Hero Lab: Tactical Console - Can you save Encounters?

[goddelusion]

With the recently announced partnership between Lone Wolf & Paizo, I am seriously considering purchasing HL and the Pathfinder datasets. However, a major deciding factor for me is the Tactical Console. I GM from my laptop, and having the ability to setup encounters in the Tactical Console and save them for later use is paramount.

Does the Tactical Console allow the user to create and save multiple encounters to be opened at a later time? It appears a fully licensed user can save portfolios. Is a portfolio the same as an encounter?

Thanks!

[Hyrum]

Originally Posted by goddelusion

With the recently announced partnership between Lone Wolf & Paizo, I am seriously considering purchasing HL and the Pathfinder datasets. However, a major deciding factor for me is the Tactical Console. I GM from my laptop, and having the ability to setup encounters in the Tactical Console and save them for later use is paramount.

Does the Tactical Console allow the user to create and save multiple encounters to be opened at a later time? It appears a fully licensed user can save portfolios. Is a portfolio the same as an encounter?

Thanks!

Yep, I recently did this for the event I ran at PaizoCon. You basically load up the PCs and the bad guys from Encounter 1. Save the portfolio. Delete the bad guys, load new bad guys, save Encounter 2 with a different name.

ie: for the Warren of the Death Spider event I had:

Encounter 1: Trapdoor Spiders (all PCs + the trapdoor spiders)
Encounter 2: Ettercaps (same as above, but with ettercaps instead of spiders)
Encounter 3: Spider Thralls (see above)
Encounter 4: Death Spider (see above)

Hope that makes sense!

Hyrum.
Super Genius Games
"We err on the side of awesome."

[rob]

There's a different technique you can also use, either in parallel or instead of the one proposed by Hyrum.

Before I launch into it, though, let me clarify something you asked in your post. The standard document that Hero Lab saves is referred to as a portfolio. A portfolio can contain any number of characters. The default is obviously one, but you can have 2, 3, 10, or 100 if you want. A portfolio is simply a collection of characters saved in a single file.

Hero Lab operates on a single portfolio at a time. Players will generally have a portfolio for their respective PCs. However, a GM might have dozens of portfolios. Some will contain individual major NPCs for the campaign. Others might contain the collection of monsters in a particular encounter.

The ability to store multiple "actors" (our generic term for characters and monsters) in a single portfolio is highly flexible for GMs. First of all, the GM can manage a single portfolio that contains all the PCs during the game. You can import the PCs from their separate portfolios into a single shared portfolio at the start of the game. This is accomplished via the Portfolio menu. From there, you can use the Tactical Console when not in combat to have a fully interactive "cheat sheet". Every GM has a sheet on which they maintain all the important aspects of the PCs for quick reference during play. The Tactical Console serves this purpose, with the added bonus of having ready access to all the details of each character whenever you want it.

This technique can be extended further, though. You can setup all the monsters a given encounter within a single portfolio. Once the portfolio is saved, you can then quickly use its contents during play. Let's say that you have the portfolio loaded that contains all of the PCs and they reach "Encounter #1". You've already setup all the monsters from that encounter in a separate portfolio prior to the game. By going to the Portfolio menu and selecting "Import Hero from Portfolio", you choose the saved "Encounter #1" portfolio. HL then shows you a list of all the monsters in that portfolio. Since you want all of them, simply click the "Import All" button. HL sucks them all in and you now have them loaded alongside the PCs. You can now use the Tactical Console to view both the PCs *and* the monsters (or NPCs). If combat starts, the Tactical Console can orchestrate everything for you.

Once the encounter ends, you can unload the monsters from the portfolio. Using the Portfolio menu, you can go to the "Delete Hero" submenu and select "Delete Multiple". From here, you can check all of the monsters from the encounter and click "OK". All those monsters are dumped and you're back to just the PCs again. This process can be easily repeated for successive encounters, with all damage, effects, and conditions on the PCs persisting along the way.

This technique differs from the approach used by Hyrum in that the PCs aren't part of each of the encounter portfolios. They are loaded once at the start, then the encounter participants are loaded as needed and discarded. The PCs persist along the way, allowing you to track their state on a continuous basis across encounters.

Portfolios with multiple actors are used extensively within Hero Lab. For example, each game system includes an assortment of "Stock Portfolios". These portfolios contain an assortment of standard NPCs and monsters for the game system, allowing you to instantly grab some bad guys for use on the fly - or when setting up encounters prior to a game. In the case of Pathfinder, all of the monsters from the Bestiary are available through stock portfolios, along with various other monsters and NPCs. We'll also be adding all the NPCs from the Game Mastery Guide in the near future. You can readily access these by selecting the "Import Stock Hero" option on the Portfolio menu.

Hope this all makes sense. You can load a bunch of monsters or the provided characters into a portfolio within Demo mode. You can't save the portfolio, but this should allow you to fully experiment with how the Tactical Console works before plunking down your hard-earned cash.

[huntercc]

I think the original question was "If I have to pause the encounter until next session, can I save the state of that encounter (damage, spells, conditions, etc)".

The answer is yes - all changes made to any character in a portfolio are saved when you save the portfolio

[goddelusion]

Thank you gentlemen! Sold.