Online Subscription or Downloadable Purchase

[The Senator]

I've searched through the forums a bit this morning and haven't found anything official or explicit on this - I do apologize if this is a duplicate and would love to be directed to the answer, if I missed it.

I have made a significant investment in Hero Lab throughout Pathfinder 1E and expect to get a couple more years usage out of it at least.

But I also totally understand the advantages of moving to a cloud-based subscription model. I would gladly pay (maybe $5 per month?) for access to HLO for PF2 and would be even more delighted if PF1 was brought over to this new platform. (I love the Campaign Manager hints, too!)

The deal-breaker for me would be a model that combines both methods - purchase it, subscribe to it and then purchase additional content as books and such are released which kind of looks like where Starfinder is going.

Again, I haven't used HLO and would love to have someone correct me and allay my fears of a cash grab. Has anything official been said to address this?

 

[Farling]

If you have lots in HLC, there is a one-off payment to also have access to that information in HLO (when it becomes available).

You have to buy everything again for PF2, since it isn't the same as PF1.

The HLO subscription is purely for access to the tool and your characters. The specific rules and packages you want access to within HLO will need a purchase of each one.

So the purchasing of the stuff is the same as you have been doing with PF1, but with an additional annual server charge.

 

[The Senator]

Wait a sec - are you saying that I have to _buy_ the packages as they are released but I can only use them if I pay an _additional_ access fee?!?

 

[charlieluce]

That's right. The access fee pays to run the servers, but otherwise it works the same way as Classic.
(It is fair to say that this business model has not been met with universal acclaim.)

 

[thaX]

The actual server fee for the year isn't that much.

Funny story, my Yahoo Email account just went up to 39.99 a year for a service that no longer supports Outlook and has discontinued the Yahoo apps that would be able to retrieve Email for you. One has to use the AOL web portal thing, though Windows basic email program in Win10 is working for the moment.

So 24.95 a year is pretty cheap.

 

[Maidhc O Casain]

The actual server fee for the year isn't that much.

So 24.95 a year is pretty cheap.

This.

 

[charlieluce]

Maybe that should be a marketing line: "For less than seven cents a day!"

 

[Ualaa]

The server access fee is quite reasonable.

And a lot of the advertised options of HL Online were rather neat.
Our group is looking forward to having one person cast a party buff, and having it hit the entire group without needing to enable an adjustment on each character.

With Realm Works able to point to a URL of a character, not just the static saved portfolio, integrating a monster or character into an active portfolio should be even better.
And having a VTT able to grab the current version of a character, means not needing to edit the VTT version, every time there's a change to the HL version of the character.

That said, while I have an interest in Starfinder, my players don't.
And none of us have any interest in Pathfinder 2e (not saying there aren't plenty of others who might).
For our group, we'll gladly jump to HLO, once Pathfinder 1e (with 3pp HL file support such as the Community Pack, Legendary Mythic stuff, Drop Dead Studio's Sphere files etc) are supported on HLO.

 

[thaX]

For me, the extra stuff for Online would only matter if my GM would be using it in a Wi Fi enabled place we are playing at. Otherwise, it isn't gonna make much difference on my printed character sheet.

I just want a character builder aid for the game, not an online swiss army knife with Gensu blades.

 

[Azhrei]

The server access fee is quite reasonable, in my opinion.

There you go, I fixed that for you.

And a lot of the advertised options of HL Online were rather neat.
Our group is looking forward to having one person cast a party buff, and having it hit the entire group without needing to enable an adjustment on each character.

Meh. MapTool can do that right now and has had this capability going back... five or six years?

And having a VTT able to grab the current version of a character, means not needing to edit the VTT version, every time there's a change to the HL version of the character.

Meh. Jamz (heavy HL user and big MT contributor) added portfolio support to MapTool. Just navigate to the folder containing the portfolio then drag/drop onto the map. It imports the portrait image and the stats. Pretty tough to beat.

And that said, it's extensible because the various components are not controlled by a for-profit company but by the community and the maintainers of the open source code. (Disclaimer: I'm one of the latter.)

For our group, we'll gladly jump to HLO, once Pathfinder 1e (with 3pp HL file support such as the Community Pack, Legendary Mythic stuff, Drop Dead Studio's Sphere files etc) are supported on HLO.

Not enough value for me. And I'll look at the official PF2E when it's out, but I've got a lot invested in 1E so I'm not in any hurry. I do have to decide whether I'm going to cancel my Paizo AP subscription, though. I've been a subscriber since AP#1...

 

[Toblakai]

Meh. MapTool can do that right now and has had this capability going back... five or six years?


Meh. Jamz (heavy HL user and big MT contributor) added portfolio support to MapTool. Just navigate to the folder containing the portfolio then drag/drop onto the map. It imports the portrait image and the stats. Pretty tough to beat.

.

I find that maptools interface is really clunky and not very reliable. Plus it's interface looks like its from 10 years before HLC's interface.

Though I haven't used the character aspects of it much, but does it allows live updating from players characters buffs and will it support the buffs a level 17 party can turn off an on?

I am really looking forwards to the sharing of characters that HLO is getting in the near future.

 

[Azhrei]

Yeah, the UI is still clunky. Think of it like the Millenium Falcon. She may not look like much, kid, but she's got it where it counts.

Ten years before HL? Ouch, that hurts! I don't know about on Windows, but on the Mac, there are no fields in HL which support copy/paste (or at least, none that I've found; maybe the output preview window, but nothing else).

Assuming you drop a dozen tokens on the map in MapTool, 4 players and 8 NPCs, you can apply buffs to any or all of them. With the proper macros, you could automatically choose all NPCs, all PCs, all creatures within a given radius of a token, and so forth. And you can make tokens visible only to their owners, which gets rid of the metagaming when the party rogue goes invisible! There are some pretty slick macro frameworks available for PF1E, so a lot of the ground work is already done.

We are hoping to get the UI rewritten in JavaFX, but there have been some snags along the way (right now, JFX performance is the big one, but it's looking like rewriting the rendering engine is going to get tricky). That rewrite will allow theming and user-defined CSS for styling of the UI.

 

[Farling]

With the proper macros....

I think that's the big turn off for me. You always need to find or write lots of macros to get any benefit, rather than it "just working".

 

[Ualaa]

Not enough value for me. And I'll look at the official PF2E when it's out, but I've got a lot invested in 1E so I'm not in any hurry. I do have to decide whether I'm going to cancel my Paizo AP subscription, though. I've been a subscriber since AP#1...

We'll stick with PF 1e and will not be making the jump to PF2E. There's so much content we have, and probably two decades worth of adventures between Paizo and 3pp sources, plus anything we create ourselves.

If Paizo doesn't want our money, for Pathfinder content, there are regular options on Kickstarter.

 

[thaX]

Ualaa, when you do make the jump to PF2, there will be content there for you as well. You can enjoy the PF1 products that you currently have and be open to going to the new product when you are looking for new (or newer) material to play.


I believe that PF1 adventures could be played with PF2 rules with minor adjustments, as they did with a module about six months ago.

As far as HLO goes, though, the easier and more straightfoward rules may make a character generator less of a necessity than PF1 did.

 

[Ualaa]

At this point, I'm leaning towards converting anything interesting (from 5e or PF 2e) to original Pathfinder.
That's not that urgent though, as I have just over a dozen full adventure paths (several from 3pp) I'd like to run, that are the correct edition.
(And two of my players have started to DM a little... one ran a short campaign (6 months or so) and another is working on converting a 4e campaign of his creation, to a 5th level to 25th level Pathfinder Gestalt/Mythic... so the life of the edition could be longer with more than just store bought / kickstarter made adventure content).
Still, if a monster exists in WotC 5e (or PF 2e), there's probably a monster with the same name in one of the Bestiary books, and if the CR is fairly close, that will likely work fairly easily.

I'm guessing, a group of (7x) the same monster for the 5e system whose CR (per monster) is the same as the party's level... will push the group to the same degree as the Pathfinder system same monster, versus Pathfinder characters. And that the same would be true for PF 2e to PF 1e creatures.
If the CR is off, but close, it shouldn't make a lot of difference; and if the CR is drastically different, then just grab a different monster of the same style of combat (like 4e roles... Lurker, Brute, Artillery etc) that is near the appropriate level.

Our group is massively into Path of War (and Expanded), Spheres of Power, and Spheres of Might.
We make regular use (but less so than the aforementioned) of Ultimate Psionics.
If it's relatively easy to convert Path of War / Spheres into Pathfinder 2e, it's possible we'd migrate eventually, if conversion of both PF2e & D&D5e content proved difficult.
If the conversion doesn't really work for either Path of War, Spheres of Power or Spheres of Might, it's doubtful we'd switch at all; there are groups playing AD&D or OE still.

From the playtest, our group universally went from very excited (at the time of the announcement) to not that interested (as we played with the Playtest).
Maybe the release version will be improved...

 

[Azhrei]

I think that's the big turn off for me. You always need to find or write lots of macros to get any benefit, rather than it "just working".

Well, you're exaggerating, but there is definitely some truth to this.

Keep in mind that MT works with ALL games because it doesn't enforce the rules of ANY game. Think of it like the hammer and screwdrivers that are in your tool box. By itself, the hammer isn't usable. Ditto the screwdrivers. The hammer needs nails and the screwdrivers need screws. And wood (or something to use the nails and screws with).

MT is the tool box. It contains hammers, screwdrivers, chisels, files, and so on. You provide the raw materials.

"You always -u]need[/u] ... to get any benefit..."

You can use MT without any macros at all. You can change token states (adding Prone or Helpless or whatever). People have shared their configurations for token states, some of which include cool graphics to go with them (the state becomes a graphic overlay along the edge of the token), but you don't have to use them.

You can define properties for the tokens and control which ones appear on mouseover.

You can measure the distance between tokens by dragging the mouse.

You can apply templates and area of effect shapes to the map.

You can draw a map of a house, then zoom out and draw the city around it, then zoom out some more and draw the farms around the city, then zoom out and draw the kingdom, then zoom out and draw the region, and then zoom out and draw the continent, then zoom out and... You get the idea.

You're right that nothing comes "baked in", but check out our Discord server and you'll find that many people like it that way. They get to choose how things are done, rather than being forced to do things in a certain way.

But different strokes for different folks. Cheers!