PCGen

Although role-playing games are all about telling a story and providing the players with a meaningful adventure, the actual character sheets are insanely complicated for those who are not familiar with the practice. Hence, it can be a real challenge to keep up with multiple characters at the same time, since there are many stats and attributes you must remember.

PCGen is an elegant little application that allows you to keep track of your RPG characters in a very organized manner, as well as create them from scratch. Not only that, but you have complete control over every aspect, including stats, attributes, spells, race, name, and many other bits and pieces that might be of importance. In essence, this is a complete tool for any d20-based RPG out there.

To begin with, you can easily create a new character and give it a name, only to drown in the staggering amount of options you are presented with. Every possible race, class, deity, and ability is present and everything is connected as well, so your stats are updated depending on the race you choose and so on. This way, you can avoid creating illegal characters and keep an eye on everything you modify.

Naturally, the application is useful in a variety of other purposes as well, such as when you need to quickly create characters to use in video games. Entire parties can be formed as well, which is definitely a helpful feature when you have to deal with old-school RPGs that require six different characters from the get-go and you want to avoid randomly generating them.

Interface-wise, the tool is quite straightforward and easy-to-use, although the interface can get a bit cluttered sometimes. However, this is only because it comes with so many features, so not all of them can be neatly arranged at all times. The application was developed in Java, which means that it can run on basically any operating system that has that specific runtime installed.

When it’s all said and done, PCGen has a very specific target audience, and it should be more than enough for those who need it. Thus, if you are looking for something to ease your job as a dungeon master, this can certainly be the thing to lend you a helping hand.