(Drop Dead Studios) Spheres of Power: Official Support Thread

[asvaldson]

In the Elementalist Bonus Feats list I have a feat called 'Staff Technique' that does not seem to exist ANYWHERE else. Including the SoP books (Or USoP) I even tried to do a google search and that exact name does not seem to appear anywhere. I've attached a SS of the feat and description so I know I'm not crazy! lol

[Parody]

At this wiki it's listed under Old Combat Feats. It's not listed as being in Ultimate Spheres of Power.

[asvaldson]

Originally Posted by Parody

At this wiki it's listed under Old Combat Feats. It's not listed as being in Ultimate Spheres of Power.

Yeah I found it there, I just couldn't find what book it was in. I wanted to edit or copy it to make it show up on the general feat list as well. I'm not great at scripting, so I tend to do a lot of cribbing from existing material

[asvaldson]

Oh, and I DID find it. It's in the Battlemage's handbook

[Ualaa]

I got everything working, thank you

[Aril]

So, if I have ONLY purchased the Transmuter's Handbook and Champions of the Spheres before this, what process do I need to follow to purchase USoP?

1-Do I have to seriously purchase all the other books first? Some posting here at debugging why they have errors seem to refer to installing other books first.

2-Do I *delete* the two books I've already purchased? Or just "uncheck" them in the Character Configuration screen before enabling USoP once I have installed it?

3-What happens to characters I have already created with SoP and the two books I already purchased? Do I need to recreate them from scratch?

[Aril]

Originally Posted by TheIronGolem

With the desired sources you mentioned, this is the minimum of what you should install:

Community Pack
Ultimate Spheres of Power
Spheres of Might
Champions of the Spheres

The order of SoP vs SoM doesn't really matter, but Community Pack should be first and Champions should be last.

If you have Wild Magic or the Bear handbook you can install those as well, but they aren't necessary. Any other legacy SoP books you may have (sphere handbooks or Expanded Options) should not be installed because USoP already contains them and you will get duplicate-record errors.



Downloading from DriveThru may or may not get you the latest version (I did email them the files I created this weeked but don't know if DDS has posted them yet or not and am no longer in direct contact with them).

Using the update mechanism in HL will get you the most recent version (barring any issues with Dropbox, your Internet connection, etc). This is because when you set up the update URL in the readme file's instructions, this tells HL what the newest version of the package is and where to find it.

There is nowhere besides DriveThru to purchase the HL packages for SoP/SoM as far as I am aware, and you certainly shouldn't need to buy anything extra to stay up to date.

EDIT: It occurs to me you are probably asking as someone who has never purchased/installed SoP before, so my explanation may be lacking. Let me drill down a bit further:

When you buy and download a HL package from DriveThru (at least, the ones I made), you're getting a zip file that contains two important things: A readme file, and a .hl file. The .hl file is the installer, and will give you whatever version of SoP (or whatever) was bundled into that zip file. The readme file contains an "update URL" and instructions on how to enter that URL into Hero Lab. When you do that, HL will use that URL to look up the latest available version of the package, compare it to what you have, and (if what's out there is later than what you have) notify you that an update is available for download. So for example, if you bought/installed Ultimate Spheres of Power on DT and the zip contained version 1.3, and you also set up the update URL, the next time you started HL it would find that version 1.4 is available and ask if you want to download that. The long and short of it is, I can't guarantee that what you download from DT is the latest and greatest, so if you want to stay up to date you will want to make sure to follow the readme's instructions to set up the update mechanism. Hope that helps.

Thanks for the explanation. I *have* purchased SoP, but only recently started using it. I've only created a few NPC's with it (I'm the DM). I'm interested in USoP, as I have the hardback and the PDF, so I wanted to get the updated Hero Lab file.

Unlike many others, I only really started getting into Hero Lab in the last two years. I've only got I think 3 SoP books...the main one, Transmuter's Handbook, and Champion's Handbook.

I'm asking these questions, because I've seen so many people posting here about having difficulties, I'm trying to understand what to do to have it go smoothly.

I'm not actually sure *how* to delete packages I've already installed, if that's necessary. I've never had to until now.

[Ualaa]

If you wanted to remove a package, you'd go to:
- Tools Menu
- Manage Third Party Updates
- Select whatever, and then press the Delete button

Ultimate Spheres of Power, Spheres of Might, and Champions of the Spheres cover basically all the sphere stuff.
The Community Pack has Path of War, Ultimate Psionics, and some other stuff, and used to be a dependent package for the Sphere stuff (maybe it still is).

USoP is a really good deal, it is the handbook for most of the individual spheres as well as several other books like Expanded Options etc.

Assuming you don't have other Hero Lab purchases (AAW Games, Frog God Games, etc), removing the extraneous packages that have been combined into USoP is a good idea.

[Aril]

Originally Posted by Ualaa

If you wanted to remove a package, you'd go to:
- Tools Menu
- Manage Third Party Updates
- Select whatever, and then press the Delete button

Ultimate Spheres of Power, Spheres of Might, and Champions of the Spheres cover basically all the sphere stuff.
The Community Pack has Path of War, Ultimate Psionics, and some other stuff, and used to be a dependent package for the Sphere stuff (maybe it still is).

USoP is a really good deal, it is the handbook for most of the individual spheres as well as several other books like Expanded Options etc.

Assuming you don't have other Hero Lab purchases (AAW Games, Frog God Games, etc), removing the extraneous packages that have been combined into USoP is a good idea.

So, in terms of SoP, SoM supplements for Hero Lab, I only have:

Spheres of Power
Spheres of Might
Champions of the Spheres
Transmuter's Handbook

In terms of supplements from OTHER companies, that don't include any Spheres stuff, I've got a bunch of the official Paizo bundles, and then I also have In the Company of Dragons/In the Company of Fey/In the Company of Unicorns/In the Company of Monsters, and then all the Kobold Press/Midgard stuff.

None of those other supplements have anything to do with Spheres though.

Are you saying to use USoP, I'll have to remove and stop using ALL that other stuff as well?

[WhiteUnggoy]

Aril, no, you just want to delete the old 'update links' and add the one included in the USoP help file. You don't need to purchase other spheres books: instead USoP overwrites SoP; so when you purchase USoP Hero Lab files you get access to the 27 supplements & 9 apocrypha that went into in the USoP book compilation. If you wanted a complete collection of Drop Dead's Hero Lab files, here's what you'd buy:

Ultimate Spheres of Power
Spheres of Might
Champions of the Spheres (requires both USoP & SoM)
The Bear Sphere (April Fool's release, not included in USoP)
Wild Magic Handbook (not included in USoP)

Does that clear things up?