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Junior Member
Join Date: Jun 2015
Posts: 27
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Hi there,
I've been using HeroLab and RealmWorks for 11 session now, but I still somehow feel, that I might be missing a couple of tricks, because some tasks are still very daunting and time consuming, more than they should be. Example (worst case scenario): My 5 heroes encounter a big chest. While they try to open it, they trigger a trap and they each receive 5 fire damage. -> I have to select every single hero and have to assign 5 points damage. That is very time consuming. Same for other special effects, especially effects, that last for x rounds and affect a couple of characters. Is there a way to apply a certain status, effect or damage to multiple characters in one go? After that, they loot the chest. I represent the chest by creating a new, empty character in hero lab and give it all the loot, because otherwise I would have to search all the items together and it would take much more time. Feel a bit like a hack, but it works quite well. They find 2 probably magic items and 5000 gold. They identify one of the items as am amulet, that prevents scrying (it's actually the cursed "amulet of inescapable location") and the other one they fail to identify. They decide, that they give all items to one character and divide the gold between the other 4 heroes. Moving items is easy. Moving gold is always quite a hassle, since you need to create surrogate items (I call them "bags of gold" and value them the amount of gold they contain). It would be much easier, if you could just send money from one hero to another without having to "buy" gold bag items and sell them on the other hero. But ok, after the session, I calculate the gained XP (I just add all the XP together and then give each hero 1/5th of that). But now, I have to create a Journal entry for each of the heroes. I would like to only have to create one and then assign that entry to all of them. Ok, but then, I export the Hero Sheets as PDF. But on the PDF, they can actually see, that the amulet is a cursed item and the other magic item is a magic sword +2, although they shouldn't. Is there a way to "hide" that information from them? Like setting a flag on the item, that only shows the basic type of the item and the DC for the spelllcraft check to identify it't properties? Because otherwise, I allways have to do the workaround via create custom item and replace that with the real one once they find it's real properties. But at that time, I have often forgotten, which item it was. I would like to have a solution within HeroLab, not an external list where I have to keep track of non-identified items. Greetings, Decrayer |
#1 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Sep 2015
Posts: 435
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Apparently, in your situation the GM is keeping track of all of the data for all heroes. You're going to have extra work if you do that. (You're essentially now responsible for all NPCs and all PCs! And the PCs will change every session while the NPCs rarely do.)
HL is great at managing a hero by a single player. It's not to good for GMs to use to manage all of the heroes in their game. I filed a bug report for how I think the Tactical Console should work. Here's the content of that bug report. It doesn't cover loot distribution, although I think that's a great idea... Some way to select multiple heroes and then "roll a saving throw" or "distribute gp" or similar. Each group will likely handle this differently, but our GM wants the players to manage their own heroes which he imports a few days before a game session. He never exports them so loot distribution isn't an issue for us; players track that stuff themselves. Quote:
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#2 |
Junior Member
Join Date: Jun 2015
Posts: 27
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Oh, maybe there is a small misunderstanding. Currently, I'm (as the GM) not keeping track of all the data. During a session, for the heroes, I keep only track of their gold and items. They are responsible for keeping track of their hitpoints (because, like my example showed, this is not feasible for me to do) and their spell selection & usage. They also note down stuff they loot, but I do so too, so I have always the current status of their characters. But, of course, I keep track of the monsters hitpoints. And it's really not fun if the wizzard shoots a fireball or black tentacles into a group of 4+ NPC...
During a session, I always have the whole hero group open in hero lab. And when there is an encounter, I import the previously build encounter that I integrated into RealmWorks directly into the already opened hero group. Then I open the tactical console and start a the fight (I don't understand that part of your quote, isn't the tactical console always already starting with the surprise round? At least that's the reason, why all heroes get the flat-footed condition till it's their turn in the surprise round). If people or other parties join the fight, I just import them and in the tactical console, I select "integrate into running fight" (or something like that, can't remember the exact wording). After the fight, if the players decide to loot the bodies, I just move the loot from the enemy to the hero who actually looted it. Then I select "remove all enemy" and I usually also hit the save button at that time. It's working quite well, but I still have a hard time to use it's full potential. For example, there are condition flags, where you can just select "grappled" or "sickened". And it applies all value changes to the creature/character. But still, it could be a bit more convenient. For example, if a character gets sickened, I would like to beeing able to enter, that he will be sickened for 6 rounds. And then, after rounds in the tactical console, the sickened condition is automatically removed from the character. Also, I think it's actually meant to keep the GM in charge of the players stats, because otherwise, the tactical console with it's automatical enemy/ally mechanic and initiative wouldn't be such a big help, if you would have to still keep a separate list of initiative order for the players. Also, my players don't use laptops while we play, they only use printed out paper sheets. And only one of the players has hero lab, the others don't. Therefore, they just tell me their decisions when levelling up and I put them into their sheets. But the main point of my post is, that I would like to have secret annotations for characters. So that I can keep non-identified items a secret from a player if I print out their pdf. Or cursed items. Last edited by Decrayer; June 6th, 2016 at 12:12 PM. |
#3 |
Senior Member
Join Date: May 2015
Posts: 830
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Ill be blunt, you're trying to micro manage your players a bit too much. HL isnt a do everything for you.
I would keep a listing of item numbers and descriptions, and then only give the actual item when it is identified. Shadow has a few useful adjustments for modifying item text/output, but blank ITEM ## seem to be the best way of doing it. Also keeping track of initiative via the TC isn't something that I would recommend. I have found that either a Pathfinder Combat Pad or Tent folded note cards are the easiest way of tracking initiative since it is so fluid. I could probably work with you some more but the forum really isnt a place for GM guidance. |
#4 |
Junior Member
Join Date: Jun 2015
Posts: 27
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First, I want to thank you for your input. I thought about my current combat process, but I came to the conclusion, that using a combat pad wouldn't help me much. It might even slow our combat management down (because we would have to roll our initiative manually, collect the values, sort the actors into the right order etc., one of the reasons, why I switched to the tactical console). The only real benefit of the combat pad over the hero lab tactical console is the right side of it, where you note effect durations. But that´s something I already do on my own sheet of square paper at the moment.
The item listing with replacement blank ITEM ## is, what I actually currently do. I just found it stupid, because I would like to have everything integrated, reducing the need for additional software (I do almost everything on my laptop and the screen gets quite overloaded). I imagine, that it would be very handy, if hero lab would have a flag that you could set for an item in order to mark it as unidentified. I think it would also fit quite well into the rest of the mechanic. The Pathfinder Combat Pad helps when you need to move the initiative of one hero, but so does HeroLabs tactical console. The PF Combat Pad doesn't help you to set up a fighting scene within seconds, rolling initiative and sorting the heroes into the right order. But maybe I don´t understand the intention of the hero lab tactical console and the condition tab. I thought, it is meant to be used as a very fine grained combat support tool. It is not perfect, I agree, I don't use every single function of it (for example, I wouldn't select "Flanking" on the condition tab if a hero or enemy is flanked). But for keeping the initiative order and look up some conditions and spell rules, it's quite good. You just need to learn a bit how to use it. And it could use some UI and performance improvement, especially for actions, that you have to use very often (like hitpoint reduction for multiple actors at once). But what is that "Shadow" you are talking about? |
#5 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Mar 2013
Location: Melbourne, Australia
Posts: 1,102
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I use the Tactical Console pretty much just like you do. You can't assign damage, conditions (or anything else) to multiple heroes/creatures in the TC - you have to do each one separately. Assigning XP in the journal is the same.
ShadowChemosh (one of the volunteers and forum posters) has some adjustments (part of the "Community Pack") that allow you to change the displayed name of an item - so you can "hide" what an item really is - you could rename it "unidentified". "ShadowChemosh's equipment" has items that are gp, sp, etc that would probably help you with money. See this thread |
#6 |
Junior Member
Join Date: Jun 2015
Posts: 27
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Alright, thank your for the hint. I'll try that community pack out.
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#7 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Oct 2015
Location: Mississauga, ON, Canada
Posts: 103
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I use a program called Combat Manager to manage combat/initiative, etc... google it. It's pretty awesome, you can even import HL files into it.
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#8 |
Junior Member
Join Date: Jun 2015
Posts: 27
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Neat, I think I'll try that one out next sunday. Thanks for the hint!
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#9 |
Junior Member
Join Date: Jun 2015
Posts: 27
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I just wanted to update: I tried Combat Manager yesterday and it worked really great. It has a very nice balance between covering most of the often used stuff (dice rolling, treasure generation, common fights stats displaying, hitpoints counting) without getting too complicated. The only thing I missed was the option, to reduce the hitpoints by a certain amount instead of having to calculate them on my own. But on the other hand, calculating this stuff on my own is a nice training. Oh, and I didn't find the combat round we are in yesterday, but today I had a second look at it and I found it (I didn't expect it to be on the right side). And for multiple dice rolls, I prevered hero lab (6d6 for example).
So to conclude, thank you very much, Dhrakken. It still will not replace HeroLab for the rest of the character handling, but it helps to replace the tactical console. |
#10 |
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