How can the players directly benefit from the tactical console?

[Shigami]

Hi guys,

first time poster here since we purchased hero lab for our group last sale.
Our group plays for three years now and in my homebrew campaign they managed to get to level 10 already.

We still love Pathfinder but due to multiple breaks with sometimes several months break between sessions especially the more detailed rule-aspects in fights drastically slows the pace of a session.
Numbercrunching, increasing/decreasing attack rolls, spells, effects, feats, conditions... You all know the drill. Especially if you climb those higher levels. I build myself a big improvised excel-sheet to half-manually do things.

So now I stumbled across the tactical console. It seems great for my purpose!

But some questions aren't aswered yet: How can my players benefit from those faster/half-automated features herolab provides?

I mean - Sure I can always tell my players: "Your AC is now at XX and your attack rolls with that buff and that are XX" but isn't that against the purpose of speeding up the pace?

Wouldn't it be much more useful if the players could also see the tactical console with all their temporary changes for their characters?

Example: Level 10 Fighter is buffed by (You name it) also debuffed by (You name it) and want to use Power Attack now - What is his Attack Roll now? Just use tactical Console - There it is. He should see it himself.

I could display it on a big screen but then they would also see enemies etc.
Is there a solution for this?

Greetings,
Shigami

 

[Mathias]

Do your players not have their own copies of Hero Lab, so they can activate the abilities and conditions for their own characters?

 

[Tarmor]

The Tactical Console is essentially a GM tool. It's great to be able to check what players are doing, but in the games I play, it is the {i}Players{/i} responsibility to be keeping track of buffs, conditions, feat activation, etc for themselves.
You aren't the first to like the idea of being able to show players to remind them of Initiative order, etc. The only way I can think of to do this without giving away monster detail would be to run two copies of HL & Tactical Console, where the second doesn't have the monsters. Of course, this can mean twice as much work updating - unless the second copy is run and updated by a player.

 

[wdmartin]

The tactical console is designed for multiple characters/monster at once. If if you're only managing one PC at a time, it's easier to just use the Conditions tab (and the Adjustments tab for spell effects), treating Hero Lab as a digital character sheet. This is how I do it when I'm a player.

This does require you to have a laptop or iPad for each player, which can lead to logistics problems with space at the table and/or power cabling. It also requires a Hero Lab license for each player, which may incur additional expense depending on how many books you use.

If you want to try the tactical console for managing both players AND monsters, you could do something like this:

1. Prepare a Hero Lab portfolio containing all of your PCs (and associated animal companions, familiars, etc).
2. Prepare a Hero Lab portfolio for each encounter you want to run. If you are running a Paizo Adventure Path or module, this is where it comes in handy to license the GM content for that AP, because it gets you pre-built portfolios containing all the encounters for a given AP.
3. When you start an encounter, load the encounter portfolio.
4. Using Portfolio -> Import Hero from Portfolio, add copies of all your heroes to the encounter.
5. Start the Tactical Console and proceed.

Note that there are some drawbacks to doing it this way.

A) Suppose your Wizard casts Enlarge Person on the Fighter. Your copy of the Fighter in your default portfolio probably won't have that adjustment pre-applied, which puts you in the position of manually adding and removing spell adjustments for every buff spell that every PC casts. That can slow things down considerably.

B) If you're using the Tactical Console, you're going to constantly wind up having to relay information back to the players. Example: your Fighter has to do his attacks. He's fatigued, but his Bard is singing (Inspire Courage), and he has a haste spell running. What are his current attack bonuses? You'll have to read them off to him before he can roll his attacks. Similarly, when the Big Bad Evil Guy casts Entangle on the party, you'll have to read off their current Reflex save bonuses to them before they can make their saves.

C) There's no good way in the Tactical Console to do group saves, damage, or status effects. If your wizard casts Fireball on five goblins, you have to manually roll a reflex save for each of them, then calculate the damage and manually apply it one at a time to all five. Similarly, if the PCs hit the baddies with a Waves of Fatigue spell, you'll be stuck applying the Fatigued condition to the baddies one at a time. I desperately wish there were some way to do this kind of group save/damage/condition assignment automatically, but as of this writing, there isn't.

It's because of these issues that I never use the Tactical Console at all. I still manage all my combats manually, because the software just isn't there yet.

 

[Shigami]

Do your players not have their own copies of Hero Lab, so they can activate the abilities and conditions for their own characters?

We bought the complete package once since we wanted to use the broad variety of rulebooks. Due to the price only once so far. Mainly for making my life as homebrew GM easier.
So my licence for my desktop + (the free one for my notebook at the table) & the ipad version for one of my players.

The Tactical Console is essentially a GM tool. It's great to be able to check what players are doing, but in the games I play, it is the {i}Players{/i} responsibility to be keeping track of buffs, conditions, feat activation, etc for themselves.

Yeah my players did that over the last three years. If I had to keep track of things on their side too I would have lost my mind long time ago =) I just liked the idea of having all that combat-bamboozle at one place.
The Ipad Version is in players hands at the table. So I could really let the copy be run by a player. I manage my complete list with enemies etc and he manages the party-related stuff only?

B) If you're using the Tactical Console, you're going to constantly wind up having to relay information back to the players. Example: your Fighter has to do his attacks. He's fatigued, but his Bard is singing (Inspire Courage), and he has a haste spell running. What are his current attack bonuses? You'll have to read them off to him before he can roll his attacks. Similarly, when the Big Bad Evil Guy casts Entangle on the party, you'll have to read off their current Reflex save bonuses to them before they

This is killing it for me I think. ;/ I can’t imagine this is worth the tradeoff in time-management and the constant interruption.
Thx for the answers guys! Since we developed our own methods of tracking stuff maybe we are able to adapt somehow. Maybe the “best” and fastest solution is to have two active Hero Labs ready and live at the table. One for me as the Gm and one with PCs only where they manage their stats collectively.

 

[LazarX]

Temporary changes can be implemented in both the conditions field i.e. entangled, and through adjustments for things such as bard song. You've made all of the big purchases, perhaps your players can buy the sublicenses for their own devices.

Also if you download the Pathfinder Pack, there's a lot of other adjustments you can have courtesy of Shadow Chemosh.

 

[Ualaa]

I would do the reverse... have a player portfolio, which is permanent and has the current buffs enabled/disabled.

Then import the monsters, since they're usually in a static state. The monster may have buffs, but generally isn't going to have combat duration buffs already enabled (sure, they may have their hours per level... most of the day Mage Armor up already).

The player group may have several 10 min / level buffs already active, when they enter the next room with the next set of monsters. It's easier to import the new monsters, to the currently buffed player's portfolio, than it is to import the players to the monster portfolio and delete used potions and enable some buffs etc.

The tactical console is primarily a GM/DM tool. If you don't mind your players seeing the armor class of their adversaries, you could have multiple monitors in your setup and then drag the console onto a monitor that the players can view. That way, everyone can see who is next and so on.

Personally, I love Hero Lab for the adjustments on the fly and correctly stacking stances, buffs, magic items, conditions and the reverse for debuffs... potentially with several of each simultaneously. However, the Tactical console is lacking in several ways... especially the ability to apply an AoE damage to six targets at once and determine which make their save or not, and adjust the damage as applied... or to track the remaining duration on a buff/debuff effect.

You could go with Realm Works (why not double support (HL & RW) a company that produces products to aid your hobby?) as that integrates especially well with Hero Lab. You can save individual portfolios for your group and easily open single entries. There is a function called 'Player View' which essentially shares some information with the group. We use an HDTV as the playing surface, along with a Virtual Table Top (d20Pro, in our case, but Roll 20 (free), Fantasy Grounds (very comparable to d20Pro), or MapTools (free, lots of extra configuration, but comparable to d20Pro/Fantasy grounds in features) as the play surface for our Face-to-Face games. If I need to share something, I can put the player view onto the HDTV for easy perusal by my players.

I've found the "Roster" as an initiative tracker, within my VTT to be superior to the Tactical Console. Essentially, the VTT is a display... but I can import HL portfolios to have the correct graphic and combat stats (mainly hit points for us, since we use real dice) and the group can see who is next, has vision limited to their character (cannot see past an obstacle blocking line of sight) or beyond the range or their torch/dark vision.

The combination of tools is up to you. For us, it is Syrinscape (sounds of the adventure), Hero Lab for building characters and monsters, applying effects etc, Realm Works to organize the campaign and to reveal (as snippets) monster lore or clues the group has learnt to date, and the VTT for tactical positioning, initiative, relative health, etc..

 

[Ualaa]

Maybe the “best” and fastest solution is to have two active Hero Labs ready and live at the table. One for me as the Gm and one with PCs only where they manage their stats collectively.

You can have a second license for free, with all the same sources as your main license and installed on your second device. If you need more than two devices, you can purchase more beyond that.

As far as licensing goes, I'd be very hesitant to purchase a license for the players and to put it on one of their devices. But on your laptop, which you own and happen to bring to gaming night, and which the players can access freely while you're there... it makes sense to purchase additional licenses (2nd is free) and just add books/sources to the single HL account.

 

[Azhrei]

Our GM has decided that it's not practical for him to track the buffs the players might put on their characters -- that's the player's job.

Now, if the GM's machine sent a wifi broadcast to players and received a copy of all active portfolios, that would be cool. There wouldn't need to be any manual import, since the GM could open the encounter and then open the TC. As buffs change during the encounter, the player machine could simply keep the GM's TC informed.

Some of the low-level details would be a pain: the player system sends a JSON packet to the GM that includes the buff that was just changed. The GM machine doesn't respond, or responds with nonsense (like acknowledging something the player didn't do!). Now the network layer needs to keep trying, and when another buff is added, the JSON structure gets a little larger. Players need a way to "opt-out" of this, in case there are systems with HL open that aren't participating in the game (like at Cons!).

Who knows? Maybe HLO will have something like this...

 

[Ualaa]

HLO did mention group buffs and easier division of loot.

I like that they mention a VTT will be able to reference the URL of a character or creature, as opposed to importing it onto the VTT with each change...

 

[Azhrei]

Well, we’ll have to see how it’s implemented (the VTT referencing a character). Obviously, the first reference needs to include a full download, but how will updates be distributed? Does the VTT need to poll a URL for changes? Or will the server use the new HTTP/2 push abilities? Or maybe the VTT is expected to leave an open connection active and sitting in a read() state? Some of those options may be easier or harder for the VTTs to implement.

And what to do about offline games? Can I set up a personal mini web server where players can keep their characters updated? If so, I could turn my laptop into an access point and players could just change the URL they connect to, and all of this would still work when an Internet connection isn’t available. (Heck, I could see preinstalling the software on a Raspberry Pi and just carrying it around in my gaming bag for on-the-fly use, if needed!)