I'm looking for a website, app, tool etc to generate characters for DnD 5E that preferably exports to PDF, or at least generates something printable.

I know a couple of decent generators got taken down recently.
Are there any left?

Am I stuck with generating characters by hand on paper or using a form fillable sheet or something like that?

As far as I know, yes for now. I used to use the cool javascript one for quick npcs but the output wasn't pretty to print.

I'm guessing someone will come up with one eventually.

I wish the official character gen program didn't get canned. I think it was called dungeonscape.
So disappointing..  Oh well.

Official programs usually suck. I think WOTC's policy of shutting down any fan made character generators is the real disappointment.

Even if they do eventually come out with an official app, it will have no competition, or reason to not suck.

Quote from: JeremyR;818598Official programs usually suck. I think WOTC's policy of shutting down any fan made character generators is the real disappointment.

Even if they do eventually come out with an official app, it will have no competition, or reason to not suck.

It doesn't have to mean an official program will suck, but yeah with no competition to speak of, I guess there's not as much incentive to make a decent product. Well apart from that given this age of the internet, bad reviews will hit sales hard.

There IS an Android character generator that's pretty good, but it doesn't have an export to PDF or print option, so for me it makes it a bit pointless.
I expect that'll be taken down at some stage anyway.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wgkammerer.testgui.basiccharactersheet.app

There is the possibility of WotC wanting to avoid such generators from poaching hardcover sales. The 4e fan shift from hardcopy to digital product was striking. The whole "your book is errata-ed out from Organized Play" probably helped that along. But the shift from downloaded-once generator to rented generator likely sped along ill-will as it poached sales.

We had whole tables at my FLGS test drive 4e by chipping into rent the generator, tinker with it for a month or two, and then dump the game en masse. Now we have nearly everyone own a 5e PHB at the table (for how much longer that will last, who knows?). When you poach from your FLGS — you know, the people who pimp out your MtG nigh 24/7 — and only get a short term rental from one-out-of-six at a table, it's time to rethink your online strategy.

I would think Hero Lab (what is it, Grey Wolf?) would sign off for this thing--if Wiz would let them.

Quote from: cranebump;818773I would think Hero Lab (what is it, Grey Wolf?) would sign off for this thing--if Wiz would let them.

Lone wolf.

Yeah that'd be pretty cool. It can get really expensive for their software though, what with all the addons.
But if I could just buy the core program and that comes with one core system, so hopefully all the classes and races in the PHB, it'd be worth the $30 USD for it.

Quote from: danskmacabre;818785Lone wolf.

Yeah that'd be pretty cool. It can get really expensive for their software though, what with all the addons.
But if I could just buy the core program and that comes with one core system, so hopefully all the classes and races in the PHB, it'd be worth the $30 USD for it.

I have it, along with licenses for 3.5, PF and Savage Worlds. Can also do FATE and Spirit of the Century characters. 4E used to be supported. It's a great program, but I don't play any of the systems it supports.:-( I'd like to run SW, but I'm not sure how I'll like the whole "Shaken" spiral.

I also just found this
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.beyondtabletop.www.beyondtabletop&hl=en

For android, but as there's no OGL yet, the character generator is a bit crap, it doesn't autocalculate much (like pretty much anything that I can see) for you.

Still, it has promise, especially if some sort of OGL is released for 5E.