Is Hero Lab ever going to go beyond the Core rule books
 

I play D&D

The current Charater I am using is a 1st level Evocer/ 1 level warmage who is ultimately trying for Ultimate Magus. She as some equipment out of Races of the Wild and She used the immidate Magic option in leu of a familar from the Player's hand book II also as her first level feat she took a feat out of the Complete Arcane Collgic wizard that giver inceasesn the bumber of spells she can add to her spell book per level and gives her a +2 to knowledge arana checks so the books my elven wizards infromation comes from

Races of the Wild
(armor and shield)
Complete Arcane
Warmage class and 1st level feat
Complete Mage
Ultimate Magus class
Player's Hand book II
wizard level substiion and
spell compenduim
(half her spells)

Unless Lone Wolf gets a license from WotC, they can't make anything for D&D except the SRD. I don't know if such a license is pending, but I would guess not based on what I'm reading on Wizard's message boards.

Some (most?) of us are working through parts of source books that are interesting to us or that are of use in current games, since it is a huge effort to get everything in. The possibility of trading files has also been asked by some who are working on extending Hero Lab. As for me, I have worked through parts of Races of the Wild, and gotten somewhere between 1/4 and 1/3 of the cleric domains from the Spell Comendium entered. And I'm kiind of skipping around....when I get tired of entering domains, I do something else (the main reason I started entering Races of the Wild stuff).

Of what's on your list, wizard (or any class) substitution levels cannot currently be done, although I think it's on Lone Wolf's to do list. I haven't looked closely at the other stuff your list (I already have too many source books sitting around my computer), so I don't know how easy they would be to implement. But I find it mostly easy to get stuff in with the editor.

I would also like to put in my vote for at least the additions of the Complete Mage, Warrior, etc... VERY helpful on those books. I'm new to this so I'm not sure I would make the best mods...

Is Hero Lab ever going to go beyond the Core rule books
 

At 01:54 PM 6/15/2007, you wrote:
Just about all of the above material can currently be handled within HL. The notable exceptions that I can think of are the racial substitution levels and the immediate magic in lieu of a familiar. I'm not sure whether we'll have racial substitution levels in the next update, and I don't know the details of the immediate magic stuff. Colen would be the one to comment on those. But I think you can add all the other stuff via the Editor right now.

As has already been pointed out, it is illegal for any company to include the material from the above books with their software, unless they obtain a license to do so from Wizards. Unfortunately, Wizards has opted to withdraw all licenses associated with D&D, so no one can do so. That means that users will need to add the material they wish to use. We've been steadily refining the editor to make that process as easy as possible. There are detailed tutorials included regarding the editor and how to add your own custom material. I recommend you take a look at them and you ought to be able to add you own stuff pretty easily.

Would to be ok if we were to from a data file sharing group?

Like on Yahoo or something to that effect?

I don't see why not. As long as we're not businesses, and we're not making profit from it. It's a mod. :)

I don't think it would matter to Wizards. We may not be profiting, but neither is Wizards if data from every source book is available for free on the internet (the whole share your music files argument, except for RPGs). Wizards would percieve a loss of money, and rightly so; there would be little to no controls on a file sharing site, so there's nothing stopping me from downloading data from sources I don't own.

I had briefly considered putting stuff I completed up on my personal website for download, but comments from Rob in another thread got me thinking that it was probably not a good idea to do that. While I don't really care one way or another if someone is using data files I created, I don't really want to get in trouble with Wizards (not even a "take this website down or else" e-mail). I won't repeat the other thread, but Rob did have some interesting thoughts on file sharing between users.

Unfortunately, WotC disagrees with you. We at PCGen thought that we were operating under the "Fair Use" when we included datasets based off of WotC material. When PCGen and WotC sat and talked at GenCon '02, we were told that WotC considered that an infringement upon their IP. From that point on, PCGen hasn't included the WotC closed-content material.

Is Hero Lab ever going to go beyond the Core rule books
 

At 09:49 PM 6/19/2007, you wrote:
That is entirely up to you. However, I recommend you head my earlier advice about keeping the effort small and relatively informal, as well as making sure all participants are contributing so that they are known to have purchased the source books. Otherwise, you could run into problems.

Is Hero Lab ever going to go beyond the Core rule books
 

At 11:18 PM 6/19/2007, you wrote:
That's a dangerous attitude that could easily run into problems. Please heed my earlier advice about keeping things reasonable and not "poking the dragon". WotC is a great company and largely supportive of fan efforts, but there is a line you need to be careful not to cross. Blatant disregard for WotC's rights is a great way of inviting the wrath of a generally very reasonable company.