Free to Create whatever Character

[ZephCommander]

In the past, I have enjoyed the ability to allow my players the option of having almost any base class D&D has offered. Because of my access to many books, I have begun to handtype all of the programs that allow me to have the classes at my fingertips.

Thoughts? Am I going to far to give players free choice? Wasting Valuable time?

[MaineCoon]

Is the effort to type it in (and beware copyright concerns regarding sharing such information) less than the enjoyment for the player to use the class?

You could simply require them to purchase the book themself.

As a software designer working on a long running online multiplayer RPG, my general rule of thumb is, if the amount of effort spent on the feature is more than 1/100th of the time/effort that players cumulatively spend using the feature, it is definitely not worth the effort, my time is better spent doing something else. In other words, if I spend an hour on it, at least 100 player-hours should be spent utilizing said feature.

With an RPG the scale changes, but it's still worth considering - if you spend 15 hours doing this work, is it going to have significant impact on someone elses enjoyment for 15 hours more time than if you hadn't. Don't count "15 hours of playing a character of that class" (because so much time is spent doing non-class specific things), but instead count "15 hours" of the time they are explicitly using those class features.

And if nobody chooses to use these classes in the end... a lot of work spent for nothing.

In the end, you don't NEED the information in FG to use it. The information is there for convenience, not out of a requirement of being present.

Do you want to spend time typing up information for character classes they may/may not use? If you have that much spare time alongside writing/planning the adventure, then more power to you, but I hope the effort is worth the reward.

[Griogre]

I'm with MainCoon on this one. IMHO most people put too much stuff in rulesets for a lot of effort without thinking of how much it will be used.

Other than a character sheet and the basic stuff/charts that would be found on GM screen for the game, I think you have to take a very hard look whether it is worth adding anything else timewise. Besides the very basics I think equipment and spell lists make sense but after that, unless you have a bunch of free time - I don't think it is worth it.