I have a secret: I hate the 'number-crunching' aspects of character generation, especially in systems which have pre-conceived ideas of particular groupings into which you have to shoehorn that delightful concept that sprang into your mind when someone proposed the game that's being planned... even more so if it's an unfamiliar ruleset so I don't know how to do half the things that I want my new guy to have or be able to do.

Here's a product which can help. It takes you by the hand and leads you through the process of creating a Wizard character for the Pathfinder RPG, explaining each stage and the ramifications of your choices. The really neat thing is, it doesn't just let you set up your starting character, it takes you through levelling up, level by level right up to level 20. Now, you will probably have figured out how Wizard characters work by then, even so it is very useful in ensuring that you do not miss anything out. No forgetting which levels you gain feats or special abilities, it's all there.

There are also handy worksheets for skills, feats and your familiar, along with a spell list and experience point log - good if you want to track it in detail (although the assumption seems to be that you only ever get experience for killing monsters...). Now I once had a GM who'd only give you experience if you gave him an itemised list of what you reckoned you'd earned it for - this would have been perfect!

One thing I'm not sure about: do I use this online or print it out? It's replete with hyperlinks to the PFSRD where every term is explained, which suggests reading this on my computer, so I can refer to anything that puzzles me or on which I want more information before I make a choice. Yet it has generous spaces in which to make notes... but it's not set up with form fields to type into, so if I want to scribble on it, I'll need to hit the printer. Now, as a confirmed non-writer (longhand is beyond me since a stroke) I do know a sneaky way to make Acrobat let me type on most PDFs anyway - use the 'Comment' button and select Add Text Comment - but you need to be quite precise in positioning your cursor before you begin to type.

Whichever, this is a beautiful and thorough tool to aid particularly new players or those for whom the number-crunching parts of character generation and development are a bit of a chore.