ddidownloader and HL 4e

[wilcoxon]

I have a DDI subscription currently and used ddidownloader to grab the full content. However, I find that many feats that are on the Compendium are not in HL after the process is done. The most glaring omissions are all of the focus and expertise feats where you choose a weapon/implement/spell group (or skill) and it applies a bonus to hit or damage.

Is this a shortcoming/bug in the HL 4e files or in ddidownloader?

 

[Colen]

Hero Lab handles those feats differently from the D&D Insider character creator. For example, Weapon Focus gives you a bonus to one weapon or group of weapons. D&D Insider includes one feat for each group of weapons, such as "Weapon Focus - Light Blades", "Weapon Focus - Axes", etc.

Hero Lab just has a single Weapon Focus feat - once you add it, you pick the weapon group from a menu. The same goes for the Implement Expertise feat, or the feats that let you choose skills to become trained.

Try adding the Weapon Focus feat and you should see what I mean. Hope this helps!

 

[wilcoxon]

Already looked for that before. The problem is that there is *no* entry for such feats (Weapon Focus, Weapon Expertise, Implement Expertise, Versatile Expertise, Skill Focus, etc).

I'm running the latest versions of both HL and ddidownloader.

Any ideas?

 

[Colen]

On the "configure your character" screen, make sure all the "rules supplements" are checked - that should ensure you have all the available feats. Do you see it now?

If not, how many feats does the "Feats" table show? For example, if I go to add a new feat to a character, the choose form shows "(all 2085 items)" - weapon focus is visible towards the end of the Heroic Tier feats, appearing between "Weapon Expertise" and "Weapon Master" for me. Do you see those feats? If not, how many feats does the choose form say it's displaying?

 

[wilcoxon]

Aha. The problem was I was looking for the feats alphabetically as it wasn't clear that they were divided up into heroic/paragon/epic (it's a poor interface in regards to easily navigating the different tiers).

Mine has "(all 2084 items)" - not sure which one I'm missing but not really important.

Thanks for helping me figure out what the problem was.

 

[rob]

At the top of the list shown is a separator labeled "Heroic Feats", indicating the start of the heroic feats list. Further down is a separator labeled "Paragon Feats", etc. These separators are used throughout the interface for lists that can be broken down into logical groupings, and the approach generally works quite well for most users. How would you recommend this be done differently?

Also, you can always use the quick filter mechanism at the top of the list to identify all the options that contain particular text. For example, if you type in the word "focus", you'll get all the feats that contain the word "focus" within their details. If you use this approach, you'll readily be able to locate feats (or powers or something else) that you are seeking.

 

[wilcoxon]

Ideally, it would be nice to have all of:
1) the labels (heroic, paragon, epic in this case) listed in the dropdown filter (where everything and valid is)
2) expand/collapse the lists by clicking on the label (heroic, paragon, epic)
3) some quick-jump mechanism with "bookmarks" for the different label sections.

Finding the three label separators is non-trivial in a list of over 2000 items.

 

[Ghaleon]

so does this mean i have to pay ddi and HL to use the herolab 4th builder, or am i missing something very obvious

 

[wilcoxon]

You have to pay HL to use HL (which contains no data for 4e) unless you are fine using demo mode.
You have to pay Hasbro/DDI to be able to use ddidownloader to get the information to put into HL 4e.
ddidownloader itself is free (but not useful on its own).

 

[rob]

That's not exactly correct. DDI offers complete content when you pay for the subscription and reduced content without a subscription (i.e. for free). Hero Lab will work with either set of content, depending on whether you provide appropriate login information. You use the same ddidownloader tool to download the content, regardless of which set of data you wish to utilize. So the ddidownloader tool is entirely useful for obtaining the free DDI data and experimenting with the product in demo mode. One key benefit of Hero Lab is that, once the data is downloaded for use, you have the info and can continue using it. If you have a DDI account and choose to let it lapse, you're still able to continue running with Hero Lab.

 

[wilcoxon]

That's interesting. From what I remember, when my DDI subscription was inactive, I wasn't able to get anything useful on the Compendium - I thought any data besides just the raw list of items (with no game data) required a login? If you cancel your DDI subscription, you can also keep using the DDI Character Builder (just not get any more updates for it).

I'll have to check again when I re-cancel my DDI sub.

 

[rob]

I haven't tried this in awhile, but that's how it worked before. It's possible things have changed with DDI. Colen is the expert on this stuff, so I'll point him at this thread and ask him to provide updated info on this detail.

 

[Colen]

Without a D&DI subscription, the information you can download is limited. There's enough for you to get a feel how the product works - I believe the core classes, powers and feats from the PHB are all available without a subscription, for example - but other information (like weapon damage, or most magic item details) isn't there.

As mentioned on previous pages, if you ran the downloader with a valid login before cancelling your subscription, you can keep using that data in Hero Lab indefinitely.