4th edition character builder and tools going away at end of month

Dear DDI Subscriber,

We appreciate you being a subscriber for so many years! The sheer number of D&D encounters, characters, & creations this service has enabled is truly staggering and we are eternally grateful.

Due to the Silverlight platform no longer being supported by Microsoft, the Dungeons & Dragons Insider service will be ending effective December 31, 2019. All your characters and material will be unavailable starting on January 1, 2020. There will be no charge for using the service in December of 2019 and our partners at Digital River will be contacting you with details on any potential refunds for charges made this month.

If you have any questions, please reach out to Wizards Customer Service here.

Don’t fret! All your creations made on this platform can be exported. Here are simple instructions for how to download your creations for future use:
Characters:
Go to https://ddi.wizards.com/DDiTools.aspx
Click Launch on the Character Builder
Click Load next to “Load a D&D Character”
Select the character you would like to save
Click the export button
Name the file the name of your character
Click Save
You can now open your character in a notepad program and look at the raw data.
Monsters:
Go to https://ddi.wizards.com/DDiTools.aspx
Launch Adventure Tools
Click Monster List
Click on the monster you want to save
Click Preview on the top right corner
Click Export on the bottom right corner
Name your monster
Click Save
You can now open your character in a notepad program and look at the raw data.
All of this content will become unavailable starting on January 1, 2020 so please make any exports before then.

Once again, we on the D&D Team appreciate fans who have used the D&D Insider platform for so many years. You are all heroes and we hope to see you rolling dice in the future!

Happy holidays,
The D&D Team

Might be time to switch to 5e.

So what are our choices. Is there an off line builder other than the ancient one I use? How do we get that one on a usb?

There is a 4e Character Builder in a computer application called HeroLab.
It's available on their computer app called Hero Lab Classic. I tried posting Kazoo in it and it seemed to work for powers. I didn't bother with items though since the "try for free" demo doesn't let you save. It's definitely not as easy as the DDI 4e CB but it seems like it gets most everything right, and might even be more accurate in some cases.
To try it go here: https://www.wolflair.com/hero-lab-classic/
and scroll a little bit down the page to where it says Hero Lab Classic. Then select Windows (or Mac) to start downloading it. Like I said though, it's free to test, but to save or print a character you need to buy, and I'm not ready to do that until we decide for sure if we want to stay with DnD4e.
Many characer builder options if we want to switch to DnD5e, mainly DnDBeyond.com, which you can actually sign onto with a google account and create some basic characters for free.

It seems we're at a stopping point in the Giant series.

If we're going to switch editions, do we:
* Finish the Frost portion, then break since we can no longer level up characters
* Stop now and get use to 5E, then continue with 5th edition characters

Other options???

Cost for the 4e Character Builder on HeroLab is $24.99, and it only works on one computer, so no sharing, unless everyone wants to create their character on one shared computer.   
Unfortunately, it doesn't look like you can upload the old DnD4e save file to this, so it would all be manual entry. So this would be lots of work as I think Stu creates most of the TKD player PC's himself.
The good news is that all of the 4e content looks like it's available.

As I stated before, the 5e characters builder in DnDBeyond is very easy to use, and most of the basic classes and races are free. There is a thing where one person can but everything, and share it out to several players so many can have access to all the different character builder features from various books.

Other thing that sucks is that the 4e compendium is going away as well.  No more easily looking up rules or other references.  They don't have that on the HeroLab application.

Here is a link to facebook where I posted an example of the HeroLab player character output.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/PacificNWGamers/permalink/1203697613157982/

Talked to Stu today and we decided we should switch over to 4e.  So everyone should download your characters as a PDF from the Old Character Builder, or as a DDI File (.dnd4e) to save it.
Does anyone else have thoughts about the issue before everyone starts buying the Hero Lab 4e version.

Is there a way to import .dnd4e files or do we have to input them by hand?

Since we're not advancing very fast I think I'll just create versions of my PC from 12-21 using the current builder and save those so that I can load them into iplay4e. I can always tweek the raw .dnd4e file and upload that if needed.

Since support for 4E is going away, we really should move on as well...

I like the balance and game play of 4E more then 5E, but with support going away, there very little reason to stay.

5e is actually fairly balanced  Just like any other versions though you can always power game and I also agree we should move on.  

Stu really wants to stick with 4e. You know how I had to drag him and all of you kicking and screaming into 4e in the first place.  

The 4e Builder in Hero Lab does not have the option, that I could find, to add the .dnd4e file.

Instructions for the new builder:
https://www.wolflair.com/
Products
Hero Lab Classic
Near the bottom click on: "A plethora of Add Ons"
Go down the list to : "– Savage Worlds / Authoring Kit / D&D 4E –"
Check the box for:
"Savage Worlds, Authoring Kit, D&D4E, & others" for $24.99

Honestly, it would be cheaper for us to pool some money and buy Stu a full set of 5E books than to spend money for a 4E builder and a product no longer supported by WotC.

I agree.  Also, I just noticed that the Hero Lab 4e does not have many magic items and its community-run.  So the HeroLab might not be a good option.

I have a ton invested in 4e, and I'm running three adventures a month often time and I'm not using any of the monster creation or other aids of the insider. I don't even have my own account. I'm basically just using the ancient 4e Character Builder for most characters and the online one for the few Hybrid Characters I have.

Doesn't seem like anyone else is running many adventures anyway... if other players will DM more if they can do so in 5e, they are more than free to do so. I can barely remember the last time I was able to play as a player... I think it was the zombie trial session where I got shot with a shotgun. I do have the three basic 5e books that were given to me free some time back.

I think it's a pretty small price to pay for everyone who wishes to continue playing to purchase a 4e character builder, at least for the time being. The 4e character builder is a one time purchase which I think is better than paying for a subscription. I don't think it matters at all that Wizards will not support 4e any longer. Other than the issue with the character builder, which should be resolved by every interested player having a 4e builder on their PC, the lack of Wizard's support for 4e will not affect the way I've been running or preparing for sessions in the least.

One short term potential issue with changing to 5e, is that some players (in addition to Stuart who DMs the most) will have to purchase additional 5e resources, character builders, etc. and re-learn how to play.

Well like I said, that 4e Character builder doesn't work well.  It's missing many magic items, including basic magic weapons and armor. It's also not calculating bonuses and allowing skills as I had in the original builder.  It's not a finished product at all, and it relies on community involvement to program the missing products in, and it doesn't have much support to get that data entered.
If we stick with 4e we should probably find a more reliable product, since the way 4e is laid out, I don't think it's feasible to play it with Pen and Paper.  

As far as 5e you can easily learn how to play that pretty quick. When I started playing it with Chris and his family we figured it out in one night.  I can give everyone a one page summary of rules that vary from 4e. I was actually able to get all players in 5e without even explaining rules to them, most of which never played an RPG.  
I also have tons of books already that you can have access too.  I can also share my DnDBeyond account with you so you can have access to the same resources I do.  
The way 5e official material works the basic character builder is free.  If a DM buys all the books digitally they have access to them on DnDBeyond.  Including monsters, magic items and access to classes, races, magic items, etc, then the DM can assign up to 11 players, who would have access to the Character Builder options.  

It's very expensive if you think of it as one player buying everything, which would cost $632, but that gets every player access to every resource the resource.  Once that's purchased you can share it out with up to 36 players so they can create characters and have all the options. If everyone pooled resources it would be a cost of about $50 from each player.  

To share the data the owner of the data would have to have a Master Tier Subscriber, which costs $54/year.
I would be willing to be the owner if people would be willing to contribute to the initial cost of the resources, and I would just pay for the Subscription myself annually.  Then like I said, I can share it with you, Stu, and you could access it anywhere (via computer, smartphone or tablet)  
After the initial cost, all the players could then create up to 6 characters that are saved for free, with access to all resources the DM has for player options. Players can also get a subscription ($54.99/year), which would give them an unlimited amount of characters, but I would think 6 characters would be enough.

I'll donate to the 5E pool.

For 4E, I've made copies of Espirit from 1st to 21st and will use those. I'll need to take screen shots of the items/feats/class rules since we'll loose access to those.

I'd be willing to chip in the $50/$60 in for the 5e if that's the way we go.

I did the same for Kazoo.
Stu maintains several of the TKD groups though and would be a lot of work for him.

Dwarmaj wrote:I'll donate to the 5E pool.

For 4E, I've made copies of Espirit from 1st to 21st and will use those. I'll need to take screen shots of the items/feats/class rules since we'll loose access to those.

My preference would be to have everyone create higher-level versions of our existing 4e PC's to finish the giant series (Stu, what level would that be), then after that switch to 5e.  

The good thing about 5e is that it will increase our Dungeon Master pool.  Chris ran a campaign for his relatives and me, and Arthur DM's 5e as well.
Chris's brother-in-law, who had previously never played an RPG in his life, DM's our current campaign and he picked up on how to do it just by playing in Chris's Campaign.
My 13-year old son participates occasionally, as a guest DM, in a 5e campaign I run for some of Susie's relatives and their friends, plus runs his own campaign for his other Middle School Friends.

So it should be really easy for 4e DM's to pick up, or even Players who have never DM'd before.
In other words, learning curve should not be a reason not to go to 5e.

I'm of the opinion that we finish out all the series we are currently playing in and switch to 5E at the conclusion. I will chip in as well to whatever 5E fund that is needed to defray cost. I've been playing RPGs for decades now and have used almost a dozen different rulesets not including the ones made for computer games. Besides the money outlay there hasn't been a problem switching from one ruleset to the next and it's the players, the story, the interactions and the DM that really makes an impact not the ruleset.

5E is very similar to 3.5 but they took a number of 4E rules and made everything easier.

The only campaign we really have active in 4e is Stu's Giant Campaign.
Mine, Ken's and Mick's can easily switch over to 5e. As a matter of fact, they will probably have to with the loss of the DDI Toolset since us 3 use it for the monsters an treasure.  I think Stu is the only one who DM'd from the books.

The problem with switching is not just whether people can learn it. 5e is easier sure; but it's also not as good of a game. It cuts far too much in the interest of simplifying things. It loses a lot of strategy and teamwork and many of the interesting abilities in 4e. In addition the cost to switch is massive. Hundreds of dollars to get a crummier game is not a good deal in my opinion. Especially since there is no guarantee on how long that purchase will be good for. 6e could be announced tomorrow.

The biggest issue though is that we are not talking about slight rules changes. Multiple people would have to re-roll and learn new characters. Vic's entire class is gone in 5e. My characters are hybrid which is gone as well. Yes we certainly CAN do that but that doesn't mean we all want to or that it will be easy.

I vote we make a couple character levels for the immediate future and just wait for someone to make another character builder. Someone will within a few months. Any GM who wants to make 5e games certainly can, and I will gladly play them but I much prefer 4e and will happily deal with third party character builders or even hand making paper sheets if that lets me play the better game. Paper sheets are how most of us started D&D and while certainly less convenient do not detract from actually playing the game. If it comes to that I don't mind helping people fill out sheets; but it don't think it will. I think this is a temporary set back at most. I wouldn't be surprised if a third party builder is actually better.

Stu’s current campaign is supposed to go to about 16th level until it ends. I think we could finish that as 4e and if a good builder comes up before it ends then we can continue with 4e.
I’ll be running mine in 5e until that happens though.
Yes, some classe names don’t match up exactly but you can find common themes. You also still have tactical battles, main thing you lose is the powers that create the role play parts that people don’t really state anyway.

Stu's is going to 26th level? We're only 13th now.

Oops. I meant Stu's current campaign would go to 16th level in total.

Terrible UI but it does have data... http://iws.mx/dnd/?list.name.All

Nice. That's actually a pretty good 4E Compendium.

PlaguePixie wrote:Terrible UI but it does have data...   http://iws.mx/dnd/?list.name.All

As many of you might know I am somewhat of a procrastinator. Bit me in the butt today because I had thought based on the wording of their annoucement that I would have until today to get things done. I sat down around 5PM and found that the sentance " service will be ending effective December 31, 2019" meant that the builder was gone as of today, not tomorrow.

So I decided to look to see what is out there. It took some digging and an email to a dude on the Giant in the Playground forums but I found that there is an offline Character Builder that seems to have been built by Wizards of the Coast. In the ensuing years either Wizards updated it or enterprising people did and it appears to have everything that the character builder had and more. It has everything I need for my seeker for sure.

I now have all the installer and files needed to get the builder to work on a Windows 10 PC and the steps needed to make it work. There are some extra things like pictures for races that I haven't worked on but I will try to do so tomorrow. I will get the files needed and instructions uploaded to my Google drive and will send it out to anyone who wants it. There is also an offline compendium. Let me know if there is any interest in the builder.

Heck yes. Post it in the 4e Tools feed.

I have the feeling that these files aren't really supposed to be out there which is why the guy had people email him for the link.  I'm going to do the same and will direct message, text, or some other means of giving individuals the Google drive link but I won't put them directly on the forums.

Edit:
I have posted a link on the Tools section about how to install. Will get the files loaded to a google drive that is sharable but only to those I directly invite.

@Mick, that's 16th, not 26th Level... :-)

We should do a D&D session at Stu's and have people bring their computers, and we can assist those who need the installation help.  
Can also show those who haven't used the builder before how to use it. I know Stu makes some player's characters for them. This option will allow them to do it themselves.

I think I may have spoken to the same person. I also had a similar exchange with someone on reddit. I compiled the two and have a consolidated rewritten install. It seems to be mostly up to date. I've seen a couple missing items but also there are ways to easily add them in. I'd be happy to share and help people get it going on their computers.

So are you running it on a Mac? Ken was having trouble installing it on his.

PlaguePixie wrote:I think I may have spoken to the same person. I also had a similar exchange with someone on reddit. I compiled the two and have a consolidated rewritten install. It seems to be mostly up to date. I've seen a couple missing items but also there are ways to easily add them in. I'd be happy to share and help people get it going on their computers.