How useful is HL for a GM?

[Nikmal]

Originally Posted by Cutter

Personally I find HL to be a fantastic tool for the DM. Keeping track of all the character builds and enforcing the rules becomes almost a no-brainer.

I have been using Tactical Console to run fights as well, but I find it actually rather cumbersome and a bit slow in actual game use.

My personal recomendation is currently to use HeroLabs for all character management, but run the fights with Combat Manager (www.combatmanager.com) which is freeware, and handles imports of HL portfolio's. It has a beautiful interface and is quick and easy to use.

So my choice of ultimate DM tools currently - HeroLabs for character creation, building and maintenance. Combat manager for handling actual combats. Using both side by side seems ideal to me.

Combat Manager does not do the conditions and adjustments for combat that Hero Lab does so why on earth would I want to use that instead of Hero Labs? Combat manager is good for what it does but to be honest it is similar enough to HL that you might as well use HL instead with the extra condition mods and adjustment tabs that it has instead.

[Tordek]

I used Tactical Console for the first time in my Rise of the Runelords game on Friday night. Overall, I liked it.

I have one question. Is there a way to apply a condition, such as haste, to a multiple characters at the same time? My PC's are now level 7 and I have a feeling this is going to happen a lot now. It breaks the flow of the game if I have to open each character up individually, apply the condition and then go on to the next. I have 5 pcs and my laptop is by no means a speed demon.

[Meatpuppet]

Originally Posted by Tordek

I have one question. Is there a way to apply a condition, such as haste, to a multiple characters at the same time? My PC's are now level 7 and I have a feeling this is going to happen a lot now. It breaks the flow of the game if I have to open each character up individually, apply the condition and then go on to the next. I have 5 pcs and my laptop is by no means a speed demon.

There is no way to apply conditions to a group of characters (which can be frustrating for us DMs)

I'm still hoping someone at Herolab will implement this somewhere in the not so distant future

[Cutter]

Originally Posted by Nikmal

Combat Manager does not do the conditions and adjustments for combat that Hero Lab does so why on earth would I want to use that instead of Hero Labs? Combat manager is good for what it does but to be honest it is similar enough to HL that you might as well use HL instead with the extra condition mods and adjustment tabs that it has instead.

As I said I find Tactical Console's interface to be slow and clumsy. Combat manager is much faster and simpler. It tracks conditions and expirations, just doesn't do the math for you.

[Lord Magus]

I used HL in my game for the first time last Sunday. It made things really easier on my side, and I'll keep using it for combats. Really helped me to quickly find things, as opposed to searching through piles of char sheets previously.

[Fenelthin]

I've been using HL for around two years now and it has saved me over a dozen headaches and countless arguments with my players. When we transitioned to Pathfinder, everyone tried to treat it just like 3.5 and despite my warnings, to them it didn't work properly. I made everyone build their characters in HL while I hawked over their shoulders so that everyone was operating under the same rules and everyone was on the same playing field. People would bicker about creation rules since we didn't have a book at the time, but HL knew all the tricks and was always consistent. And I'll agree with others here, having the players give me their character portfolios made the tactical console a dream come true.

[RavenX]

From a GM's perspective: I've been a GM exclusively for 20+ years. One of the things that used to take me hours to do by hand was NPC and Monster builds or rebuilds. I've never been content with using just classic monsters. I sometimes like to build abyssal hell hounds to throw at my players giving them things other than the standard fire breath abilities. This keeps my players on their feet and makes them think a bit about the foes they're dealing with. Hero Lab is the most convenient tool I've encountered in my years running games.

#1 All PCs in One Place With the use of Hero Labs portfolio system I have all of my player characters in one place. I can customize my encounters to their specific strengths and weaknesses and not have to dig out campaign note books and hope my players remembered to put their sheets in there at the end of the session. I don't have to worry about players making illegal changes to sheets either, as the only changes I recognize are through Hero Lab, meaning they have to go through me to make any modifications. This has reduced the number of cheating players I've encountered.

#2 Tactical Console If you haven't already discovered this feature, do yourself a favor and push Ctrl + T to pop it up, NOW. You can import monsters and NPCs from other portfolios under the Portfolio section of the main menu. The tactical console allows you to keep track of both Initiative, in play effects like status conditions, hit points, and spell adjustments by clicking on the appropriate areas of the console. You can even see a characters skill modifiers and combat statistics and spell lists along with special information on the console. This has made running games easier on me. Just hit the play button after each player has gone, at the end of the round I make sure any end of round effects are dealt with and then hit next round. This feature alone is worth while for any GM.

#3 All Character Info in One Place Personally I enjoy reading the books for my settings, that doesn't mean I remember every single page number something was found on in those books. Hero Lab makes it convenient for that Magic Item or piece of gear I'm looking for. I can just type the name into the search bar on the appropriate gizmo menu that pops up on the tab and the system takes me right to it. Having all the feats in one place is a no brainer. I don't have to look them up in books, nor do I need to carry a 5 inch thick notebook of compiled feats with me just to look up one that a player wants to add to their character anymore. (Before anyone asks, yes I had a player that did this. He had every feat ever released in 3.5 in a five inch notebook. All the pages were double sided printouts.) This also makes it easier to build monsters. The Bestiary Monster Creator feature under the race chooser makes building races easy. You can even import monsters from 3.5 or 3rd party supplements into your pathfinder game using this feature.

#4 Output Options You can have hero lab output Monster Stat blocks in a way similar to those printed in the bestiaries under the file menu. This is a great feature. I use it often to deal with printing off monsters from non-Pathfinder sources.

#5 Validation Reports First thing I check as a GM is the validation report that hero lab displays for each character a player submits for approval. If they've done anything not allowed by the rules of the game system it will show up here. This makes my job of validating characters alot easier.

#6 Speed and Ease of Use Doing the things I do with hero lab by hand takes hours of prep time. I have to spend hours pouring through books looking for the things I want to add to the creature or npc I am building. It gets tedious. With hero lab I can take that same build time and simplify it greatly. Everything in one place means less time looking for it when I need. Point, Click, Done.

#7 Expandability Hero Lab has the integrated Editor feature in the Tools menu that allows GMs to add custom content to their own campaigns. I've been using this feature for years now, and even shared some of my conversion work with the community for settings like Dark Sun, Eberron, and Forgotten Realms. You can add spells and other things you want, which makes a GM's life a lot better in the long haul. Got a new feat from a source not in hero lab? add it. Use it.

I could list reasons for a GM to have this software all day, but the ones I've specified here pretty much cover my justification for the expense. I bought a 4e license during the time my group was playing that system and it was the only reason we kept playing it for a while after the WotC character builder was created and kept crashing on us when we went to use it. Hero Lab doesn't have the stability issues online builders have, and it is infinitely expandable compared to others I've worked with.

[Umarian]

Wow! One heck of a necro on this thread...