I noticed this “bug” as well – mine was worse, 250lbs! – and was initially really miffed by it.

Then I realised that the builder was incorporating the weight of thr 15,000gp that the character had.

And in that exact moment, I went from “stupid f$$^ing bugs!” to “oh, wow. Just… wow”.

There are a few bugs here and there, but the DDI character builder is by far the best of it’s kind that I have ever seen.

Dungeon is again Okay but the adventures are very uneven, the adventure path’s emphasis is almost purely on encounters at the expense of story (at least one that I’m interested in), and again… if I want to use it I’ve got to print it out which isn’t all that cheap in the long run.

The character builder is cool. Fortunately you only really need to purchase a single month and update the data files to get most of the functionality out of it. Sure you won’t have all the latest stuff a few months from now but let’s face it: The game is bloating at an AMAZING rate and unless you’re going to buy every book they produce many of those classes still aren’t accessible at the table. If you’re really desperate a year from now, just buy another month and update again. So for me the character builder is sort of the “buy one month and then forget” kind of feature.

As for the rest of it, who knows? I know I read somewhere that they explicitly states that once the other E-tools are available, there will be a multi-tiered subscription model and those that want the e-tools (including the vaporware game table) are going to pay more. At that point you might be talking about $14-20 per month for a year’s subscription which is a very hefty investment, especially for someone like me who tends to just use the core rulebooks anyways.

Two friends who subscribe have mixed feelings about the character builder. While they like the convenience, they are too weary to fully trust the generator will create the character correctly.

The virtual table top is a huge bummer to be sure. A lot of DMs (and even players) will surely be considering their subscriptions to Insider as this was a great lure to begin with.

At the end, as usual, value is in the eye of the beholder (insert Beholder joke here) and whether giving Wizards (Mattel) $10 month for the product will actually enhance and improve the DM “job.”

Peace.

However, if they’ve cancelled the tabletop as you suggest, I’m deeply disappointed. I was really looking forward to it. It looked like a great product. However, I guess it creates market opportunities for other people to step in and fill the void.

(The current system allows you to download the entire backlog of Dragon and Dungeon magazines and update the character builder completely, rather than trying to restrict you to only the content you’ve had a subscription during. They do claim that this will not always be the case, but it’s Wizards, so who knows when the changes will roll out.)

RPGpundit complains that we don’t have a virtual tabletop, which is a justified complaint in light of the fact that it was promised when the game launched, but he also complains that there’s no indication that we’ll ever get one. That complaint is kind of facile, given that we do have an indication of the status of the virtual tabletop, and the indication is that Wizards has outright stated that they have cancelled that component. They are presently working on campaign tools to help GMs with creating and managing their own campaign material, monsters, etc; something like the character builder but with GMs in mind, presumably. The best idea would be to keep in mind that it’s Wizards and their track record with electronic media is laughable at best, as far as that application is involved, but also that the character builder turned out well beyond anyone’s expectations.

Another point worth mentioning is that the current price point, pre-raise, was originally set down when the only components to the Insider subscription that were available were the two magazines and a horribly underpowered version of the Compendium, which then provided access to a very small number of books. The Compendium has been dramatically improved, both in functionality and amount of content present, the Builder and Bonus Tools have been released, and the magazines continue to be what they’ve been since the beginning of this incarnation. A two dollar price raise, that you may not even be affected by for over a year if you extend an existing subscription or just subscribe to it now, doesn’t seem too rage-worthy from where I stand.

Then again, I subscribed back when it was just the magazines so I might not be considered objective enough to raise a valid counterpoint.