You experience of Hero Lab?

[Jagged]

I both play in and run 4e games at the moment and wonder what opinion people have of Hero Lab as a replacement for WotC Character Builder?

I still have a DDI account and use their tools extensively, both for character creation and monster data. I particularly like the ability to grab character abilities from other books and wonder whether that is possible with Hero Labs or does it stick to core book abilities? Can I add any magic item I want? Do the scores match the scores from the DDI Character Builder? And ultimately, is it worth paying for?

cheers!

[JamzTheMan]

I use it for Pathfinder so can not give a comparison viewpoint. But for the game systems the run, you get all items from core books but usually if you want magic items from other source books you have either pay for those books as add ons or see if there are free community add ons for those books, if ogl.

They support pathfinder very well, but if you already have DDI....i think you would get less out of it.

Try the demo, you can do everything except save/print.

[Jan van Leyden]

I fooled around with a demo version of HeroLab and trying to scrape the DDI contents with the tool you may find on the Net. The idea is to get all of the Compendium into HeroLab.

Alas, I wasn't successful. Despite several attempts I couldn't get it running completely; even building a basic 1st level character wasn't possible for several classes.

So I uninstalled HL switched back to the WotC tools. You mileage may vary, of course.

Huldvoll winkend

---Jan van Leyden

[Jagged]

I fooled around with a demo version of HeroLab and trying to scrape the DDI contents with the tool you may find on the Net. The idea is to get all of the Compendium into HeroLab.

How long ago did you try? You don't need to run the DDI Downloader any more, you download the content as a single package maintained by the user community. The problem I found was that the DDI Character Builder produced characters with higher stats than Hero Lab. For example, when recreating a level 6 character I was getting attack rolls of +7 instead of the +9 from DDI. Which may have been a lack of understanding about certain items, not sure.

[Dischord]

My group has been using Hero Lab for Pathfinder for about 6 months now and love it.

One important thing you need to do is go through the "Configure Hero" options, this is where house rules and such are placed, that might be why your characters differed from the DDI.

The only thing that might keep someone from wanting to use it is if you have a house rule that isn't listed or if you want to try and add something custom, there is a bit of a learning curve to adding your own content. However there are a lot of tutorials people have done to make it easier and the community is fantastic with helping anyone figure out how to do something.

Hope this helps.

[Jan van Leyden]

How long ago did you try? You don't need to run the DDI Downloader any more, you download the content as a single package maintained by the user community.

About one year ago? I had been working with the DDI Downloader so your version should be more recent. Wonder what WotC thinks of the idea to offer DDI data...

The problem I found was that the DDI Character Builder produced characters with higher stats than Hero Lab. For example, when recreating a level 6 character I was getting attack rolls of +7 instead of the +9 from DDI. Which may have been a lack of understanding about certain items, not sure.

Doesn't give HL a breakdown of the bonus? +9 sounds likely for a halfway optimised character:

+5 stat bonus
+3 half level
+1 Expertise feat

still without proficiency bonus and magical bonus.

Curious

---Jan van Leyden