hero lab files
 

so I got all these neat HL .por files safely tucked away into RW and moved to my laptop for the game.... Is there anyway (short of save-as) to merge them/import creatures so as to use the tactical console?

I don't think so (at least not yet, I've heard that better HL integration is something they may be working on, though.) What I've tried to do is to create portfolios for each preset encounter, though. The only problem with that is that you don't have the hero portfolios integrated into it unless you have them ready beforehand and know what state they will be in by the time they get to that encounter.

Then again I only use HL for Savage Worlds and don't really use the tactical console much, and I haven't found too many others on the forum to pipe in with ideas on how they use it for that game, if at all, and what might be some good improvements to make to is since I've seen several people mentioned using it for Pathfinder games. It makes me wonder if we're missing something on the SW side.

This capability is being worked on right now. There will be a new option in RW for Hero Lab files that allows you to integrate an encounter portfolio into a running copy of HL that already has all the PCs loaded into it.