Hero Lab

[Joose]

Hero Lab

I've been using this for D&D stuff recently, and it is very good, so I thought I would share with you lot.

In a nutshell, its a character creation/management program for various rules systems, including D&D3.5 and Shadowrun. The Shadowrun stuff was only introduced last month, but includes nearly everything from the core rules. They are due to release an update at the end of this month to complete the core stuff, then they will be introducing content for the expansions.

The advantage this gives you over doing it all by hand is immense. For starters, it calculates everything for you: encumbrance, dice roll modifiers, all that shit. Secondly, it tells you if you have done something against the rules: it doesn't stop you, but it gives you a little warning to say, for instance, that you haven't used all of your starting skill points, or you have negative money. Lastly, it keeps track of things for you: experience or money being gained or spent is logged in a history, changes to stats or equipment updates all the relevant modifiers, even things like what items are in what bags are kept up to date for you.

Its very well put together. For example, the D&D section has *everything* you will need to run a character in the game Grimmie is running. The Shadowrun section, even though it isnt entirely complete (apparently the vehicles section isn't quite fleshed out right yet), has an amazing amount of detail. Add a cyberarm, and you can customise the arm, then customise the customisations! If you then dual wield different guns, one in your natural arm and one in the cyber, it will still be able to work out appropriate dice pools for your shooting rolls! Its incredible.

That's the good. The bad is the cost. You pay $29.99 for the core program, and that includes a licence to use one game system. If you want to use another game system as well, its an additional $20. I was a bit miffed by this at first, thinking it was an absurd money grabbing scheme, but apparently Hero Lab is all properly and officially licenced, so has to pay royalties to the people who make the game system for everyone who uses it. So yeah, it is kinda expensive, but that's only because the company cant afford for it not to be. If you only use it for one system, its totally worth it. If you use it for more than one, it could start getting costly. But it is a one off payment, not a subscription, unlike the official D&D4E program. Also, although the key they give you only unlocks it on the one computer, you get two keys. This is because a lot of people would use it on their desktop and their laptop, but (although its technically against the rules) there is nothing to stop two people sharing the cost.

Another way to go is to do what I plan to do when SR is properly supported: I'll be putting all your characters in my copy, and fire you all out exported character sheets. When you make an update (buy something, train a skill, etc) I will enter it in to the system and send you back an updates sheet, with all your skills/rolls/whatever recalculated for you.

TL;DR: Its excellent, and if you are a regular beard its worth the cost.

[The Shutting Downs]

I'll be impressed if they add the Fantasy Flight sets as well.

[Joose]

I'll be impressed if they add the Fantasy Flight sets as well.

I think I saw that someone was working on a user made Fantasy Flight addin. Dont know how user made stuff works though.

[FatherJack]

I'm interested in this and am giving the demo version a spin, but I'm not really sure which version applies to our current AD&D ruleset as it doesn't mention Dungeons and Dragons specifically, only a "d20 system" and a "4th edition" one - I'm assuming the d20 system covers 3.5

[Joose]

Yep, 3.5 and the d20 system are the same thing.