My party loves to playtest Unearthed Arcana (playing a hexblade right now), and sometimes our stories lead us to strange places (that one time a player was transformed to an Aasimar when Aasimar were only in the DMG). We often fine UA unbalanced at first, and make tweaks as we play.
When using UA or other homebrew, we wouldn't expect it to be plug-and-play, but being able to type in UA/homebrew feats, races, classes and subclasses would do wonders. Currently Beyond Tabletop has the flexibility to accommodate, I would love to switch everybody here though.
Is this functionality planned?
EDIT: I just found the patch notes and now I feel silly: Creating backgrounds, feats, races, or subclasses. We want to start testing with a smaller subset of content types. We'll add more opportunities for custom content as we move forward.
The current build of the character generator is a bit of a cross between allowing flexibility and standing by the rules (can't add custom skills/backgrounds yet). This is something that staff will have to consider as they move forward. Do they want a rules reliant character builder, a freeflow do-as-you-want builder, or both? With the opinions expressed in these forums, we shall see!
It's unclear if your question was rhetorical or not, so I'll answer. Ideally, it's a combination of both. Here's a few 'stories' I would use to guide it's development if I ran the world.
1) Campaign for new players: Jeremy, a seasoned DM is asked to DM for a group of largely new characters. He buys "Storm King's Thunder" and invites his party to join his campaign. during the invite process, he is prompted to specify which material should be made available to the players. Jeremy doesn't want to overwhelm his party, so he selects SCAG, and PHB only. When the players receive their invitation, they create new characters within the structured builder, with only sanctioned material from those sources. Bonus points if he can pre-populate standard array, custom array, point buy, or 4d6 drop 1.
2) Campaign for experienced players. Jeremy runs a second session on Wednesdays. It's an older party, who likes to mix in homebrew and UA. They all own all the players content already, have pre-ordered xanathar's guide to everything. They will be frustrated if they can't play their Kenku Mystic they've been thinking about all week. Jeremy likes rules though and wants to be able to set some limits. At the beginning of the campaign, Jeremy permits Homebrew along with all the standard material, and invites his players. Before the campaign starts, players create the Mystic Class and the Hexblade Sub-class. Jeremy creates the "Dangerous Information" background specified in EE for his players to select from. This "homebrew" is available only within the campaign and can be edited by Jeremy at any time.Â
Jeremy's players use the structured character builder to create their characters, including a Yuan-ti Hexblade and a Kenku Mystic. Jeremy reviews their character sheets. the changes made to it by the homebrew are highlighted for his review. Because Homebrew is enabled, he manually adds Medium armor proficiency and poison immunity to the Warlock, much in the same way he would modify a homebrew monster.
3) Comic Relief Sundays: On Sunday's Jeremy runs a ridiculous campaign full of overpowered magic items, 95 point buy characters, dinosaurs, and unicorns. He unlocks manual character creation at the beginning of the campaign and lets his players type in whatever they want in their character sheet. The level 4 druid who can transform into a Tyrannosaurus Rex is pleased.
My party loves to playtest Unearthed Arcana (playing a hexblade right now), and sometimes our stories lead us to strange places (that one time a player was transformed to an Aasimar when Aasimar were only in the DMG). We often fine UA unbalanced at first, and make tweaks as we play.
When using UA or other homebrew, we wouldn't expect it to be plug-and-play, but being able to type in UA/homebrew feats, races, classes and subclasses would do wonders. Currently Beyond Tabletop has the flexibility to accommodate, I would love to switch everybody here though.
Is this functionality planned?
EDIT: I just found the patch notes and now I feel silly: Creating backgrounds, feats, races, or subclasses. We want to start testing with a smaller subset of content types. We'll add more opportunities for custom content as we move forward.
The current build of the character generator is a bit of a cross between allowing flexibility and standing by the rules (can't add custom skills/backgrounds yet). This is something that staff will have to consider as they move forward. Do they want a rules reliant character builder, a freeflow do-as-you-want builder, or both? With the opinions expressed in these forums, we shall see!
Thanks for the feedback!
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It's unclear if your question was rhetorical or not, so I'll answer. Ideally, it's a combination of both. Here's a few 'stories' I would use to guide it's development if I ran the world.
1) Campaign for new players: Jeremy, a seasoned DM is asked to DM for a group of largely new characters. He buys "Storm King's Thunder" and invites his party to join his campaign. during the invite process, he is prompted to specify which material should be made available to the players. Jeremy doesn't want to overwhelm his party, so he selects SCAG, and PHB only. When the players receive their invitation, they create new characters within the structured builder, with only sanctioned material from those sources. Bonus points if he can pre-populate standard array, custom array, point buy, or 4d6 drop 1.
2) Campaign for experienced players. Jeremy runs a second session on Wednesdays. It's an older party, who likes to mix in homebrew and UA. They all own all the players content already, have pre-ordered xanathar's guide to everything. They will be frustrated if they can't play their Kenku Mystic they've been thinking about all week. Jeremy likes rules though and wants to be able to set some limits. At the beginning of the campaign, Jeremy permits Homebrew along with all the standard material, and invites his players. Before the campaign starts, players create the Mystic Class and the Hexblade Sub-class. Jeremy creates the "Dangerous Information" background specified in EE for his players to select from. This "homebrew" is available only within the campaign and can be edited by Jeremy at any time.Â
Jeremy's players use the structured character builder to create their characters, including a Yuan-ti Hexblade and a Kenku Mystic. Jeremy reviews their character sheets. the changes made to it by the homebrew are highlighted for his review. Because Homebrew is enabled, he manually adds Medium armor proficiency and poison immunity to the Warlock, much in the same way he would modify a homebrew monster.
3) Comic Relief Sundays: On Sunday's Jeremy runs a ridiculous campaign full of overpowered magic items, 95 point buy characters, dinosaurs, and unicorns. He unlocks manual character creation at the beginning of the campaign and lets his players type in whatever they want in their character sheet. The level 4 druid who can transform into a Tyrannosaurus Rex is pleased.
I seem to have also found a bug In the forums..
When copy and pasting from the editor window, the Unicode character U+00C2 appears all over the place.