I make Character sheets for some main NPCs. Even though they are set to private, my players see them in the campaign page as unassigned characters. One of my players has shared content and now I can't create without the party seeing they exist and the sheets.
I can't dm like this and don't want to pay for a bunch of books I already have. Can I get some recommendations of another platform or a fix? I'll go back to paper IDC.
There is no "set to private" in campaigns as far as DM and Players are concerned, that just protects you from the outside world. What works for many of us is to create a campaign of the same name and add NPCs at the end. That way you can still build them and get to them easily but they aren't in the same campaign as the players so they can't see them. Works better for Encounter builder too.
If you claim them for yourself, they won't be readable to the players if they're set to private. They'll still be able to see the top-level details (species and class), but nothing else.
However: do you need to make these NPCs as characters at all?
An NPC the players are not expected to get involved in combat with doesn't need stats.
An NPC the players are going to fight is better built as a monster stat block -- the system isn't designed for characters vs characters to work well.
Only an NPC who's going to fight alongside the party makes a lot of sense to stat up as a character. On the principle of not stealing the players' thunder, these are best used sparingly. (And the sidekick rules exist for these purposes, though I'm not sure how well they're supported here.)
I make Character sheets for some main NPCs. Even though they are set to private, my players see them in the campaign page as unassigned characters. One of my players has shared content and now I can't create without the party seeing they exist and the sheets.
I can't dm like this and don't want to pay for a bunch of books I already have. Can I get some recommendations of another platform or a fix? I'll go back to paper IDC.
There is no "set to private" in campaigns as far as DM and Players are concerned, that just protects you from the outside world. What works for many of us is to create a campaign of the same name and add NPCs at the end. That way you can still build them and get to them easily but they aren't in the same campaign as the players so they can't see them. Works better for Encounter builder too.
If you claim them for yourself, they won't be readable to the players if they're set to private. They'll still be able to see the top-level details (species and class), but nothing else.
However: do you need to make these NPCs as characters at all?
kk that is both really good advice, thanks!