Looking for Advice on Best Apps and Tablet for Pathfinder & PFS gameplay

[EmilyMonster]

Good Afternoon Pathfinders!

I am researching tablets and applications in order to select the best possible current option for my husband to use in place of hauling around all his hard cover Paizo books, and to avoid printing out hundreds of pages of Pathfinder PDFs and Adventure packets when he GMs.

I really love the PFR app by Ufisk on the iOS systems (i have it on my old iphone, now a fancy ipod-touch in this case) and i already own the APG, UM, B1 and B2 books on it. I love that i can add new books relatively inexpensively and how comprehensive and easy this app is.

I have also found Masterworks for Android to be useful, especially since you get all the core books without having to pay for them. I find that it doesn't lay out the information as smoothly (and book-like) as the PFR for the iOS. (for example, when the iOS app bookmarks an item, it tells you which book the item is from and allows you to rearrange the bookmarks in any order; it also will scroll through the different titles in a chapter. The Masterworks bookmarks feature does allow you to make separate bookmark libraries, which is nice to use to switch between characters as a GM or as a PFS member with several different characters, but that is kind of the only feature that is better than the iOS app.)

As Pathfinders, which platform and 'free' apps have you found to be the best- comprehensive and easy to use/reference? (We're not opposed to buying apps, but when we're talking about having to buy the apps across four to five devices, the prices add up! We may consider buying an app like Hero Lab for one device, is it still only available on the iOS?)

Thanks for your advice Pathfinders! Lots of Love and Holiday Cheers!

[Thalassogen]

I am a fan of the Surface RT. I keep all my Pathfinder PDFs on SkyDrive/DropBox to have them available anywhere. Sadly, there have not been many good Pathfinder apps for Win8 available, so I started to write my own. Currently, only Grimoire - a spell reference app - is publicly available. Another useful tool for gm'ing is random word generation, especially when sandboxing and winging it. A comfortable creature library and combat tracker for Win8 would be great, currently nothing there, but I am working on it.

So, if you already own an iPad or an Android tablet stick to that as there are many apps around already. But if you like Windows and are looking for a Win RT or Win8 tablet and are willing to wait for apps to come up in the future, try the Surface (RT or Pro) and let me know if you want to contribute app and feature requirements.

[Adamantine Dragon]

Just about any tablet of any size can store and read .pdf files.

The real question is if your husband has any apps they would like to use, and if so, get the platform that supports those apps.

When I went through this a few months ago I personally concluded that the iPad had a bit of an edge in available apps. I have an iPad mini and I use it as my primary gaming tool now as a player. It still doesn't quite satisfy my needs as a GM, but I don't think the other tablets would either.

[EmilyMonster]

Thank you for the advice! We're gonna give the iPad the test, I think with available apps, it is the best choice currently. Happy holidays!