usability of Hero labs in a live setting

[cybear]

Hello, Kinda new to Lone Wolf and looking to buy HeroLab Online for the starfinder I run. I had a few questions before that though:

1. Does the secondary License mechanism currently exist for HLO? or Does everyone in my group need to purchase a license and all the additions if we want to use this at our table?
2. is there currently a way for the GM to interact with the player's characters sheets for review and the like if the players have their own license?
3. is it currently possible to import characters into fantasy grounds

[wheredoigo]

1. Not yet, but is in the works. Once implemented it is not intended to grant others to your license. It is supposed to allow people living in the same hotel me to use the same account on multiple devices.
2.Not yet.
3. No.

[Tcheekin]

Hey Cybear ... I'm in the same boat ... new and trying things out. There are a lot of very positive looking aspects in the works but at the moment, HLO is just a very powerful, easy to use character generator (and "tracker"). We had a Chromebook during our last Starfinder session, running an account with all five characters on it casting to a monitor. It did provide some easy reference and "what if" scenario solutions but as a live running app during a game provided little else. Made leveling super quick which we enjoyed since that reduced any break from the adventuring, letting us get on with the action. Also allowed for quick calculations when a character acquired new "loot" and wanted to utilize it immediately. Otherwise we still ended up printing out the characters for hard reference (old school) and using the single Chromecasted account for some creative additional tools.

Despite all that, I am impressed so far with the application's potential and desperately hoping they can release several of the road mapped features soon. I've only used it for a few weeks but would already encourage anyone with patience to invest now.

[Farling]

Originally Posted by Tcheekin

It did provide some easy reference and "what if" scenario solutions but as a live running app during a game provided little else.

Hero Lab's main benefit during game play is that when a character suffers a condition or gains a benefit, you can tag the character with that condition, and all the relevant stats will immediately change to reflect that condition (and any other conditions affecting the character).

It saves a lot of mistakes in forgetting to apply bonuses and/or penalties to the stats on a paper printout.

(I don't know if they exist in PF2 or SF, but in original PF this applies to buffs like Bless or conditions like Dazed and/or flat-footed.)

[Tcheekin]

Originally Posted by Farling

... you can tag the character with that condition, and all the relevant stats will immediately change to reflect that condition ...

Yes .. This .. thank you Farling for putting it more eloquently than myself. After re-reading my own post it sounded kind of like HLO had no use in live and that's not the case at all. It's just not Roll20 or Fancy Grounds as its far more character-centric (as intended). However, I still highly recommend it for several reasons ... the "condition reference" mentioned above being BIG ... prevents tons of rule look ups especially for those of us still learning Starfinder

That and I'm really enjoying this community

[Roadie]

Originally Posted by Farling

(I don't know if they exist in PF2 or SF, but in original PF this applies to buffs like Bless or conditions like Dazed and/or flat-footed.)

Yeah, stuff like that is there.

There's also (as in PF1) a really exhaustive list of custom adjustments for everything from stats to specifically tweaking the range or DC of abilities, which does a lot to make things practical for the inevitable minor homebrew bonuses or penalties characters tend to pick up in home campaigns.