Character Sheets

[bromleylaerchenheim]

Hi - just use HL since a week. I ll find HL great and easy to use but two things strikes me:

- Why are all the lists (weapons, armors, feats...) not sortable? Finding a specific feat is a time-consuming thing. Why not just providing a few more columns to sort for combat, racial, class feats etc...?

- The character sheet output is creepy. Why does Lone Wolf not just provide sheets following the rulesystem standards? Otherwise it would be great to just have a simple editor to move things around and customize sheets.

 

[Nikmal]

Customizable Character Sheets are coming soon. They just sent out a newsletter explaining:

We continue to work on updating Hero Lab and the latest update, V3.7, is coming soon. Hero Lab 3.7 adds a variety of highly requested features, including:

* Customizable output: By writing an XSLT file, you can generate totally customizable game-specific output for your heroes. Now you can work on that custom character sheet that you've always wanted!
* Output multiple heroes: As well as just outputting the current hero, you'll be able to print or generate statblocks for all heroes in the portfolio at once. This is ideal for GMs running encounters, or players who have sidekicks, companions or familiars.
* Scrollable tabs: Running Hero lab on a netbook or laptop is easier than ever before, with new scrollable tabs - instead of trying to squeeze more and more information into the same tiny space, tabs will now scroll when necessary.

And more! This update also includes more bug fixes for issues uncovered by you, our users, and includes other stability updates.

 

[tatteredking]

bromley,

welcome aboard. While HL feats/spells, etc are not easily sortable, if you are looking for a specific feat, you can search on it. Take, for example, feats. Open the Feat tab, click the Add New Feat link. In the pop-up window at the top, right under the "Add a Feat - 0 of 1 (1 left)" line, there is an empty box, and then a pulldown menu that currently reads Everything.

In the empty box, start typing the specific feat you are looking for.

But I know what you are saying. It would be nice to be able to pull up, all the metamagic feats, for example.

 

[CapeCodRPGER]

Things I'd like to see in a character sheet.

I would like more custominzation with the HL sheet. Here are some things I like, feel free to add so the HL people can see. I use HL for Pathfinder.

1. Page numbers for the spells.

2. Able to add gems, jewlery to the tresure list so it gets added in enc.. I know you can add it with custom treasure or write it in the the journal. Be nice to just add it in.

3. The option to print out certin weapons as combat stat blocks. The way it is now every weapon you carry has a stat block. A couple of my players in my game were just carrying weapons that they knew they would not use. A few of the weapons were even in a portable hole. Yet all the weapons print out as combat stat blocks. This wastes ink and makes it harder to to find the weapon attack you are using as you also don't have any way to tell HL what order you like the weapons printed out.

4. A breakdown on the different bonus' for different things. IE, Initiative should have the total modifier, the DEX, and feats, armor, magic, ect.. Not just the total modifier. Easier to adjust when you know the breakdown.

What do others think?

 

[gypsyxot]

bromley,

But I know what you are saying. It would be nice to be able to pull up, all the metamagic feats, for example.

because each feat lists the type of feat you CAN. simply type metamagic in the search box. I've also had good luck typing in what I'd like to have the feat modify such as, "saving throw", or "bardic music".

 

[toddlower]

I didn't get this newsletter that you referenced, so . . . when is soon? I love HL for creating characters but the output is so bad as to be unusable. It doesn't display any of the variable bonuses for things like power attack or rage. I currently have a mid level two weapon fighter with rage, power attack, two weapon rend, none of these show on the weapon's stat block. I have five attacks per round. One of the things that I hate most when playing at a table is when I (or others) can't find or compute their attack/damage bonuses in a timely manner.

 

[Adam.Ormond]

I'm also curious when more flexible output will become available. I'd especially love to see a more verbose XML output, so I could write my own XSLTs. The existing XML output contains a bunch of information that is only useful to HeroLab itself.

I considered writing a parser for the Stat Block output text, but it'd require a lot of hacks to properly differentiate everything, and I'm not even sure it's possible. For example, the spells are separated by commas, but spells have commas in their names as well.

 

[rob]

The newsletters are all available on our website (www.wolflair.com) and include answers to most of the questions being asked.

Hope this helps....

 

[CapeCodRPGER]

How easy is it going to be for people like me with no programing skills and very basic computer use skills be able to customize the new sheets? I have no idea what an XLST file is.

 

[Adam.Ormond]

How easy is it going to be for people like me with no programing skills and very basic computer use skills be able to customize the new sheets? I have no idea what an XLST file is.

A brief description of XSLT can be found here.

You don't need programming skills to figure out how to write an XSLT, and if the XML to be processed is available outside of HeroLab, there are a number of free applications that exist to make writing XSLTs more accessible to the non-technical.

I'm really looking forward to this capability -- I have been for over a year. There's so much I could do with the XML, beyond creating pretty character sheets. Like create an HTML5 character sheet that I could use directly on my iPad, and offline.

 

[chiefweasel]

If the user community is will we can create multiple templates and offer them to everyone. It would make it easier for folks.

 

[Nanan00]

The character sheet output is a bit of a disappointment as it neglects many things such as names of custom items still including enhancement stuff spamming to the end of the name block yet those enhancement bonus items are not reflected in the weapons stats such as a longsword with flaming/frost should be 1d8+x + 1d6, the problem is the extra damage dice items are not showing up.

eg.: from the .por file, does HL not even track some enchantments?

+3 Keen Frost Rapier +18/+13 (1d6+11/15-20/x2)

where is the 1d6 frost damage?

 

[NeoFax]

I didn't get this newsletter that you referenced, so . . . when is soon? I love HL for creating characters but the output is so bad as to be unusable. It doesn't display any of the variable bonuses for things like power attack or rage. I currently have a mid level two weapon fighter with rage, power attack, two weapon rend, none of these show on the weapon's stat block. I have five attacks per round. One of the things that I hate most when playing at a table is when I (or others) can't find or compute their attack/damage bonuses in a timely manner.

You could output multiple sheets with each applied and hand write the name of the applied "bonus" at the top. This way you have a rage sheet, a power attack sheet, Hybrid form sheet...

 

[ShadowChemosh]

You could output multiple sheets with each applied and hand write the name of the applied "bonus" at the top. This way you have a rage sheet, a power attack sheet, Hybrid form sheet...

This is exactly what a player in my game does. He says "I rage" and he flips his sheet to the "Rage" sheet. Seems to work pretty good as their is allot of stuff that changes for rage.

The only thing that would be nice is to see which In-Play features are active and which "Adjustments" are active when the sheet was printed. Make it easier to ID which sheet his which and for un-trusting DM's to know what adjustments the character sheet had at the time of printing.

 

[Kinnakeeter]

If the user community is will we can create multiple templates and offer them to everyone. It would make it easier for folks.

Yep. So now that this ability is out there, which of you bright fellows is going to have them first?
On a related note - would someone be willing to write up advice or a tutorial to assist us those of us who would like to learn to create them for ourselves?

I'm slightly upset by this, however. I know next to nothing about editing XML or creating XSLT files other than what little editing I can do in Excel for XML. I don't have the time to map out a sheet in Excel - if I did I'd simply create my own custom database. HeroLab has been great to use and I love the authoring feature( though I don't use it much anymore except to add custom wondrous items or gear and such) but the printed output has left me flat. It's even more of a disappointment to finally have a customizable feature only to have to use an entirely different program to edit it and print something that's actually usable.

Why was the printed output feature neglected so much when you've done so well with every other feature? This has been an ongoing complaint since the beginning of HeroLab and it saddens me.

 

[Adam.Ormond]

What saddens me is that the upgrade invalidated my license, and now I have to wait for "early license reassignment".

 

[rob]

Why was the printed output feature neglected so much when you've done so well with every other feature? This has been an ongoing complaint since the beginning of HeroLab and it saddens me.

Hero Lab supports a large range of game systems, and every gamer has a different idea of what the "right" character sheet design happens to be. Look at how many different character sheets have been produced by various third party companies over the years, let alone all of the custom sheets created by fans. Regardless of what we did, some would like it and others would hate it. So the best solution is to give users the power to create their own. Yes, there is some learning curve involved, but the mechanism uses a well-established standard that many people are already familiar with.

At first, this will be frustrating, since you want something *now*. However, after a little while, a number of users will put together some custom sheets and share them. Once that occurs, you'll be able to use those sheets or tailor one you like to your own purposes.

 

[rob]

What saddens me is that the upgrade invalidated my license, and now I have to wait for "early license reassignment".

Are you perchance using the same Hero Lab license number on two different computers? That would definitely cause the upgrade to report that error. If so, then you need to use a separate license number on each computer. When you purchase Hero Lab, you are given access to a FREE secondary license for use on a second computer. All you need to do is obtain the license number and put it to use, which can be done from the License menu within the product (Obtain Secondary License).

Hope this helps...

 

[Kinnakeeter]

Hero Lab supports a large range of game systems, and every gamer has a different idea of what the "right" character sheet design happens to be. Look at how many different character sheets have been produced by various third party companies over the years, let alone all of the custom sheets created by fans. Regardless of what we did, some would like it and others would hate it. So the best solution is to give users the power to create their own. Yes, there is some learning curve involved, but the mechanism uses a well-established standard that many people are already familiar with.

At first, this will be frustrating, since you want something *now*. However, after a little while, a number of users will put together some custom sheets and share them. Once that occurs, you'll be able to use those sheets or tailor one you like to your own purposes.

That's not my point, though. My point is that there was never any usable output from the beginning. The program is wonderful but half of the usability is in being able to create character sheets that are legible and helpful in a game. Unfortunately, the output that the program generates is not so. I can't just use a stat block and the printed output is ludicrous and sometime incomprehensible. I need more comprehensive information and I don't have the luxury of using a laptop for games. I talked to you personally at GenCon once about this.

I've had my copy of the program since 2007. I was lucky enough to get a free license from an RPG giveaway and have simply kept upgrading. However, I actually walked away from using HeroLab because of the output issue, even after I spent money upgrading to get all the Pathfinder datasets. I've been waiting for years, silently reading threads commenting on this, and sometimes responding. All this time we've been told something along the lines of "We're working on this", but now all we get is something we can't even manipulate in the program. At least your dataset editor is part of the program and is easier to use. For me, this is useless and, frankly, is a deal-breaker. I'm extremely disappointed.

 

[Adam.Ormond]

Are you perchance using the same Hero Lab license number on two different computers? That would definitely cause the upgrade to report that error. If so, then you need to use a separate license number on each computer. When you purchase Hero Lab, you are given access to a FREE secondary license for use on a second computer. All you need to do is obtain the license number and put it to use, which can be done from the License menu within the product (Obtain Secondary License).

Hope this helps...

I have two licenses already. One for one of my desktops, and one for one of my laptops.

As far as I can tell, I need my license unlocked. I'm leery to upgrade on my laptop, as then I'd have zero working copies.