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How useful is HL for a GM?

I just started up a Pathfinder game (Rise of the Runelords) for my group and was wondering how useful HL would be from a GM point of view. I can see where it would be really helpful for players to keep track of their characters but what specific uses does it offer for a GM? I don't plan on creating my own character classes or custom feats and really only plan on using the ones already written. Any Pathfinder GMs care to add their 2 cp's?
 
As a new Pathfinder player myself I've found it useful for checking my understanding of the rules. I haven't played much D&D 3.0/3.5, heck I haven't played much D&D since 1rst edition. My players would create characters which I'd punch into HeroLab to double check totals etc. I'd frequentely notice our additions were off and would have to investigate why. Can't remember all the things I learned that way but I remember learning about AC size mod that way. I don't use it while playing though I recently bought a new laptop and plan on moving HeroLab over to it off my PC.
If I had one complaint it would be that while HeroLab may add up, let's say a plus 11 attack bonus to hit for a certain weapon I can't figure out a way to get HL to break down all the pieces of that plus 11 bonus. That has been a bit of a pain when HeroLab's total is different then mine, though each time HL has been correct after I eventually figure out what I did wrong on paper.
 
I've used HL as a player and a GM and I find it very useful. You can create your goblin warrior, druids sorcerers etc. fairly easily and more quickly than on paper. Also adjusting NPC's and monsters to better suit the player's level or party composition is easy too. Hope this helps :)
 
I use it for all of the games I run (besides one, which uses Gestalt rules - I'm still working on getting the classes to work properly in HL).

I use the Tactical Console extensively for tracking combats. It's been an invaluable tool for me as it allows me to account for all sorts of conditions and effects with just a few mouse clicks. (Now that I'm used to having it I really miss it in my Gestalt game).

I keep a portfolio with my players' characters, then for each combat I import a portfolio with the foes to the character portfolio. The console keeps everyone in initiative order, remembers that AC is flat-footed until the character has acted, etc.
 
I have played 3.x since it came out and I ran a 3.5 game for a while. I haven't ran a Pathfinder game though but most of the rules are the same. I was just curious as the overall help that HL offers a GM. I'm currently running my group through an AP so the adventure has most of the stat blocks already figured out.

I'm not sure if I would feel comfortable using the Tactical Console during a game. I guess I'm an old school pen and paper guy during combat and I feel that using the tool may slow down the flow for me.
 
I have played 3.x since it came out and I ran a 3.5 game for a while. I haven't ran a Pathfinder game though but most of the rules are the same. I was just curious as the overall help that HL offers a GM. I'm currently running my group through an AP so the adventure has most of the stat blocks already figured out..

I have been running a group through Rise of the Runelords (pretty slowly) starting as 3.5, going through PF Beta and now through Pathfinder. I've played D&D since Basic, and didn't get a laptop at the table until two years ago because I was actively against having technology at the table. Here's my take on this question:

Going from 3.5 to Pathfinder just by itself... enough of the rules are different that it makes the conversion a little tricky. There are just so many small changes across the board that you can't rely on almost any 3.5 rule recall. :/ I would suggest to anyone new to Pathfinder to not assume you know the rules for anything no matter how much experience in 3.5 you have. It's always worth a check of the book. Hero Lab "remembers" these differences for you, so that means less book checking for my table.

The Tactical Console is very nice for you if you're the type who puts Initiatives on a white board or index cards. If you just list them on a piece of paper behind your DM screen old school style, then I think it's a steeper curve to learn it. Once I learned the keyboard shortcuts, I found it very smooth and handy to offload a lot of manual work when you get into the entire party and 6+ NPCs.

Where it REALLY shines and makes it worth the trouble of learning is how easy it is to "activate" all those little buff spells and bonuses like charging effects, deadly aim, power attack, bless, inspire courage, a bulls str. potion, etc. All of the ACs, attacks and saves get automatically updated with a click. WAY easier than scribbling down every single +1, +2, -4, +3, +2, +2 every round for your players and monsters... oh yea, this round this guy is sickened... and took 6 pts of con damage so his total HP went down...

Yea. WAY easier to do all of that on the fly with a few clicks and check boxes.

With the addition of the Bestiary & Bestiary 2, you have the options of entering and easily adjusting any NPC / Monster in the game (including the random list in the back of Volume 3) in a matter of minutes. So you decide on the fly that you need a wanding monster while your party is hanging around the woods? Roll a die, import a stock monster from the list, and you're ready for a combat in less than thirty seconds. Less than that if you use the Tac. Con.

If you use a virtual table-top, for either remote players, a digital table or both, there are exports to D20 Pro. This, for me, doubles the benefits of the program because it means the work I do to create anything in Hero Lab effectively duplicates in D20 Pro.
 
Almost on topic

It's been a few years (i think) since I last looked at Hero Lab. If it is the same program, then I love the improvements.

However for my purposes of GMing I was wondering two things (with the first one being important and the second just a pipedream):
1) Can you print out the info as a Pathfinder-esqe statistics block
2) Can you do weird rule things such as gestalt?
 
It's been a few years (i think) since I last looked at Hero Lab. If it is the same program, then I love the improvements.

However for my purposes of GMing I was wondering two things (with the first one being important and the second just a pipedream):
1) Can you print out the info as a Pathfinder-esqe statistics block
2) Can you do weird rule things such as gestalt?

  1. They've said they plan to make improvements to the stat block output . . .
  2. Gestalt is difficult. The best way I've found to do it so far is to make a new class combining the two classes you wish to use for your Gestalt. Even then, only one of the classes can be a casting class, as HL won't allow you to have two different spell sources in the same character.
 
Personally, I'd be lost without HL these days. I rarely play - I almost always GM for our group, and I use HL constantly, both in preparation and during the game.

In preparation - well, nothing beats either fast creation of NPCs or modification of monsters, or just the straight import and then modification of existing NPCs (such as all the ones in the GMG).

In play - yeah, the Tac Console can be a bit daunting at first, but once you've gotten used to it, it makes life so much easier. I suggest getting your group together for some "training sessions". Whip up some characters and just run them through combat after combat using the Tac Console in order to get used to it. It won't take that long (and it's a bit of fun on a rainy Sunday when nobody can be bothered running a full game session).

Once you have the individual portfolios created, you can import them into another portfolio called "Group" or "Party", and use that for the game itself, keeping track of treasure, XP, etc. There's even a journal section to enter the game dates and real-world dates of encounters and the like. You can then export the characters to individual files again for each player (assuming they have HL themselves).

In my group, the players that don't live at my house (my wife and son play, as well as friends) have HL, so on character creation I simply put together a portfolio at its most base level, which includes the number of points for ability scores, and what additional resources we'll be using (such as expansions, etc). I email this .por file to the player, who then uses it to create their character according the rules for the campaign.

Seriously, I don't think I could go back to "traditional" tabletop GMing! It would just take up too much time!
 
Yeah it's awesome and the recently released Combat & Spell adjustments make it even awesomer. :)

The only thing missing IMHO is a better integration of the Dice Roller. It would be nice if it could "auto import" the chosen characters modifiers and add it to the roll. I know it may sound silly but when running a large scale combat with four players, wouldn't you rather click for a result than search for a modifier?

Making group rolls would also be spiffy. My DM job would be so much simpler if I could figure out with one glance which one of these 12 orcs (some having class levels) has survived the Fireball.

Just my two copper pieces :D

(And yeah a breakdown of attack modifiers would save me a lot of head scratching)
 
I mostly use HL as a Mutants & Masterminds GM. It's very handy for checking PC builds, and for creating NPCs quickly.

When I play Pathfinder, I use HL to keep track of my character. It made creating a character a snap! It wasn't without its hiccups, but overall I have found HL very easy to use.
 
For myself I use it as a DM primarily to help my players have correct character sheets. I have all of my houserules and races setup in HL and it makes checking players sheets a snap. Instead of everyone having a different sheet and having to double check the math one thing at a time I just have my players send me their .por files and load it up in HL and it instantly tells me if something is wrong.

I have gone from taking hours to check characters to minutes so that right their is a HUGE saving to me.

I also use HL to create custom monsters. For example in Rise of the Runelords I needed a more bad-ass White Dragon for chapter 4. My players are WAY over powered for the module and their are 5 of them. So I was able to quickly add more HD, feats, and HP to a white dragon. This made the fight with freezemaw a awesome fight and the fact that it took just minutes of prep time to do was even better.

Also the still in development Realmworks is meant to interface with HL or at least use HL character files is a nice perk coming down the road. And that tool is meant to be 100% DM use.
 
I sat down and used it a couple of weeks ago for an impromptu session. Only used the console for one combat, but it seems like it could be really useful, especially at higher level play.

Only downside was I'm not super proficient with it yet, so it seems slower for some things. Someone had mentioned hotkeys for it though, any ideas where I might find a list of them?
 
Someone had mentioned hotkeys for it though, any ideas where I might find a list of them?

That was me... it was a poor choice of words now that I re-read it. What I meant for HL's tac con was more getting used to what each icon and button on the display meant, and using the keypad to type in values where you can rather than clicking the value keys up and down.

Once you don't have to read the tool tips to remember what the button does, it goes a lot faster.
 
HL is crucial for the GM. All PC's in my group are required to be created in it. I am running RotRL. I am not using the tactical console yet, but it is an option I am considering. If there were a way to tie the tactical console in with everyone elses character sheets then it would be worth having everyone else in the group buy teh program and start using it that way. Right now, everyone pretty much creates their characters and I enter them into HL to validate the build.

In a heomebrew I was running, the Bestiary stuff was a godsend. I was able to build several encounters up very quickly in HL, putting combinations of stuff together that took my veteran players by surprise and generated a lot of positive comments about afterwards. If I had been doing that manually, the encounter may never have happened that way because of the amount of time it would have taken to build them manually.
 
For myself I use it as a DM primarily to help my players have correct character sheets. I have all of my houserules and races setup in HL and it makes checking players sheets a snap. Instead of everyone having a different sheet and having to double check the math one thing at a time I just have my players send me their .por files and load it up in HL and it instantly tells me if something is wrong.

I've just begun using hero lab and I am the GM of a group of experienced hero lab users. A couple of questions about this...
1) How do you handle any errors you receive (on loading) when you import the character portfolio they send you?
2) Will these errors cause their stats to be incorrect when you use the imported character in the tactical console?
3) If they have made custom items themselves, what should they send me so that I can add it to my system.

Sorry in advance if these n00b questions have been answered somewhere else before, I have been searching but have not found any answers yet.
 
I've just begun using hero lab and I am the GM of a group of experienced hero lab users. A couple of questions about this...
1) How do you handle any errors you receive (on loading) when you import the character portfolio they send you?
The errors I was talking about was things like taking too many skill points or a feat that is not valid for them. I am pretty much the only one in the group that does stuff in the editor so my players use my data set so that we match.

Otherwise what your probably getting is just Source error messages which is not that big of a deal.

2) Will these errors cause their stats to be incorrect when you use the imported character in the tactical console?
It will depend on the errors. If you are missing .user files like it sounds like from #3 then yes it will cause some issue as those custom Things will not exist when you load it up. Including any custom scripts.

3) If they have made custom items themselves, what should they send me so that I can add it to my system.
They need to also send you any .user files that allow their character to be created.

Sorry in advance if these n00b questions have been answered somewhere else before, I have been searching but have not found any answers yet.
No problem ask questions as that is what this forum is for.

My recommendation would be have everyone in your group use the same custom .user files(the files made in the editor). This way everyone has the same sources and Things and you will be able to load up their stuff without HL errors.

This is why for my group I actually control the data set for the group so that everyone is using the same version of .user files and no issues come up then. So you may wish to do something similar or at least make sure your players send you their .user files along with the characters.

Hope that helps.
 
Personally I find HL to be a fantastic tool for the DM. Keeping track of all the character builds and enforcing the rules becomes almost a no-brainer.

I have been using Tactical Console to run fights as well, but I find it actually rather cumbersome and a bit slow in actual game use.

My personal recomendation is currently to use HeroLabs for all character management, but run the fights with Combat Manager (www.combatmanager.com) which is freeware, and handles imports of HL portfolio's. It has a beautiful interface and is quick and easy to use.

So my choice of ultimate DM tools currently - HeroLabs for character creation, building and maintenance. Combat manager for handling actual combats. Using both side by side seems ideal to me.
 
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