But, I'd still recommend PCGen despite not having touched it in well over 15 years. My personal view nowadays is that if you need software to manage your character sheets then the game is outrageously too bloated and complicated. Hopefully this application will streamline character creation by providing the user with digestible information. Character creation is often an overwhelming process for new players as there are so many customizable options due to the fantasy nature of D&D.

If you happen to have E-tools, I'd say use that. This application was created to guide new players through the wonderful but complicated game that is Dungeons and Dragons. PCGen was better and had been there first, and was free (still is), which certainly was NOT true of E-tools at the time and I'm not sure if you do still have to pay for it.

Then the whole Master Tools debacle was turned over to Code Monkey publishing and morphed into E-tools. Certainly by 10th level or so, players HAD TO have PCGen holding their hands to walk them through the level-up process and make sure their PC's were up-to-date and accurate. Really that was 3E's fault for becoming so bloated. Character Builder 5 is an open-source application that can help you create the perfect character, using the D&D 5th edition rule set. I started to actually hate it somewhat as a DM because it was SO PERVASIVE that players just had no f'n clue whatsoever how to level-up their PC's without using it. PCGen was graphically plain (still is) but handled everything we needed it to for managing PC character sheets.

Meanwhile, a few other free generators came along and the best (IMO) was PCGen (even if it was written in Java). This tool lets you easily manage all your D&D Fifth Edition characters Currently available exclusively for iOS. They bit off more than they could chew and that kept getting cut back. WotC announced that they were going to create a big thing they were calling Master Tools that was going to be more like not just a character generator but a virtual tabletop. It suffered from being SLOW, incapable of handling character advancement, buggy and had data errors, and apparently was not especially conducive to ever being updated - though they DID patch it. We originally used the character creator that came WITH every 1st printing PH.

Dnd 5e character builder program