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Recommended Hero Lab Purchase Add-ons

L

Lord Gorchnik

Member
Good day to everyone,

After much debate with my friends (with some fisticuffs involved) we have decided to go ahead and purchase Hero Lab to help out with our upcoming Pathfinder role-playing campaign. After trying the demo I must say it is an amazing tool and kudos to the entire team that developed it.

That being said, I wanted some suggestions (and had a few questions) about what you would purchase if you were a new GM like myself and in my shoes.

I currently have a $60 budget to spend on the application along with addons. Naturally $20 of it will go straight to the program so that leaves $40 for data-pack add-ons. Looking at the pricing list, it seems the best bang for the buck is the classic bundle which combines all the books from the Player Companion and Campaign Setting bundle for $30. My question on this one is.....why not keep waiting? If it's going to include all future companion and campaign setting bundles doesn't it's value keep growing? I have a feeling Lone Wolf realizes this and will take necessary pricing actions as time goes on.

Any recommendations for the final $10. I have a feeling my crew will probably want to play something besides the standard races so the Advanced Race Guide might be worth looking into, but then we won't have enough for the Advanced Players Guide and/or Ultimate Combat/Magic.

WWYD? Oh and glad to be here. Have a great one.
 
Welcome to the fun of HL. :)

Sorry I don't have any great advice as its very dependent on what you plan to play or use for your group. If you want Mythic play then Mythic Adventures is good plan. If you want 3PP Rite Publishing stuff then you would want to pick that up. I can't think of anything that is required for anyone to pick up.

If you plan to run say Adventure Paths then getting access to the "Community Bestiary" is very useful. For it to run it requires: Advanced Players Guide, Bestiary 1, Bestiary 2, Bestiary 3, Ultimate Combat, and Ultimate Magic. So that just an FYI is all.

We do best to try and keep other Community Packages to require only a CORE only license.
 
If you are looking for unique, the "advanced races" compendium is great. Personally I love the "Seeker of Secrets" book (campaign setting #2 for $4.99). It has lots of feats, gear, magic, etc. all to help adventurers. It is included on the bundle you already mentioned.

Depending on where you play in Golarian, you might want to pick up something close to that area. (Inner Sea Primer is good all around). Choices in add-ons will of course be personal and predicated on whatever bias you or your group want.

Some love ultimate combat, some prefer ultimate magic, others love ultimate campiagn for all the role play potential/castle building/background history on your characters.

I personally have all, including the kobold (Midgaard setting) add ons. But for budget purposes, the core system and the bundle will be good to start you off. You can always create the basic character using Herolabs, and adjust the sheets manually via any books you may own.
 
Thanks for the suggestions. I think I may just stick with the base purchase for now. There are just too many add-ons and compendiums. Really wish there was a way to bundle EVERYTHING together for a discount but we all know that would never happen.
 
If you're planning on using hero lab's tactical console to run the games, the bestiary bundle would be a definite must have.

The Advanced Race Guide is pretty essential as it allows you to build custom races pretty easily and gives a great deal of versatility in race design.
 
I'd just go ahead with the core, and then, if a player or you do want to use something from UC, UM, etc, it's an easy enough $10 purchase then. They do have bundles for some of the minor content (campaign packs, Player Compendiums, etc), just not for the 'Core' expansions (Ultimate Combat, Ultimate Magic, Advanced Race, etc). I'm thinking this is restricted from Paizo's agreements.

It's the data sets that take the most labor to create, so I'm not surprised that's where a majority of the money has to go.
 
Fuzzy said:
I'd just go ahead with the core, and then, if a player or you do want to use something from UC, UM, etc, it's an easy enough $10 purchase then. They do have bundles for some of the minor content (campaign packs, Player Compendiums, etc), just not for the 'Core' expansions (Ultimate Combat, Ultimate Magic, Advanced Race, etc). I'm thinking this is restricted from Paizo's agreements.

It's the data sets that take the most labor to create, so I'm not surprised that's where a majority of the money has to go.
Click to expand...

No that's certainly understandable due to licensing agreements. It would just behoove a few of us more (we have a group of about 10 people) and most of them are holding off on purchasing it because they don't offer a huge bundle pack to get everything in one go.

Finally got the base version up and running last night. Already created a few NPCs for the game world. Will probably end up picking up the ARG and Bestiaries down the line.

Has anyone found if #4 is ground-breaking and absolutely essential, or have the first 3 been okay for most people?
 
I'd pick up something like Advanced Race Guide or Players guide. The advanced players guide adds new rules like Hero Points to the game, which are a nice thing to have. My group makes extensive use of Hero Points in our games.
 
Yeah that seems to be the plan.

I was doing some browsing on this forum and I didn't see any stickied posts with said material, but are there any Hero Lab custom add-ons you would recommend just in general? For example I see RavenX has a link to keep updated on his material and I've also seen this post but don't know if it is actually needed or not.

Again any help is appreciated.
 
Lord Gorchnik said:
Yeah that seems to be the plan.

I was doing some browsing on this forum and I didn't see any stickied posts with said material, but are there any Hero Lab custom add-ons you would recommend just in general? For example I see RavenX has a link to keep updated on his material and I've also seen this post but don't know if it is actually needed or not.

Again any help is appreciated.
Click to expand...
My adjustment addon adds I think allot of useful adjustments if you want to make quick changes to characters, monsters, NPCs without using the editor. Do you suddenly want some claw attacks or want to add some "extra damage" info to an attack. Do you want to just set all spell DCs that are "Fire" based to be 2 higher then their is an adjustment for that. Its very small addon and is setup to work for all three systems (Windows, Mac, iPad). This is used by allot as it adds adjustments that can be used for ALLOT of stuff regardless of the campaign or group.

The other Community Packages are pretty much dependent on if your group is using some of the 3PP stuff or for the DM is running an Adventure Path or Paizo Module. Though the CB also adds allot of monsters from 3PP sources like Tome of Horror.

So if your doing strictly home grown campaign and basic paizo rule books the Community Packages are not that helpful then.
 
Lord Gorchnik said:
Yeah that seems to be the plan.

I was doing some browsing on this forum and I didn't see any stickied posts with said material, but are there any Hero Lab custom add-ons you would recommend just in general? For example I see RavenX has a link to keep updated on his material and I've also seen this post but don't know if it is actually needed or not.

Again any help is appreciated.
Click to expand...

Stock portfolios are now managed by the gamemaster menu tools (Encounter Builder) and are much easier to work with now as a result.

And, yes, I've got many add-ons built for 3.5 settings that I use which I share for free with the community. jbearwillis and brannum01 helped with the Forgotten Realms a bit and candidgamera provided a good chunk of data for Ravenloft. I am also working on a Dragonlance set that will be released soon as a new option. Dark Sun is one of my pet projects and that data was solely done by me. I am very partial to running dark sun games at times. In addition to these releases there are other surprises that will pop up in the near future once I've had time to work on them.

I am currently building a set of files to handle 2e data as well. I don't get much free time, but I am usually cranking on data when I have it. I just released my World of Darkness files recently as well.
 
The common set for players in our games is the Advanced Race Guide, Advanced Player's Guide, Ultimate Combat, Ultimate Equipment, and Ultimate Combat. For DMs, add at least the first three Bestiaries. I've picked up a couple of the other packages, but no bundles.

Then again, I buy modules instead of books, not in addition.
 
So I was just about to purchase the classic bundle but noticed a discrepancy between the pages. In the official license add-on page it shows you will only receive the first 5 books of each. On this page however it shows that you will receive all of them (AA, PC#1-14, CS#1-11). Can anyone confirm for me which one is actually correct? The latter would be amazing but at the same time that certainly seems to good to be true.
 
Where on that page you link to does it say that you receive all of them from that package? I can't find anything on there that disagrees with the license page.
 
I saw a Warning: Contains Cthulhu. I must ponder whether purchasing that Bestiary 4 license requires a sanity check.
 
Lord Gorchnik said:
On this page however it shows that you will receive all of them (AA, PC#1-14, CS#1-11). Can anyone confirm for me which one is actually correct? The latter would be amazing but at the same time that certainly seems to good to be true.
Click to expand...

On the page you linked above it says the following:
Classic Bundle said:
The Classic Bundle combines all the books from the "Player Companion Bundle" and "Campaign Setting Bundle" at a further discount. That's content from over 35 books at a 40% discount compared to buying each package separately! ($29.99)
Click to expand...

The Classic Bundle only includes the books included in the Player Companion Bundle and the Campaign Setting Bundle. The books in those bundles are listed on the page as follows:

Player Companion Bundle said:
Player Companion Bundle combines the "Adventurer's Armory", "Player Companion Races #1", "Player Companion Races #2", "Player Companion Regions #1", and "Player Companion Regions #2" packages into one bundle for a discounted cost. Get 5 for the price of 4! ($19.99)
Click to expand...

Campaign Setting Bundle said:
Campaign Setting Bundle combines the "Campaign Setting #1-5" packages into one bundle for a discounted cost. Get 5 for the price of 4! ($19.99)
Click to expand...

Does that clarify things?
 
liz said:
On the page you linked above it says the following:
Does that clarify things?
Click to expand...

Yes. If I was wise I would see that it says "includes all books from the Player Companion's Bundle and Campaign Settings Bundle," not players companion and campaign setting sections.

It's cool, I'm an idiot. Nothing to see here folks :D
 
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