Let me get this straight...

[Mjprogue]

Just researching HL for the first time after hearing rave reviews and I sincerely hope I'm misunderstanding something...

By my understanding...it costs over $150 to get all the licenses for all the official pathfinder stuff...so basically $150 to make a character in HL...after i've already bought all of those books...

Does this make sense to anyone or am i missing something?

[Farling]

If it is $150 for all the options, then it will cost less to make a character, since you don't need to buy the bestaries if you aren't a GM.

You can start by only buying the options that you want.

[liz]

Hi! Thanks for your post and interest in Hero Lab.

The base Pathfinder game system (the one that you select with your purchase of Hero Lab) provides you with the Core Rulebook. Were you to add up the cost to buy everything available from Paizo within Hero Lab, yes it would be a high amount. However, it's important to keep in mind that you'd be purchasing content from over 100 books.

We offer a couple bundle deals that you might want to explore, like our Bestiary 1-3 bundle and our Classic Bundle (which includes both our Campaign Setting & Player Companion bundles). You can find more info on the bundles here. Purchasing bundles will help offset the cost of purchasing over 100 books worth of content.

However, going all in is something that probably isn't necessary for the majority of users.

Keep in mind that you can use the Editor to create material as well. So, if there were only a few things from a given set of books that you used, you could build these yourself in the Editor rather than purchase the ready-made data set(s). For example, in the beginning I had a character that used content mostly from the core game, APG, and Ultimate Magic. So I purchased Hero Lab, APG & Ultimate Magic. For the few feats/items I used from other books, I worked with friends to get them made in the Editor. Then when I decided to treat myself, I would buy the package.

I hope that helps clarify things a bit.

[ShadowChemosh]

Originally Posted by Mjprogue

after i've already bought all of those books...

Does this make sense to anyone or am i missing something?

I purchased a Car a few months back and HL still required me to buy licenses.

You purchased Product A from Paizo. Paizo is not the same company as Lone Wolf. Lone Wolf provides software that runs on Windows, Mac, and the iPad. Paizo provides nothing like that.

So yes you have to pay each company separately for their products. Just like I had to pay the car company to buy a car.

Let me try it this way. You pay Paizo for the game rules and you pay Lone Wolf for the "programming" engine and Scripting hours to input the feats, magic items, classes, etc for you.

You can spend $30 bucks and enter the classes, feats, magic items, traits, archetypes, talents, powers, spells, domains, etc yourself past the CORE rules. The HL editor is very powerful and you can enter everything for yourself for free. Their is allot of help here on the boards for entering the Things into HL editor if you wish to go that way.

Also note that if you purchase the PDF from paizo and the game package from LW you spend less money than if you purchased the dead tree. Just an FYI...

[Aldaron]

Well, I use HL as a GM, not just as a player, and I think of it this way.

A high-level, complex NPC can easily take 2 - 3 hours to create by hand and requires a lot of space, a lot of page-flipping, and wear and tear on the books. Say there are two or three in an adventure you're creating. That's 4 - 9 hours, just to create the "bosses".

Throw in another 10 moderate NPCs at 40 minutes each. That's another 6 or more hours.

Then there's, say, 20 minor NPCs whose stats you're going to get directly from half a dozen different splatbooks. You've either got to write them down somewhere or have the books on hand, either physically or electronically.

With HL, I can create the high-level, complex NPCs in about 20 minutes each. That's 40 - 60 minutes.

The 10 moderate NPCs? About five minutes each. That's a little under an hour.

The 20 minor NPCs? Import them all from various HL sourcebook databases and it'll take about 20 minutes in total.

So, all up, I've gone from about 12 hours work to about 2.5 hours at most, saving myself about 9.5 hours. For $150, that's about $15.79 an hour...for the first adventure.

Every time you use HL to create all your NPCs, you reduce that rate further. And if you're using HL to actually run your games, all your NPCs are in one place, all your PCs are in one place, and your combats are absolutely dead easy to run with the tactical screen. No more scraps of paper trying to keep track of initiative and hit points and conditions and who's dead and who's unconscious and when the bad guy reinforcements are coming in and where the hell are the stats for the summoned hell-hound and oh god I have to add the fiendish template to it which freakin' book it that in...

I say this with all seriousness: I teach Information Technology to students at a diploma level, and have done so for nearly 15 years. I have never in my life found a piece of software that is not an office application or web browser that has proven as useful and time-saving as Hero Lab. I'm not exaggerating.

And if you compare the price of Hero Lab to, say, Microsoft Office...suddenly, it's not that expensive.

$150 for something that has saved me literally thousands of hours work over the last however-many years? I'd pay ten times that for it...

[Mjprogue]

Thanks for the replies...obviously I am in the wrong place however. I have no issue with paying for product, but I get the strong feeling that Paizo is making a cut on these sales...and that is unacceptable. They have already been paid for the book...then again for the PDF (that alone is a ripoff) and now they want us to pay yet again for the data we already "own" to be useable in thrid party software? They should GLADLY allow other parties to make their product more useful...hell they should probably be paying HL for sending out updates to their customers...not the other way around.

If 100% of the purchase price for a "license" goes to HL then MAYBE it is worth it (still doubtful given the extreme costs) but if even a penny of that goes to pay Paizo...no way. That term License is what throws me...its what people usually pay other people for permission to do stuff...like use their product.

All said and done, the data is there, it doesn't take long to input (sorry, I can input everything relevant from a single book in a few hours) so paying such high prices just doesn't seem reasonable.

Possible exception...is every line of text from the books somewhere in that data? I get the impression its only the hard stats...meaning only a small fraction of the contents of each book (some more than others of course)

[charlieluce]

Personally, I don't buy the books at all; I just buy the Hero Lab modules and use the online rules references. Then again, I'm only playing, not running.

[DMG]

As far as I know, Paizo does get a cut as Lone Wolf licenses the system from them.

It wouldn't be fair for Lone Wolf staff to make a living by ripping off Paizo's work. It's no different than if LEGO started making Star Wars sets & didn't licence from Lucasfilm (now Disney).

Fair is fair & I'm more than happy to pay Lone Wolf for their efforts & have the trickle on to Paizo for the hard work they put in as well.

[ShadowChemosh]

Originally Posted by Mjprogue

All said and done, the data is there, it doesn't take long to input (sorry, I can input everything relevant from a single book in a few hours) so paying such high prices just doesn't seem reasonable.

Yes you could input the Things into HL as text in a few hours. Scripting all the pre-req and evail scripts you could not. If you can then I would advise you to go become a contractor with LW and make some good money doing whole months of a releases in one day.

Most things are not too bad in HL but sometimes an odd feat or class ability can take 8 to 16 hours of work to get working right. When doing the Razor Coast stuff one line(ie one sentence) errata cost me 5hrs of time.

If you did enter everything as just text their is allot of adjustments you could use to get things to calculate correctly. But then I think your missing out on part of the power of HL which is that it "auto" calculates all those values for you.

[Aldaron]

Originally Posted by Mjprogue

Thanks for the replies...obviously I am in the wrong place however. I have no issue with paying for product, but I get the strong feeling that Paizo is making a cut on these sales...and that is unacceptable.

They may get a licencing fee, just like every other company gets a licencing fee when someone uses their products. I paid to see Star Wars. If I buy my child a Star Wars lunch-box, should I complain because I pay more for it than for a plain lunch-box?

They have already been paid for the book...then again for the PDF (that alone is a ripoff)

1) So you think a company which already provides the entire content, sans illustrations, of all its core books for free on the Internet should also provide the fully-formatted, fully-illustrated electronic versions for free?

2) If you have a subscription to Paizo product lines, you get the PDF versions for free.

and now they want us to pay yet again for the data we already "own" to be useable in thrid party software? They should GLADLY allow other parties to make their product more useful...hell they should probably be paying HL for sending out updates to their customers...not the other way around.

You're not "paying for the data". As has already been explained you can enter the data yourself if you want to. You're paying for someone else (ie: Lone Wolf staff) to enter the data for you.

I can't quite get my head around why you would think Paizo should be paying another company to make a profit off their licenced material. Should LucasArts be paying the lunch-box maker to slap an R2-D2 picture on it?

If 100% of the purchase price for a "license" goes to HL then MAYBE it is worth it (still doubtful given the extreme costs) but if even a penny of that goes to pay Paizo...no way. That term License is what throws me...its what people usually pay other people for permission to do stuff...like use their product.

The extreme cost? Are you serious? You'll pay $50 for a game that will last a few hours but you baulk at $30 for Hero Lab?

If you have a problem with Lone Wolf licencing Paizo material then you'd best never buy any kind of licenced merchandise again. Lone Wolf is paying Paizo for permission to use their product - the Pathfinder rules set - in order to increase the sale of their software.

All said and done, the data is there, it doesn't take long to input (sorry, I can input everything relevant from a single book in a few hours) so paying such high prices just doesn't seem reasonable.

I've been using Hero Lab for years, and it takes me a couple of hours to enter the data for a small splatbook. I have no idea exactly how long it would take to enter the data for, say, the Game Mastery Guide, but it would be a lot longer than a couple of hours.

Just exactly how much per hour is your time worth, and why exactly do you think LW staff time is worth so much less?

I'm still gobsmacked that you think the price is so high, by the way. You've just said it doesn't take you that long to enter the data, so pay $30 for the program and enter your own data.

Either you think it takes too long to enter the data and therefore want someone else to do it, but you don't want to pay them to do it; or you don't think it takes that long and could therefore do it yourself, in which case you think $30 is too expensive.

Which is it?

Possible exception...is every line of text from the books somewhere in that data? I get the impression its only the hard stats...meaning only a small fraction of the contents of each book (some more than others of course)

Then your impression is wrong. I don't know about "every line", but I can run an entire game session from HL without referring to a single book. Rules, clarifications, skill descriptions, full spell descriptions, feats, character classes, monster descriptions, both crunch and fluff, are all there.

Edit to Add: Incidentally, this is far more generous that the vast majority of other companies out there. Paizo is allowing Lone Wolf to essentially create an electronic version of their books, which could actually reduce sales, and you want them to pay Lone Wolf for the privilege?