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]

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.

 

[bodrin]

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.

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]

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.

 

[freeAgent]

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

Yes, but it automatically calculates CR and XP. It's also faster and I've found it to have a better UI for managing combat. I particularly don't like that you have to load enemies into your active portfolio in HL in order to use the tactical console and then manually remove them when combat is over.

 

[Nikmal]

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

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

As much as I think Combat Manager has potential, it is not the end all be all of a product though. But to be honest I am kind of disappointed though. It seems all of your postings have been to promote the Combat Manager. That in and of itself kind of turns me off of it. The fact that you have the guts to come to another products site to promote another.

Not very cool... but if Wolf Lair lets you... I guess more power to ya.

 

[bodrin]

As much as I think Combat Manager has potential, it is not the end all be all of a product though. But to be honest I am kind of disappointed though. It seems all of your postings have been to promote the Combat Manager. That in and of itself kind of turns me off of it. The fact that you have the guts to come to another products site to promote another.

Not very cool... but if Wolf Lair lets you... I guess more power to ya.

I'm going to throw my 2 cents worth into this, I've looked at combat manager and it does a decent job, plus it has HL portfolio import which is a nice touch.

IMO
I don't think all the posts have been to promote just CM though, I think it was offered as an alternative to the HL tactical console in response to the OP.

They both do a similar job and both have their own quirks you are free to take your pick. Me I'm sticking with pen and paper at the moment and slowly moving to electronic and that will be HL tactical console plus the Realmworks product when it gets released.

Then i'll be looking at the quirks that I don't like, and requesting features.

 

[Joshua]

I agree, Bodrin. I use HL for most of my creation and record keeping at this point for individual PCs and NPCs, but I still use P&P for combat etc. during the game. I'm more than willing to use a full program, which is why I'm SUPER excited for Realm Works. As it is, I used electronic references during games. I always bring (for Pathfinder, for example) my core book with me, but I use a tablet or laptop and the pdfs for most of the other books. I keep the laptop handy in case I have to make character changes (or, unfortunately, if my PC dies and I need to make another) on the fly, but as a GM, most of my tasks are done via P&P.

Now, I'm really looking forward to Realm Works. I think there's a huge potential there. Granted, the BIGGEST usage for me right off the bat will be the between-game organizing and referencing of all the crazy, psychotic amounts of notes and outlines I have for my game, hehe. But it seems like it will also be a very useful in-game tool to boot.

 

[ShadowChemosh]

Not very cool... but if Wolf Lair lets you... I guess more power to ya.

I think there is a bit of a difference between a paid software advertising and someone that built free software that works with HL.

Personally I use a different piece of software to run Combat at my games and have used it for 5+ years now. It is a paid piece of software so in that case I have never mentioned its name on these boards.

But the guy who wrote CM is an active community member over at Paizo and is giving away his created software for free. Running the website its on to allow downloads is not free either. So I give the guy allot of credit for this hard work. I doubt LW would have an issue with it actually.

Anyways I have used computers at my game table ever sense my first campaign got to level 5 and trying to run two dozen creatures and buff spells was WAY too overwhelming. I am also one of those freaks that uses a Projector for the maps and for displaying the images of monsters and NPCs to the players.

Hero Lab is a cool piece I added to my software collection and I am hoping Realm Works is the final piece that puts all together.

 

[Kendall-DM]

I was slowly beginning to progress towards using a projector, but then I thought, why do that. My eventual goal is to run my entire game on a VTT online. Haven't completely settled on a VTT, problem is, there are things I like about each and every one, but not one of them is the kind of feature rich product that includes the great ideas in each product. Right now, I'm leaning towards MapTool, because its free and it has line of sight, not to mention its Java-based, which means it can run on all machines. Haven't found another one that does line of sight. Really like the story telling elements in fantasy grounds 2, but hoping that RW will do that up right for me and I can forget about FG2 (the cost is ridiculous). d20Pro has alot of promise, and that's the deal, there's alot that can be done with that product that hasn't been finished, but it is reasonably priced.

For now, I'll stick with just HL and progress towards online play (and possible a projector if I get a wild hair). I have gone almost entirely digital though, I was P&P for a long long time, but the stacks of paper comprising my campaign notes has gotten completely out of hand and disorganized to boot. I tried a wiki at one point, on Obsidian Portal, but it just didn't offer enough for what I wanted. My eventual goal is to have no paper notes at all, though I will never get rid of having the physical books. I hate reading online documents, argh, the raster burn to the eyes!

 

[ShadowChemosh]

I was slowly beginning to progress towards using a projector, but then I thought, why do that. My eventual goal is to run my entire game on a VTT online.

VTT are really cool the only issue is I LOVE MINI's. I have thousands of them and they are all sorted and even individually numbered. I am so geeking I have a MySQL data base of all my mini's broken down by type and size. The numbers are for when I put down 5 orcs the players can say I hit orc number 25 or I did 5 points to orc number 3.

Did I mention I LOVE MINI's. So a VTT would prevent me from needing to use my mini's. I am now even a subscriber to the MINI line of Pathfinder Mini's so I get cases now ever few months of NEW MINI's.

When I do encounters half my time is making sure I have the right MINI for the encounter. For a new AP one for the first things I do is plan what minis I am going to use for each encounter and NPC (good and bad). They are like my little actors and stay hidden behind the curtains until its time for them to appear.

Yea yea I am strange.

 

[Joshua]

I am also one of those freaks that uses a Projector for the maps and for displaying the images of monsters and NPCs to the players.

Oh my sweet lord! I would LOVE you as a GM! A projector?? Now I totally want to do that! (Sorry, I'll stop spazzing now, but I've never thought of that, and it's such a rad idea.)

 

[Kendall-DM]

VTT are really cool the only issue is I LOVE MINI's. I have thousands of them and they are all sorted and even individually numbered. I am so geeking I have a MySQL data base of all my mini's broken down by type and size. The numbers are for when I put down 5 orcs the players can say I hit orc number 25 or I did 5 points to orc number 3.

Did I mention I LOVE MINI's. So a VTT would prevent me from needing to use my mini's. I am now even a subscriber to the MINI line of Pathfinder Mini's so I get cases now ever few months of NEW MINI's.

When I do encounters half my time is making sure I have the right MINI for the encounter. For a new AP one for the first things I do is plan what minis I am going to use for each encounter and NPC (good and bad). They are like my little actors and stay hidden behind the curtains until its time for them to appear.

Yea yea I am strange.

I have thousands of minis as well, but only a few pewter ones left (ones that are just too cool). I love the plastic minis. But... most of my players have drifted away over the years, but still have a desire to play in my game. Yeah, my players are loyal like that, I'd like to think I weave a rich tapestry of a game, full of plot, intrigue, and connections that my players become addicted to it much like some people get addicted to a soap opera or a contiguous tv drama. I've had only a few people come to my game leaving it disgusted, but that's because they were mostly power-gamers and I don't run one.

That said, I never knew that Pathfinder was putting out a line of minis. Apparently, my local gaming store doesn't carry them. But I've stopped buying minis because of the fact I may go to the VTT online. Like you, I once loved minis, and I had several methods of which I tracked them, with numbers, then with colors and number, then with small stickers, and eventually I settled on mini-clips of varying colors. The mini-clips work perfectly for me, and for effects, I have several different color markers to indicate an ongoing effect. But, when a VTT takes complete care of that, well, you can't help but love the simplicity of it. Streamlining combat is a major issue I've had for years, and I've done a good job of it, but it would be infinitely more efficient to let the VTT track things for me. Besides, I'm a lover of technology, I HAVE to try the new toys.

 

[Eretas]

With the exception of the CR and experience per encounter. But it look great and easy to use. Nice work!

Edit: Sorry did't see the second page before posting.. oups..