Building Encounters

[Troedel]

Hi all,

So here it is in front of me, my beloved Hero Lab. I wonder if it can be used to build up encounters and fine tune them like telling me the overall experience point value and challenge rating of an entire portfolio. It tells me individual challenge ratings but no exp for monsters as far as I can tell. Is there a summary for the portfolio regarding those two values. If not I would like to see something like that in the future. Takes away the crosschecking.

THX in advance,

Troedel

[freeAgent]

You can use Combat Manager for that. It calculates the CR and XP awards for any monsters/baddies you add automatically.

I also find Combat Manager generally superior to Hero Lab for managing actual encounters. If nothing else, it's a lot faster and has a more intuitive interface. I'd obviously like to see Hero Lab improve on the Tactical Console feature, but for now Combat Manager is my choice. You should check it out. It's built to work with Hero Lab portfolios, so it's pretty seamless to switch between the two.

[Kendall-DM]

Ergh, you got my hopes up for a better tactical console, and immediately dashed when I noticed it was only for Pathfinder. End result, I'll probably just have to create my own for d20.

[ShadowChemosh]

Originally Posted by Kendall-DM

Ergh, you got my hopes up for a better tactical console, and immediately dashed when I noticed it was only for Pathfinder.

Ever think it would just be easier to start using Pathfinder? Better rule set and its supported. Plus you can still use all your 3.5 stuff and campaign stuff. Seems like a good idea.

[Kendall-DM]

Unfortunately, most of PF is too power-gamey for my game. d20 was a little bit as well, but I've house-ruled it nicely to my liking. Including adopting a few of the PF rules and methods that I liked, and co-opting the things that made 2nd edition work. Sure PF is better supported, but changing to it gives too much of an excuse for no work to be done on the d20 set. Since the functionality is basically "the same", I'm not sure why it got left behind like it did, except for maximizing profits. My take on this is, they made d20, made a ton of mistakes, but instead of correcting them and making it better, they just did it with the PF files instead. So, didn't mean to rant, but I've got to stand on principal, especially since I shelled out one of my licenses on a currently badly supported product. I love HL, I just don't like the failure of correcting the problems with the d20 system working within it. Still, even flawed, its by far the best thing I've seen.

I know, shut up already. :P

[bodrin]

Originally Posted by Kendall-DM

Unfortunately, most of PF is too power-gamey for my game. d20 was a little bit as well, but I've house-ruled it nicely to my liking. Including adopting a few of the PF rules and methods that I liked, and co-opting the things that made 2nd edition work. Sure PF is better supported, but changing to it gives too much of an excuse for no work to be done on the d20 set. Since the functionality is basically "the same", I'm not sure why it got left behind like it did, except for maximizing profits. My take on this is, they made d20, made a ton of mistakes, but instead of correcting them and making it better, they just did it with the PF files instead. So, didn't mean to rant, but I've got to stand on principal, especially since I shelled out one of my licenses on a currently badly supported product. I love HL, I just don't like the failure of correcting the problems with the d20 system working within it. Still, even flawed, its by far the best thing I've seen.

I know, shut up already. :P

D20 got power gamey the moment the Complete series of books released, each one compounded rule upon rule that, IMO, opinion broke the foundations set out before it!

At least with the Pathfinder product there is some semblance of balance and support of the newer options written into the PFRPG lines from the ground up!

Wizards released a boatload of new stuff but wrote for core only, heck even the official Psionics rules were left floundering. And try to integrate Incarnum magic into Greyhawk it's a lot of hard work for little to no gain!

Agree with the red part above, HL D20 system still flawed but by far the best Rpg program I've used for character creation!

Here's hoping that the D20 dataset gets a tremendous update in the near future in terms of functionality, content and bug fixes!

[Kendall-DM]

Originally Posted by bodrin

D20 got power gamey the moment the Complete series of books released, each one compounded rule upon rule that, IMO, opinion broke the foundations set out before it!

I use very little out of all the additional materials, but frankly, there were still alot of things in game that made it power-gamey as well. Maximize Spell and Empower Spell just get stupid at very high levels, moreso than the spells they are replacing at that level. I have disallowed even those feats. About the only things I take out of the splat-books are reasonable spells and ideas for prestige classes.

The problem, IMO, with RPGs today, is you get different people working on unrelated products within the same system, each with their own view of how it should be run. These often cause conflicts within the system, because they fail to set fundamental guidelines on where the limits of the system lie. Instead, they pay homage to the almighty dollar to make the product sell, which means giving in to the power game that the majority of people want. I can't say that's a bad strategy, I just don't agree with "quantity over quality". Forgotten Realms was a great product when it first came out, I bought into it because it was Ed Greenwood's vision, and it was reasonable. Years later, after it was butchered by everyone else's vision of what FR should be, it was no longer a viable product for me to buy. I still have alot of the early stuff, and it's damn good stuff. The later stuff, of what I bought, I haven't cracked one open in years. It's that bad. But that's what sold for D&D at the time, and it still does to this day.

[Eretas]

Where or what is the "combat manager" you are talking about? It's not the Tactical Console is't it? If it is, how do you have the CR?

You can use Combat Manager for that. It calculates the CR and XP awards for any monsters/baddies you add automatically.

[freeAgent]

Yeah, it's not a Wolf Lair product: http://combatmanager.com/

It's free, though, and works with Hero Lab portfolio files quite nicely.

[chiefweasel]

Looking at it, it looks like it does the same stuff as the tactical console and native HL.