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liz
Ex-Staff
Lone Wolf Staff
 
Join Date: Jul 2013
Posts: 961

Old April 17th, 2014, 01:39 PM
If your players are going to be manipulating their characters on their own computers, they should have their own separate Hero Lab accounts.

Keep in mind that you can use the Editor to create material as well. So, if you're playing Pathfinder and one of your players uses one feat from Ultimate Combat and nothing else, it may make more sense for them not to purchase the additional supplement and just add the feat through the Editor.

Rob explained it really well in a previous thread with someone asking a similar question:

Quote:
Originally Posted by rob
[Many groups share books], which is perfectly acceptable. The key detail here is that there is only one copy of a book, so only one of you can use the book at any given time. You need to pass it around the table. Now extend that concept to a Hero Lab license. If you put it on one laptop, you can pass the laptop around just like a book. However, if you put the same license on multiple computers, then everyone in the group can share the same copy at the same time. That's no longer anything close to sharing a book. It's now equivalent to making complete copies of the book and passing them out to everyone. Most reasonable people would consider that an inappropriate activity, and we do as well.

The Hero Lab license is setup along these lines. However, we go well beyond the limits of a single book. We provide a free secondary license to run the product on a second computer, so you effectively get two books for the price of one. You're also able to purchase up to two additional secondary licenses for only $10 apiece. So you can essentially buy two extra full copies of all the books for $10 apiece. That's a lot more generous and flexible than managing a single book. However, there is still the limitation that you can't just give the product away to others. We consider that to be reasonable.

In your situation, you might consider getting an old used laptop and putting a secondary license on it. Then you can pass that around amongst your players, along with your own laptop. That's the equivalent of having two sets of all the books available at the table for sharing, and it's all in keeping with the license.
His suggestion at the end may be a good solution for your group if you don't think they'd want to purchase Hero Lab.
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