easy to do, but I don't want to, because I don't like the rule. If you do like the rule, just show self-control

If you change your mind, just double click on the skill value (er, rank), and it will be reduced and the skill points increased...

Skill points are saved if you level up again. 

Anyway, besides buying skills, you can also select feats. Feats are handled very primatively. Basically, just select the ones you want, and that's it. The number of feats the char gets is kept track of, though (new in .25).

Also, besides just getting skill points when you level up, you get hit points, and new attack/save bonuses. If you don't like the new hit points, you can edit them and put whatever you want. 


Once you're done, you can save or print it out or print it out to a file.


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Loading a saved character
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Pick load, then you get a window with a list of character sav files. Double click on the one you want, and it will be loaded. 

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Menu Item Descriptions....
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Roll - Rolls the stats using the method picked. 


Method - How the abilities are rolled

    Keep 3, Drop Low - Keeps the best 3 dice rolled

    3d6,4d6,5d6 - How many dice are rolled

Random - Stuff about the Character determined by random

    Random Name - Generates a random name, either by picking a name at random from a list of names in a file according to that race, or by picking letters at random. Not surprisingly, the former generates better names. Or at least, pronounceable ones. But the latter sometimes comes up with decent names, although it needs improvement.

    Buy Skills - All or One - 1 skill point is spent, picked at random.


Char Details - Stuff about the character I couldn't fit in the form

    Sex - Male, female, or Andro - Doesn't really affect anything

    More details - another screen pops up and you can enter more info on the char - height, weight, age, description, background. Doesn't matter what you put, it doesn't really matter, and most gets printed on the char sheet. If you can't think of anything, hit the ???? button and it will randomly generate vague answers.

File -

    Save  - Saves a character to disk. Filename used is the name of the character

    Load - Brings up a list of characters. Double click on one to load.
  

Print Character

   Print to File - Prints the character to a text file

   Print to Printer - Prints the character to the printer. Might be a bit dodgy.

Exit - Exits the program. 


Tools - Explained in the technical document

View License - Shows the license for that world.

  


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Improvements planned for future versions
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Better Implementation of Random Skill Buying

Idiot Proofing

Better Random Names (no more Xdjf Dxjqjqxs)

Print character sheet to HTML file

Better char sheet

Improving the tools

General improvements

Saving char stats to file in 'stat block' form



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Legal Stuff and Contact Info 
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I'm not sure where this stands. I'm not using their d20STL, only the stuff in their SRD released under their OGL (Open Gaming License). Actually, their SRD isn't really released yet, but like the many companies that are putting out stuff for it, I'm overlooking that little bit. 

Also, I borrowed from spell point rules from a couple of books, mostly under the basis that rules mechanics are not copyrighable. I didn't use any product identity, though.




               Jeremy Reaban
               jer@connectria.com
