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OK, I've been using Hero Lab for quite some time now and have a lot of custom portfolios. Also, LW and the community's been doing a great job of getting NPCs from Paizo products in there as stock portfolios.
But it's getting increasingly difficult to find them. Which portfolio was that one NPC I made in? I need a level 4-6 barbarian type for next session, where's one of those from the GMG or wherever? I end up doing a *lot* of opening up "Import Stock Hero" submenus, backing back out, drilling back in... You almost have to already have the book open in front of you to see "oh, that 7th level sorcer I need is under the completely arbitrary Heretics heading in the GMG and is called a Cultist..."
Some UI work would help, say if all that Import Stock Hero window was openable as a normal expandable folder type view instead of progressive windows so you don't have to import, choose a section, pick one, open, cancel, repeat. With a preview too!
But it would also be nice to have a search - starting with basic name stuff but ideally with class/level range and then ideally search anything. "Hey let me go look at a Spring Attack build." "All I remember is that character had a magical cricket cage..."
With the NPC Codex coming, this will go from a "nice to have" to a "man I can barely navigate this..." And all the hard work to get that content in there, by WL and by the Community folks, is mildly degraded by the difficulty of finding and using it.
So two implementation recommendations.
1. A search that works across stock portfolios and your own portfolio directory(ies) that lets you specify a substring name match, class(es), level (range), and a text string to arbitrarily match anything else. Looking for that archer samurai I statted up, or hoping there's one in all that stock stuff somewhere? Name: blank, Class: Samurai, Level: any, Other: Deadly Aim - bang, done. Add race and overload race/class as monster/monster type for super monster search. "Show me all the CR5 fairies..." Heck, a first cut that works across all game systems that just does string matching with AND/OR would be a big step up.
2. A better UI for importing heroes into your current portfolio. Merge importing hero from a custom portfolio and a stock portfolio and make a finder/windows explorer type window that lets you drill down and view. Expand folders, look around. Have a preview pane to the right to click on something and see more info than "CR5." Integrating the search with it as an additional filter (assuming the usual "what books" filter is already in place) would be beautiful.
I love Hero Lab, but I spend a lot of my session prep time searching around in the SRD and books instead of just being able to do it all in HL because of this one deficit.
For my very next session I'm confronted with "I need some Ulfen raiders around level 6, and I need some sinspawn with class levels (I remember there were some in some AP), and I need to pull out that druid werewolf named Mythra I have in some old portfolio..." This feature could turn this prep into a minute instead of the hour or so it's going to end up taking me.
Thanks for listening!
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