he long-awaited D&D eTools program is finally out, providing players with computerized character and monster generators for Wizards of the Coast's signature fantasy role-playing game.
The program has three major types of tools: creators, generators and tables. Creators allow users to build characters from scratch based on the classes and races from the Players Handbook, as well as the prestige and non-player-character classes from the Dungeon Master's Guide. Characters can be created starting at first level in a given classes, or higher levels from one or more classes. Creators can also be used to give character levels to monsters, turning a lowly kobold into a more respectable fifth-level sorcerer.
The generators automate the creation process. For example, the character generation can create semi-random characters: users note whether they want to have a random race, class and/or alignment and the generator spits out a response. The final product is only partly random—variables for things like magic items, skills and feats are based on the generic NPCs detailed in the DMG. The creation can then be edited in the character editor. There's also a random treasure generator that asks for a "challenge rating" (a ranking of how difficult a monster was to defeat) and then creates a list of appropriate coins, artwork and magic items.
D&D has always been filled with tables—for wandering monsters, for weather, for the color of one's beer, for just about anything imaginable. eTools allows its users to create their own tables and to then "run" them to create a result. There's also a dice roller allowing for rolling everything from two-sided dice to 100-sided ones.
Time for a toolbox—but not this one
The problem with eTools isn't that it's too late. It's that it's too little.
Gamers have been waiting for Wizards of the Coast to release electronic tools for D&D 3E ever since the game was published in 2000. Back then, the product was known as Master Tools, and a preview character generator was included with each Player's Handbook
sold. Time passed and plans changed, and Fluid, Master Tools' designer, was forced to drop the mapping program from the tool. Wizards then decided to change the tool's name to eTools to avoid any confusion with the earlier product.
Meanwhile, gamers have created home-grown tools to fill the void, including the Java-based PC Gen character generator, the online NPC and Treasure generators by Jamis Buck, and the Mac-based "Crystal Ball." All of them offer capabilities similar to—or in excess off—eTools.
eTools has a few things going for it. First, it's official—it's the only D&D tool that has WotC's blessing to include content from the core rule books, rather than simply the subset of material released under the "open gaming" license. This allows it to incorporate much of the text for feats, skills, spells and other commonly sought information from the core handbooks into the game's help file.
Another good feature, and something not included in some of the free tools, is the table designer and generator. Tables are something that every DM needs to use, and the ability to create new ones is nice. The interface is Windows generic, and while it's adequate for the job at hand, it isn't as attractive or intuitive as the preview Character Generator released in 2000. It is, however a big leap forward from the clunky and awkward interfaces for Core Rules, the computer aid released to support D&D's second edition.
That said, the program has a lot of problems, too. The non-player-character generator's reliance on the Dungeon Master's Guide's generic NPCs means every NPC of a given class—be it human or
medusa—has the same feats and same magic items. This would be OK, but Jamis Buck's generator creates truly random results.
The Monster Generator is better than the NPC one, but it has its own problems. For example, I decided to create an aboleth—an evil monster that lurks in deep subterranean lakes and water sources. I used the program to "advance" it from a huge beast to a gigantic one. Then I went into the editor, where I was told that the monster had spent too many skill points, and had two feats that hadn't been assigned. There's no indication of why this happened, and from what I've read online, others have run into similar problems with feats and skill points when generating characters or monsters.
Finally, the program only ships with information and rules from the three core D&D books—none of the guidebook information is included. This means that all of the official prestige classes, magic items, feats and other supplemental rules released over the last two years can't be
used with this tool. What could have been eTool's greatest advantage over its fan-created brethren—sanctioned use of all of Wizards of the Coast's own content—is instead a liability.
eTool's silver lining is the Access database that drives it. Although Access is not needed to run the program, those who have Microsoft's database program can use it to modify eTool's tables and create new ones. Users have already begun making their own tweaks—such as new or omitted monsters, races and feats—as well as improved tools for importing and exporting their effort. If the fan support continues to grow, and if WotC supports the product with expansions that fix some of its problems and add the various guidebooks, then eTools could transform into a far more useful tool.
eTools does an adequate job, but it needed to do a heck of a lot more to win initiative back from its home-grown kin.
— Kenneth
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