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Originally Posted by Conandy
My main concern with the character sheet is that I just don't see my players having a device at the table to use HeroLab. If it made a sweet printed character sheet, at least a couple of them might invest the $30 to keep track of their characters, but they would probably bring the printed sheet to the game. We are pretty old school at the moment. I guess I could take the initiative (pun intended) and just store all my players' characters in my own version of Hero Lab in order to help automate the process at the table.
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My recommendation would be to pick it up yourself. You create the PCs in the software and then import monsters in to enable the combat automation. This gives you the benefits of the software without forcing the cost on the players. If the player's want a print-off from Hero Lab then that is absolutely possible and gives the benefits of having all the spell and ability descriptions printed. Or perhaps just print of the spell and ability descriptions and let them print everything else manually.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Conandy
To the topic of automating things: we use the "speed factor initiative" option from the 5e DM's guide (tweaked a bit), and have a few house rules that, if I could incorporate into the tool, would make it awesome. Other than just having my players roll their own initiative and calling it out to me to put into the encounter tool (right now I don't even have to write it down, I just start counting down from 30 and players or monsters jump in and take their turn on their initiative count), would there be a way to mod Hero Lab to figure in weapon speed factors to the initiative rolling and encounter ordering process? I know it is advertised to allow for customizing and home-brewing.
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It's most likely possible but well beyond the coding capabilities of many. With something like this my usual approach is to raise a support request to LWD, direct them to the book and page number that the alternative rules exists on an in my experience the next update usually has the requested feature.
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Originally Posted by Conandy
Another example is that I use some alternative "medicine" skill rules and allow the medicine skill to operate off of INT or WIS and use a modified "Advanced Healer" feat. I also have incorporated some of the community home-brew content for some available feats, class options, etc. I have downloaded and installed the community 5e pack from these forums, so I know lot of this is possible.
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Creating custom feats is absolutely possible. How far you can go on the coding comes down to your ability to script. I personally suck at scripting and simply copy existing code that does what I need to do.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Conandy
PS: It is mind-boggling how much content daplunk has put into RW. One wonders if you have a day job.  Here's hoping that the content sharing and marketplace will be up soon. That might swing me right there. |
Sure do. I'm an IT Project Manager. This means my free time goes up and down like a yo yo. I could tell you how I get so much content into the tool but then I would need to kill you... no seriously
There's some seriously cool stuff coming for both Realm Works and Hero Lab. We do know that a price rise is coming to Hero Lab in the near future, so my recommendation is get it asap because once everything launches you will want to just buy it all anyway
