What books are covered
 

I’m new to HL and realm works but I would like to use both for my 4th DND campaigns. So what I want to know is which 4ed books are covered for HL and does HL interfaces with RWs. Also were do I get the latest version of the HL files for 4ed?

I'm not sure how complete it is, but the source selection screen lists the following --

Rules Supplements: Adventurer's Vault, Adventurer's Vault 2, Arcane Power, Class Compendium, Dark Sun Campaign Setting, Demonomicon, Divine Power, Draconomicon, Dungeon Delve, Dungeon Master's Guide 2, Dungeon Master's Kit, Eberron Campaign Setting, Eberron Player's Guide, Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide, Forgotten Realms Player's Guide, Heroes of Shadow, Heroes of the Elemental Chaos, Heroes of the Fallen Lands, Heroes of the Feywild, Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms, Into the Unknown: The Dungeon Survival Handbook, Manual of the Planes, Martial Power, Martial Power 2, Monster Manual 2, Mordenkainen's Magnificent Emporium, Neverwinter Campaign Setting, Open Grave, Player's Handbook 2, Player's Handbook 3, Player's Handbook Heroes, Player's Handbook Races: Dragonborn, Player's Handbook Races: Tiefling, Primal Power, Psionic Power, Red Box Starter Set, The Book of Vile Darkness, The Plane Below: Secrets of the Elemental Chaos, The Shadowfell, Underdark

Adventures: Beyond the Crystal Cave, Dragon Magazine, Dungeon Magazine, E1 Death's Reach, E2 Kingdom of the Ghouls, E3 Prince of Undeath, FR1 Scepter Tower of Spellgard, H1 Keep on the Shadowfell, H3 Pyramid of Shadows, Halls of Undermountain, Hammerfast, HS1 The Slaying Stone, Madness at Gardmore Abbey, Marauders of the Dune Sea, P1 King of the Trollhaunt Warrens, P2 Demon Queen Enclave, P3 Assault on Nightwyrm Fortress, Revenge of the Giants, Seekers of the Ashen Crown, Tomb of Horrors, Vor Rukoth, Web of the Spider Queen

The last centrally supported version of the 4e files are the ones downloaded from within Hero Lab; I know there are/have been various projects to fix bugs or add material to the files but there is little or no coordination between the projects.

Our group has been playing 4e using Hero Lab for a couple of years now and have our own set of modified files; I can give you a link to those if you want to try them out.

Okay looks good to me. Just a couple more questions first how do I download the 4 files. What in your mods are they just bug removal or did you modified things? I see MM 2 in included but not 1 or 3 is that because there are characters options in MM2? I can’t remember. Does downloading give me access to the raw file also so I can do some editing myself?

Also has The errata been included. Seems like that would be easy mostly changing the data base I guessing it has a data base

Okay, this reply is going to be somewhat long but I want it to be useful.

4e for Hero Lab is a Authoring Kit project, so you buy it by buying the Authoring Kit package (this wasn't an issue for our group, as most of us had already purchased the Authoring Kit to get Savage Worlds). Once you have the Authoring Kit for Hero Lab you can download and install the latest centrally developed version of the 4e game system from the Game Select screen or the Updates screen. As far as I know, the files (such as they are) do reflect the game's errata.

4e is not an officially supported system, it's a fan project with a convoluted history; this means that 4e for Hero Lab has significant limitations compared to an officially supported system like Pathfinder or even an OGL system like d20 (I'm not familiar with 5e, but given the SRD and the apparent size and activity of the 5e Hero Lab community and the fact that 5e is the current edition, I expect that things are better off there).

As an Authoring Kit project, you technically have full control over your copy of the game system and can use the Editor and the Authoring Kit tools to change pretty much anything and everything about it. That being said, for the most part this is not a simple process; we had people who were familiar with using the Editor in Hero Lab with Pathfinder and Savage Worlds and we have still struggled at times (and we don't have anyone who knows things to the level of the Authoring Kit; we've never tried to do anything that fundamental).

I also have to admit that although I know that Hero Lab 4e has tools for monsters I don't know anything about using Hero Lab for 4e as a DM. Our DM has the DDI-derived offline tools and uses that to run his games (though he does have a copy of 4e Hero Lab so that he can read the portfolios the players send him and enter the characters into the semi-official builder. This is admittedly a useful way for us to catch bugs in the Hero Lab files). We also don't use Realms Works, so I don't know anything about how they will work together.

If you'd like to go ahead with it, let me know here and I'll put up a link to a zip of our modified files and explain how to use them.

Yes I would like that link please

All right, then; a Zip archive of our last files (October 18, 2020) is here.

We didn't expect any more "official" updates, and we were doing these for ourselves not expecting our work to be used outside our own group; that means that rather than doing things in discrete files to be added to the downloaded system files like we would for Pathfinder or Savage Worlds we actually edited our copy of the game files. Because of that, you have to copy our files over the initial ones.

Here's the procedure:
1) Download the Zip archive.
2) Open the Hero Lab 4e Game System Data Folder. The default location Windows is C:\ProgramData\Hero Lab\data\4e but in any case you can get to it from within the Hero Lab for 4e menu at Tools > Explore Folders > Game System Data Folders
3) With Hero Lab closed, unzip the archive to the Game System Data Folder, overwriting any duplicate files.
4) Now when you open Hero Lab 4e, you should be using our files.

Do be warned that while we have fixed bugs, added functionality, and put in a little more content, we know that there's lots more to potentially do.

EDIT: I updated these files with our latest fixes for anyone who comes across this post.

And there were at least some things that were, to say the least, resistant to any sort of easy fix.

Any idea on when we can get Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes?

Did you mean to post this in the 4e section?

Posted to the wrong Forum - it's a 5th Ed product.

I am an idiot and thought I was in 5E, my apologies

Not a problem, I just wanted to help clear up any confusion. :)

Thanks for sharing, friend!

Any word on the compatibility of these files with the various fixes (etc) on the Cryptoknight site, or is that not something your group uses?

We started with the last set of files Cryptoknight put up on the official site, so AFAIK all his stuff was in there. We also included dracusmage's Masterwork Armor workaround.

Okay, but none of the stuff that wasn't made into official updates? I ask because I basically run my copy (with which the rest of the group synchronises their files) with a complete set of those bugfix .user files, so I'm trying to work out if I should expect conflicts or not. It's okay if the answer is "big shrug" :p

Since Cryptoknight was the one who was maintaining the official updates up until right before the end, I didn't realize there was anything there that he didn't include. You're based on the 12-Apr-2016 files, right? Your best bet is to check your fixes against the same things in our files; that will tell you anything that is missing or redundant.

Edited to add: Looking at Cryptoknight's site, the only files that postdate the 12-Apr-2016 patch rollup are your files, so it shouldn't take long to check.