PCGen Walk-Through

Intro

Welcome to PCGen! PCGen has recently completed Phase I of a GUI revamp, and Phase II is now underway. After that is completed we hope to focus on cutting a Production release of PCGen. We'll make big announcements when that is nearing completion! :)

If you have trouble running PCGen, see if your problem is covered Trouble.htm here, if not, let us know at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pcgen and we'll be glad to help resolve your issue.

Creating a New Character

Once you have loaded your sources (see the Source Material Tab tab description), the "New" menu item in the "File" menu should be enabled, as will the "New Document" icon in the toolbar. If those are not enabled then the sources you have loaded must not contain enough data to create a character.

How to use the GUI

Sorting: Most of the tables can be sorted by clicking on the column header, and reverse-sorted by shift-clicking on the column header.

Right-Click: You can right-click on most items for additional options. For example, in the Inventory tab you can right-click on an item in the "Available" table and select "Customise" to alter that item (change its size, name, make it masterwork/magical, etc.).

Alignment: Some races and classes require an alignment. PCGen starts your character off with an empty alignment, so you won't qualify for anything that requires certain alignment(s). The alignment selection box is currently located in the lower-right hand corner of the Class tab.

Pre-Requisites: Any pre-requisites you don't meet will show up in red - this is to help focus your attention on why you don't meet the pre-reqs.

Sliding Dividers: Most of the tabs have 3 sets of sliding dividers. This way you can change how much screen room is devoted to the different areas of the tab.

Known Issues

PCGen doesn't currently handle leveling-down a character and then leveling it back up very well. If you remove a level of some class and then add it back, if that level entails gaining some special abilities (especially if it entails a choice of options), it's quite likely that PCGen won't handle it properly. This issue will be resolved along with our conversion to xml data format - until then we'll rely upon players and DMs to police their characters to make sure leveling issues don't account for apparent problems. If such is the case, re-create the character.

Other Notes:

Optional Weapon Proficiencies: Some races and classes gain optional weapon proficiencies. You aren't assigned these as soon as you add the class or select the race - the way we handle it is that on the Feat tab there's a section devoted to Weapon Proficiencies. In that section there's a "Choose" button through which you can select optional weapon proficiencies.

How to Submit a Bug, request a feature, ask when such-and-such book will be included, offer to help: For all of the above, join the group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pcgen and the Welcome message will address most of those issues. The yahoo group is the best place to discuss bugs, features, conversion of books, and everything else PCGen related. There are even additional character sheets and books "in-the-works" available there. Like PCGen itself, membership is free.