D&D 5th Edition Coming to Hero Lab and Realm Works!
 

The D&D 5th Edition SRD is out, so we can now make it official. Both Hero Lab and Realm Works will support D&D 5th Edition in the very near future! The unparalleled power of these tools will soon be yours to harness for the world’s most popular RPG.

We’re still going through the SRD in depth, so we’ll be announcing further details at the end of the week. In the meantime, though, here’s a brief update on what this means for both products.

Hero Lab
Flexible character creation is the hallmark of Hero Lab, and that’s something D&D players can look forward to shortly. More importantly, though, a key aspect of Hero Lab is its extensibility and customizability, and that will be critical to many D&D players. The SRD is a subset of the overall suite of D&D rulebooks, and Hero Lab will make it possible for users to readily go beyond the limits of the SRD. For GMs, we’ll also provide invaluable tools like the Encounter Builder and Tactical Console so you can streamline running your games.

When will it be available? The SRD has been openly discussed by Wizards of the Coast for over a year, so we’ve already built preliminary Hero Lab data files for D&D 5th Edition. We’re currently poring through the SRD to figure out what we have to omit and what holes we need to fill. We’ll provide a more informed release estimate by the end of the week, but we expect it to be a pretty short wait.

When released, current Hero Lab users will be able to add it to their license for $20, and new Hero Lab users will be able to select it as their initial purchase for only $29.99. Oh, and for those of you with tablets, D&D 5th Edition support WILL be available on the iPad!

Don’t miss the big release! Sign-up below and we’ll send you an email the moment D&D 5th Edition is available for Hero Lab!

Sign-Up Here

Realm Works
The SRD opens up new options for Realm Works, too! As we announced last month, the Realm Works Content Market will be launching in early 2016 with adventures, settings, and source material from award-winning and fan-favorite publishers like Paizo, Green Ronin Publishing, Kobold Press, Frog God Games, and more. We’ll obviously be making the D&D 5th Edition SRD available as well. Beyond that, the SRD will allow us to work with publishers to offer D&D 5th Edition adventures, settings, and more.

If you’re not familiar with Realm Works and our plans for the Content Market, now is the perfect time to find out what it’s all about! We’re currently hosting a regularly updated Spotlight Series, which outlines the Content Market release plan, showcases published content in Realm Works, and previews key Realm Works features. With the announcement of the SRD, we’ll share our plans for D&D support later in the series.

Plans for an Official License?
The plans above are based on supporting D&D 5th Edition through the recently released SRD. We’re still actively pursuing an official license with Wizards of the Coast to support the full D&D 5th Edition rules in Hero Lab and sell official D&D 5th Edition published content for Realm Works, and we’re doing everything we can to make that happen.

If an official license is signed for either product, we’ll definitely let everyone know with another announcement here and in our monthly newsletter!

To keep up with the latest news, make sure to “like” Hero Lab and Realm Works on Facebook, “follow” @lonewolfdevel on Twitter, and “follow” Lone Wolf Development on Google+.

(Originally posted on our website.)

Please limit your comments/questions to ones about Hero Lab. If you have any questions/comments about what this means for Realm Works, post here. This will help keep things better organized for people following the discussion. Thanks!

I assume I should wait to buy HL until buying the DD5E SRD is available as an initial purchase option. Now that I know 5e will be supported, I'm eager to install HL and familiarize myself with it.

It is not clear from the descriptions if users who purchase the 5e license will be able to choose subclasses and subraces that are not in the SRD, but are part of the Player's Handbook.

Will this feature be available without any additional addon's or costs (initially at least, obviously other source books such as SCAG will likely be additional costs)?

That would require a real license from WotC. If it's not in the SRD, it's not in the SRD.

Of course, but I hope that along with the SRD research and knowing what is in it, they would be working on a license as well. Also hoping that is covered in that initial cost, knowing that other books are likely going to require a license fee.

Not sure what you mean by some of this? A number of these questions/statements are covered in the announcement.

I hope that clarifies any confusion on pricing and plans for an official license.

As to your other post...

The SRD is a subset of the overall suite of D&D rulebooks, so there will be content included in the PHB but not included in the SRD. However, once thing that makes Hero Lab unique is that the community can readily fill in those holes with the editor. Any data files created by the community are free.

When and if this happens please get in touch with me as I am happy to provide another folder for free on the current community servers for hosting. The d20 (3.5) community stuff and the Pathfinder (Packs) are hosted on my servers. I am happy to do this for the 5e community also.

For the case of d20 Sendric is the main guy and he has his own unique User ID and Password to the web server and using a FTP client its very easy for him to upload/download to the folder. I can easily do the same for who ever becomes the main guy for 5e and I would not even need to be involved then. :)

We need a Hero Lab 5e Sub Forum :)
 

Like the title said, we need a new Hero Lab 5e subforum. :)

Really nice. It seems I'm going to use my HL licenses again :D