Patron clarification
 

I apologize but I'm still a little confused about Patron accounts. What exactly can a free account do in a Patron campaign? Nothing? Just make a level one character?

I love the progress made for patron accounts, but I have a number of players who will only play PF2 and only use Hero Lab for my game. If free/demo accounts are still very limited I'd love if there was a higher tier that allowed me to let those people participate in my game.

If I owned the characters but gave them control, could they manage their own leveling up, or does that still run into the account limitation?

A Demo (free) account can play a Patron-connected character but cannot change or level it; you have to transfer the character to GM control to do that and then transfer it back. I had a player who did that for a while before deciding to upgrade to an Apprentice account.

Thanks, much appreciated. I hope they do come out with an enhanced patron account. I feel like it will be a recurring problem to find entire groups who are all willing to purchase apprentice accounts.

I have players who don't want to use HLO, but it's not the $5/4 months that they object to, they just don't want to use HLO. I still require them to coordinate with me or another player to keep an HLO version of their character current (at least as of the start of each milestone).

I suppose the GM could just offer to pay the Apprentice fees. That's probably all a hypothetical Sponsored account would amount to anyway.

I too, would like to be able to have my players manage their characters properly while in my campaign. If there were an option that allowed me to shoulder the cost of this so I don't have to take over their character to level them up every time, that would be fantastic.

Hero Lab becomes a much more popular option when my players can use it for free to start with. I've converted several people to paying customers by purchasing extra licenses for classic hero lab. Please allow me to do the same for my campaign for the online option.