Misc. Questions Re: Pathfinder & Hero Lab

[JackOfAllGames]

So my gaming group is a fairly recent one - we started on a homebrew, moved to D&D 4E, and played a little Dragon Age on the side. 4E has been our main game system, but one of the members (and his wife) are wanting to try Pathfinder. I have no experience with Pathfinder and my only experience with 3 or 3.5 are video games like Knights of the Old Republic and Neverwinter Nights 2 that were based upon them. I'm hoping you guys might be able to help me out with a few questions.

1. I'm not interested in DMing yet - just learning the game system. Further, I want as complete a picture of the game system as possible - not just a beginner box (I did see that there is such a thing). Where would I go (or what would I buy) to learn the game system?

2. If I like what I see from the player side of things, what would I then need to get to learn the DMing side?

3. Pathfinder's been around for quite a while. I assume there are a lot of books and supplements - as with D&D 4E. (Correct me if I'm wrong there.) What does Hero Lab have from this content? Is it up to date with all the content? How much of the books is duplicated by Hero Lab's content?

4. How buggy/complete is Hero Lab for Pathfinder? I'm still learning Hero Lab for 4E and I'm not too impressed so far - there are a lot of bugs and holes in the data. I know that WotC has a pretty bad rep in the gaming community (part of why I'm entertaining the idea of switching our primary game system) - I don't know how much to blame Lone Wolf vs. WotC for HL:4E problems. I'm hoping that the Pathfinder portion is better.

5. I understand that Pathfinder was built with a good deal of backward compatibility in mind...but 4E took a different path than prior D&D editions. How compatible would the materials likely be? Would any portion of the 4E materials be reusable?

I think that's it. Thanks to anyone that can help this n00b (me) out.

[Chemlak]

1) The Pathfinder Reference Document (PRD) is your friend. It contains all of the Open Game Content rules (which is most of them).

2) See 1), above. It's all in there, though the GameMastery Guide has some good advice.

3) Pretty much all of it, though you have to buy data packages to get all of it. This can add up price-wise.

4) In the main, PF is great in HL. There are bugs, yes, but not too many, and most of them aren't serious, and many of them can be mitigated by using the truly fantastic Adjustments package by ShadowChemosh.

5) PF and 4E don't really play nice together, in many respects. Unlearn what you have learned. Your experience in NWN2 will actually serve you better.

[RavenX]

1-3: To answer your questions, if you're new to the system, you can get the books for the system as PDFs from paizo.com at a substantial savings over hardcover copies. I still recommend at least getting a core rulebook pdf, gamemastery guide and Bestiary 1 (you can get the bonus bestiary for free on paizo.com). There are also a few sample adventures on that site you can get for free.

As for your inquiries about the differences in support between Pathfinder vs. 4e, Pathfinder has given Hero Lab an official license, meaning they subsidize the entry of the data into the software. You get a very good amount of data from the core package, and there are a lot of extra supplementary data packages you can pick up as well. 4e is not officially licensed, so all Hero Lab can provide is the framework for storing the data and acquiring it. With 4e many of the data retrieval problems stem from the fact you have to download the data direct from the compendium. Due to WotC changing the formatting of the compendium periodically (as new data emerged), Hero Lab's downloader has not been able to procure everything from the site when it downloads. You pretty much have to enter everything from the Essentials line by hand in the editor. If you see a book on a shelf for Pathfinder, however, chances are Hero Lab has a license you can purchase to add that content into Hero Lab to go with that book. That lack of official license for hero lab for 4e is one of the biggest reasons my group decided to get out of 4e and switch to pathfinder. We like how seamlessly Pathfinder came together and the simplicity of the system (it is similar to 3.5 but much more streamlined). In my honest opinion, Pathfinder is what 4e should have been (Note: Not trying to start an edition war here, just stating my personal experience and preference from both sides of the coin). If you want to know anything about GMing, feel free to PM me, I've been DMing/GMing exclusively for many years, I never play the game as a player, I only run games.

as an aside, you may want to talk to cryptoknight about the 4e data, he might have a repository for the missing data but I am not sure.

[JackOfAllGames]

Thank you both for the info! After a bit of looking around, I think I'll go ahead and start with the digital Core Rulebook. $10 isn't a lot to get into building characters and learning rules. Then the PRD can give me an idea of what monsters and such would look like until the day that I might try getting the GameMastery guide.

I'm glad that I don't have to buy a dozen books to get a complete picture of how things work. If I like the core rules, I'll probably look into the GM guide and HeroLab upgrades (and their prices) next. The 4E character creator spoiled me. I'll probably want a similar experience for Pathfinder. (It's great to hear that Hero Lab is able to fully support the Pathfinder content too!)