New here, thinking about buying for my Pathfinder game, couple of questions.

[CapeCodRPGER]

Hello, I have been reading alot of good stuff online about Hero lab and D20 pro. I am thinking about buying both for my Pathfinder game. I have some questions:

1. When you buy the bonus packs for Pathfinder (APG, Beastary, ect.), does it have an installer or do you have to manualy put the new info into the right herolab folders?

2. With D20 pro, does it have the Pathfinder rules built in? Or before a game will I have to maunally put in all the NPC/ monster stats, tresure, ect?

3. With D20 pro, when you import a map can you scale for combat grid use?

Thanks.

[Lawful_g]

1 - It has an installer

2 - I don't know if Pathfinder has herolab export capability, I know d20 (3.5) does.

3 - Yes.

[CapeCodRPGER]

Thanks. On the Hero Lab pathfinder page, it says you can import the characters to D20 pro. I was wondering if that meant Hero lab had pathfinder support built in.

[Lawful_g]

I am not 100% sure I understand your question. What do you mean pathfinder support?

Herolab has Pathfinder as one of your choices when buying. If you choose it and start the program in Pathfinder you can see feats, classes, monsters etc from the base pathfinder setting and make your character with those. You can also buy add-on books like the Advanced Players Guide, Beastiary, etc for more options. All of this might be called support.

Now if you mean d20 pro support for characters, since that was your original post, I would say you have answered your own question. If the pathfinder page says you can import your characters to d20 pro, then I would say that is support.

Does that answer your question?

[Lawful_g]

Alright, on second reading of your question, I realize it pertains to d20 Pro rather than Herolab. d20 Pro is flexible enough to work with Pathfinder. You can make characters in Herolab, export them and load them in d20 pro, rather than making them twice.

[CapeCodRPGER]

Ok, thanks. I need to clarify my question a bit, too. With D20 pro, does it have the Pathfinder monsters, conditions, ect built in to it or do you have to manually enter those things in? There are enough little difference between 3.5 and Pathfinder that I would think you need a seprate database for each system. Or can you import hero lab beastary entries to D20 Pro from Herolab?

[Golkiwu]

On D20Pro, you have separate campaign folders (you will need to create the one for Pathfinder) and this allows you to keep your multiple campaigns/game systems separate. Hero Lab, as Lawful_g has stated, has multiple systems you purchase to use. 3.5 D20 and Pathfinder are separate systems you purchase separately. I have both. Each of them has D20Pro support for output from hero lab to D20Pro. You make/and export to D20Pro format from hero lab and then in D20Pro, you import the desired files to the respective campaign instances. You can only have one campaign instance open in D20Pro at a time, but most folks only work on one system at a time. Remember you can have multiple Pathfinder campaigns within D20Pro (or D20/3.5 for that matter. Now as for D20Pro and monsters and such, there are 2 monster sets I have (one from HL and one from D20Pro) for my pathfinder. There are instructions on all of this on the D20Pro site/Manual/Forums. I would suggest checking them out. The synergy between these two pieces of software is excellent, and has allowed me to synthesize a campaign for Rise of the Runelords in a matter of weeks (almost done with Hook Mountain Massacre). I have the entire Burnt Offerings Module up in the User Created Content on the D20Pro Forums that I did, complete with NPC's for the encounter maps and all of the NPC's for Sandpoint at their correct Location from the guide. I used Dundjinni for some of the maps, along with import from the PDF's and some open content maps from other users. I would not have had this capabillity without the two programs.

[CapeCodRPGER]

But you don't have to manually input all the monster stats, ect into D20 pro? You can just import them from Hero Lab?

[Golkiwu]

You can do either. I have made custom monsters on the fly in D20Pro, but I mainly use the ones in the Bestiary. So you can do both. Either or.

[Shayd3000]

The only catch to watch for with d20Pro is the Pathfinder configuration files are not the default files and it takes some effort to actually find complete configuration files to support Pathfinder - which is why I have avoided purchasing the program so far. The config files on the "official" site are not complete (i.e. up to date) though browsing the forums should yield you what you need. That said, I personally had a lot of issues with the imports from HL (everything imported fine) in that there was a lot of work to do after they characters were brought in. So, if you are looking for a install and go for Pathfinder in d20Pro I think you will be a bit disappointed. If you are willing to put in effort to add any missing classes and rules tweaks, and tweak each of the characters imported form HL then you should be fine, and d20Pro is actually a fine program.

If PF was it's default system and it handled dynamic vision then I would be sold.