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First off this is not a thread to vent about 4E or anything remotely resembling it. If it turns inot that I will ask the mods to lock it.
I am playing in a 4E game and one of the more use things I use is the Character Builder. It allows me to stat characters up in a matter of minutes. While at the sam time containng all the information on feats, abilites and powers etc. I think that it is something that Paizo should look into in the future imo.
Yes I know we can do it by hand but thats not the point of this topic. It would reduce the time needed to mkae characters. A monster builder would also be nice too.
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First off this is not a thread to vent about 4E or anything remotely resembling it. If it turns inot that I will ask the mods to lock it.
I am playing in a 4E game and one of the more use things I use is the Character Builder. It allows me to stat characters up in a matter of minutes. While at the sam time containng all the information on feats, abilites and powers etc. I think that it is something that Paizo should look into in the future imo.
Yes I know we can do it by hand but thats not the point of this topic. It would reduce the time needed to mkae characters. A monster builder would also be nice too.
HeroLabs is the Official Sponsored Pathfinder Character/Monster Builder.
It just became official so it will be a bit of time before all the closed content is added.
I agree with you - the character builder is the reason my time-limited group prefers 4th edition to Pathfinder.
I love the Herolab character creaters
Would you ever like to see Paizo make one of their own?
Why would I want to see that if HeroLab has it covered along with so many other systems?
As long as the program is functional, efficient, and kept up to date, I really could care less who writes the code and publishes it.
Why would you have a publisher become a computer programer, when there is already computer programers doing the job?
Also, PCGen. Free, open source, cross platform, and has Pathfinder support.
I played around with the HeroLab demo, and it was neat, but I can't see myself buying it for one simple reason...
I hafta buy it...and then buy a license for 20 bucks or so...and then buy additional support for any new books that come out...that seems kinda crazy to me.
If it was just the program to buy, and the licenses for new systems were like 5 or 10 and including any update or addition to that system, I'd probably go ahead and pick it up, but effectively having to pay twice for every book, once for the book and once for the HeroLab support? Nah..
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I hafta buy it...and then buy a license for 20 bucks or so...and then buy additional support for any new books that come out...that seems kinda crazy to me.If it was just the program to buy, and the licenses for new systems were like 5 or 10 and including any update or addition to that system, I'd probably go ahead and pick it up, but effectively having to pay twice for every book, once for the book and once for the HeroLab support? Nah..
Your choice - you can always just use the editor to add the actual feats (etc.) you need, rather than paying someone else to type them in for you.
Hero Labs works great.
Well, you get a game system free when you buy Hero Labs, so you don't have to pay extra for Pathfinder. That's good.
However, they do charge a LOT per data set and apparently the Pathfinder Bestiary is a separate data set - frankly I'm concerned about what their model is going to be when they add all the closed content - is every new book going to be an additional $20? If so screw that!
Now, I do understand them wanting more ongoing revenue to compensate for the work of adding all those rules over time. I'd like to see a "you pay $30 for the program and a year of data updates, and have to re-up $20 for data updates after that time." That's eminently fair.
I played around with the HeroLab demo, and it was neat, but I can't see myself buying it for one simple reason...
I hafta buy it...and then buy a license for 20 bucks or so...and then buy additional support for any new books that come out...that seems kinda crazy to me.
If it was just the program to buy, and the licenses for new systems were like 5 or 10 and including any update or addition to that system, I'd probably go ahead and pick it up, but effectively having to pay twice for every book, once for the book and once for the HeroLab support? Nah..
When you buy Hero Lab you get one game system of choice. Let's say you choose Pathfinder. That gets you the core book. For $15 more you get the entire Bestiary, and soon you'll get the APG for around the same price, although that's TBD.
Hyrum.
When you buy Hero Lab you get one game system of choice. Let's say you choose Pathfinder. That gets you the core book. For $15 more you get the entire Bestiary, and soon you'll get the APG for around the same price, although that's TBD.
Hyrum.
Right, but 15 dollars per book seems pretty...crazy, honestly. If it was like Ernest said, where the initial purchase gets you updates for a year, and then after that it was 20 per year for updates, it'd be different, but having to (effectively) buy every book twice, once for the book itself and once for the HeroLab update...I don't know, that just seems ridiculous to me.
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Right, but 15 dollars per book seems pretty...crazy, honestly. If it was like Ernest said, where the initial purchase gets you updates for a year, and then after that it was 20 per year for updates, it'd be different, but having to (effectively) buy every book twice, once for the book itself and once for the HeroLab update...I don't know, that just seems ridiculous to me.When you buy Hero Lab you get one game system of choice. Let's say you choose Pathfinder. That gets you the core book. For $15 more you get the entire Bestiary, and soon you'll get the APG for around the same price, although that's TBD.
Hyrum.
I own Herolab with the bestiary package and I agree with you about having to buy every add on for Herolab. I own every book Paizo has done for Pathfinder both 3.5 and the Pathfinder stuff and I will more than likely buy all the add ons for Pathfinder in Herolab, to me running online games with D20pro Herolab is hugely invaluable so as I do agree that paying for every extra add on that comes out I will most likely do it out of convenience.
I've noted on other posts regarding Herolab, but figure it can't hurt to restate...asking for all of the content updates for free (as some do) or for a flat fee per year is not exactly a profitable model for the company. I do a free Excel-based character generator, and I can tell you first hand that just getting the data into usable tables and building the Excel logic takes a lot of time. That's without any of the fancy stuff Herolab can do. That sort of work is going to require a good return for Herolab to remain a profitable endeavor. Now, the more folks that buy the product, the more overall profit the company sees, the more it can drive down prices, etc.
I do think a subscription option would be nice (although I'd want to own the content from the time I signed up to the time I stopped, not have it cut off if I stop subscribing). I'm not sure $20 is a reasonable price point, however. It might be closer to $60, but if that was a $5/month subscription that wouldn't be too bad.
For folks that don't want to pay, I definitely encourage looking at the other options in the field--PCGen as already mentioned, or my sheet, or Kor's, or sCoreGen, etc. There are free options out there, and in my opinion each of the ones I mentioned has its strengths.
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Why would you have a publisher become a computer programer, when there is already computer programers doing the job?
No offence creating a chracter builder for Pathfinder will not make Paizo a "computer programmer". So please refrain from exaggerations. It's not like I am asking them to make a computer/console Pathfinder rpg.
Why would you have a publisher become a computer programer, when there is already computer programers doing the job?
Because of the added complexity and resultant delays. One company may go out of business or just change their model/priorities, they may disagree about license fees down the track, there are timing issues in that Paizo can authorise their in-house developers to begin work while the book's at the printer (or earlier). Third party Pathfinder publishers are going to be an extra thing to think about - can they provide their material to HeroLabs for inclusion without Paizo's permission?
In my case there's also an issue of quality assurance (although HeroLabs seem to be highly regarded) - I am sure Paizo will do an awesome job and I have no such confidence (or lack of it) with regard to some new company I've never dealt with before.
Why would you have a publisher become a computer programer, when there is already computer programers doing the job?No offence creating a chracter builder for Pathfinder will not make Paizo a "computer programmer". So please refrain from exaggerations. It's not like I am asking them to make a computer/console Pathfinder rpg.
So the act of creating a computer program does not make someone a computer programmer? While a RPG character builder is not that complex of a program it is sophisticated enough that the person in question would need basic knowledge of computer science to get it to work properly.
I've noted on other posts regarding Herolab, but figure it can't hurt to restate...asking for all of the content updates for free (as some do) or for a flat fee per year is not exactly a profitable model for the company. I do a free Excel-based character generator, and I can tell you first hand that just getting the data into usable tables and building the Excel logic takes a lot of time. That's without any of the fancy stuff Herolab can do. That sort of work is going to require a good return for Herolab to remain a profitable endeavor. Now, the more folks that buy the product, the more overall profit the company sees, the more it can drive down prices, etc.
I do think a subscription option would be nice (although I'd want to own the content from the time I signed up to the time I stopped, not have it cut off if I stop subscribing). I'm not sure $20 is a reasonable price point, however. It might be closer to $60, but if that was a $5/month subscription that wouldn't be too bad.
No, it's not worth nearly that. Given that I've bought the print version, have probably bought the PDF if I didn't get it via subscription, paying yet again for the same content is prohibitive, especially $60/year. Besides, it's not all that hard, people are already making Hero Labs files from Paizo products for kicks and making them available for free - see the pfd20srd Web site, there's a number of them there. And if it's really not worth it for me, a DM, it's TOTALLY not going to be worth it to a player (who makes a couple characters a year, unless they are mighty unlucky) and there's a lot more players than DMs, you want everyone to give you that $30+$20/year.
Besides, they sell whole rules sets for $20, and they see that as "OK," so a year of random new rules is worth about the same - the rate of rules in side products is nowhere near the startup cost of building a whole new rules set, I am 100% sure. If you were right they'd need to charge even more than $60 for those.
If they do it right, they're making plenty of money because they become a "must have" product for Pathfinder fans. Already, I've been happy that I bought Hero Labs because Joey Virtue did a lot of great Pathfinder conversions on these boards of Second Darkness characters to Pathfinder, and he used Hero Labs and will email you the character portfolios if you ask. That's awesome. If all the new content, and all the NPCs from APs, and other custom stuff DMs create, started to become available in the "lingua franca" of Hero Labs, then they sell more units. Heck, if they do it well, then maybe the AP creators themselves will use Hero Labs to create the NPCs (and maybe get rid of all the glaring stat block errors while they're at it...) Since they're official, too, Paizo could give them the original text (without the current annoyances of locked PDFs and other BS we customers go through) so that it's not all that hard to get into the program...
Third party content providers can be convinced to do some of the conversion job themselves - unlike Wizards, who locks third parties out of the Digital Aberration, Hero Labs is open to other content providers, so you basically say "hey Open Design, if you want From Shore To Sea to show up in Hero Labs, you do the input work..." Third parties can do that now, but they would have to just post it on their own site and say "you can use this" - they'd probably want to provide it to Hero Labs so that they'd get the free advertising - "From Shore to Sea, now available for Pathfinder, here's the new stuff for it in HL!" "Oh, I am not a forum remora so I've never heard of that but now I have, maybe I should get it!"
An open builder like this is potentially a huge community grower for the game, and everyone'll make money off it. It can easily be scuttled, however, by trying to charge for it in the wrong way. The Times found that out recently with their recently instituted paywall dropping readership by 90%.
If in Hero Labs, I have to pay more per Paizo product - I won't do that (maybe the APG...). If I have to pay more per third party product - I won't do that either. And the more content I have in book form that isn't in Hero Labs, the more the program becomes worthless to me. "Oh, I want that NPC to have Hellknight levels... But I didn't pay $5 for the Naughties of Cheliax addon... I'm certainly not gonna do it for this one NPC... screw it I'll do it by hand."
Frankly Paizo should be subsidizing this pretty hard. Building high level NPCs is a pain in the ass. I've spent the last couple nights doing one a night, and that's WITH Hero Labs. (P.S. They already have Hellknight in there, so that was a bad example, I made a level 10 Hellknight just last night... The level 12 Wizard took some more time...) If DMs can create NPCs easier, they run more games, and people play more, and more APs and products are sold... If it's open and affordable it can be a force multiplier for the game. Retention rate is God in business. If someone's using HL to make Pathfinder stuff it means they're still active Pathfinder customers and that's money. But if it's mishandled in a number of ways, it can go nowhere.
Tips to avoid:
- "You got buffed/nerfed this month" - don't make changes to existing stuff and try to roll it out in a generator. Wizards does that and it's ubertarded.
- "You gotta pay for X individually..." Get money from me but don't make me pay an additional $5 for something I already bought for $12. Again, if I don't have all the content I own in HL then I end up not using HL. Some of the video game industry is going to "micropayments" as the brave new world, and I don't do that and neither does anyone I know.
- "You don't have access to it any more" - I would definitely expect that if I let a subscription lapse I don't get new stuff but won't lose my old stuff. It's cutting off your nose to spite your face anyway to do this, it just means people won't buy in in the first place, so you drop sales to get a slightly higher retention rate, which is bad business.
- Let me distinguish between rules I want to use and don't want to use. Already in Hero Labs I can't see where some of these things came from. "What the heck is the Illumination Widgeteer prestige class, where's that from?" Doesn't say in the interface. Frankly as the publisher I'd demand this be in there as advertising and demand generation. But as third party stuff gets in there I want to be able to use or not use it. pfd20srd is getting bad about this - I love them having third party stuff there but I hate it being mixed in with the core stuff in a way I can't easily filter. "Show me the weapons list without all the third party cruft please..." for example.
It would be very nice if a DM could make a filter of "legal sources" for their campaign and pass it out to their players. "My Campaign - legal sources X, Y, Z..." Import and then gen a DM-approved character.
Anyway, rambling now, but I really like Hero Labs and even broke down and bought it after one too many attempts to use PCGen to do real work with. But I didn't buy the Bestiary add-on, that was a bridge too far. Luckily I don't need that for NPC/PC work, but if say I had to buy the APG or something - I'd probably just say "screw it" and go back to doing it manually.
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I downloaded HeroLab today and checked it out, demo version. I like the program and would be willing to pay for the initial amount, but I agree with the exasperating cost of having to buy a book 2 or 3 times. Once for the hard cover, another for the pdf (if you don't have the subscription), and a third for HeroLab. (PDF optional of course.)
I especially like the character sheet. It's simple, saves ink and is easy to follow.
I also noted during my testing/demo of the product, even though it says full functionality for creating characters (not for printing, saving or exporting) There were a lot of traits, feats and spells missing. For example, I couldn't find "Warrior of Old" from the Elves book. Someone who has HeroLab, could you tell me if this is just because of the Demo version? There were other racial traits from books, so I was unsure why this one was missing. Also couldn't find "Desperate Focus".
I tried out adding my own content, even used the "Desperate Focus" as an example, and found it is pretty easy. I may buy the program knowing that I would be adding a lot of my own content instead of buying the add-on packages.
I did subscribe to the D&D Insider when it first came out. And like how they handled the character builder with that as just a part of the subscription. I have since quit my subscription, but only because I quit playing 4E. Something similar to that I would jump at the chance to get. If you're talking 2 AP's with players guides, 12 Companions, 12 Campaign Settings, and 2 or 3 core books every year, I would expect to pay between $20 and $40 for a year subscription. While that is a lot of books, you have to remember that there is a lot of flavor in those books. Stuff you would never need in a character builder.
So the act of creating a computer program does not make someone a computer programmer? While a RPG character builder is not that complex of a program it is sophisticated enough that the person in question would need basic knowledge of computer science to get it to work properly.Why would you have a publisher become a computer programer, when there is already computer programers doing the job?No offence creating a chracter builder for Pathfinder will not make Paizo a "computer programmer". So please refrain from exaggerations. It's not like I am asking them to make a computer/console Pathfinder rpg.
Yeah really, learn from Wizard's mistakes... What gaming company has ever done anything even semi-competent regarding computer gaming (especially inhouse)? Even with outsourcing it it's less than 50/50, and with trying to do it internally (woot Gleemax) it's miserable. These companies are small and writers are ill-paid, that's a fact of life. Hiring one competent programmer will require salary likely equivalent to their CEO's, and it takes more than one competent programmer to put out a good character generator.
I downloaded HeroLab today and checked it out, demo version. I like the program and would be willing to pay for the initial amount, but I agree with the exasperating cost of having to buy a book 2 or 3 times. Once for the hard cover, another for the pdf (if you don't have the subscription), and a third for HeroLab. (PDF optional of course.)
I also noted during my testing/demo of the product, even though it says full functionality for creating characters (not for printing, saving or exporting) There were a lot of traits, feats and spells missing.
Two things...
Right now, the Bestiary is the only thing you have to pay extra for. I don't want to give the impression that currently you have to pay for everything. They have the APG beta stuff, and Hellknights, and a batch of other stuff in there. I am more concerned about their future direction, but they may not be intending to do that; I don't want to give the wrong impression.
Also right now, they do not have all the closed content in there. They have a little. I've downloaded a bunch of extra Hero Lab libs from d20pfsrd - link here. But really there's only a minority there. They are working on that because they just got the "official" nod recently.
So all the closed stuff should be getting there, I just want to make sure it won't be upcharged per book or whatnot, because then it'll just cause me not to use the product. If I "can use it to make half my NPCs but not the other half" then I don't use it at all, of course.
SNIP
There were a lot of traits, feats and spells missing. For example, I couldn't find "Warrior of Old" from the Elves book. Someone who has HeroLab, could you tell me if this is just because of the Demo version? There were other racial traits from books, so I was unsure why this one was missing. Also couldn't find "Desperate Focus".
SNIP
Most of the items you listed about can be found at D20PFSRD.Com
There is talk about what items will be added over time by the Hero Lab folks officially. And there is talk about if that will or will not cost money. That being said many fans have added all of the stuff from the companion books. You can find it here. They are in the form of .User files. You put them in the Pathfinder file under Data and then select them at Configure Hero with a check box.
There are advantages to paying the Hero Lab folks to do stuff. There are advantages to making everything yourself in the Editor. And there are advantages to only searching the net for other fan created content and adding it to your data files. Some folks will use all the above. Others will only want what is easy and will be willing to pay for that. Others will not want to spend another nickel past the core book.
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Yeah really, learn from Wizard's mistakes... What gaming company has ever done anything even semi-competent regarding computer gaming (especially inhouse)? Even with outsourcing it it's less than 50/50, and with trying to do it internally (woot Gleemax) it's miserable. These companies are small and writers are ill-paid, that's a fact of life. Hiring one competent programmer will require salary likely equivalent to their CEO's, and it takes more than one competent programmer to put out a good character generator.
I know Wizards has done certain mistakes such as Gleemax. Yet I'm not asking Paizo to do something similar to Gleemax. A simple character builder is all I'm asking. Why does doing anything remotely digital either place them into a computer programming territory or Gleemax territory. I wish I had never brought this topic up.
As for Hero Lab I am on the fence. I may or may not want to buy it. It will coost me as much as a subscription to DDI while getting less than DDI offers. So for now we will see.
Yeah really, learn from Wizard's mistakes... What gaming company has ever done anything even semi-competent regarding computer gaming (especially inhouse)? Even with outsourcing it it's less than 50/50, and with trying to do it internally (woot Gleemax) it's miserable. These companies are small and writers are ill-paid, that's a fact of life. Hiring one competent programmer will require salary likely equivalent to their CEO's, and it takes more than one competent programmer to put out a good character generator.
I know Wizards has done certain mistakes such as Gleemax. Yet I'm not asking Paizo to do something similar to Gleemax. A simple character builder is all I'm asking. Why does doing anything remotely digital either place them into a computer programming territory or Gleemax territory. I wish I had never brought this topic up.
As for Hero Lab I am on the fence. I may or may not want to buy it. It will coost me as much as a subscription to DDI while getting less than DDI offers. So for now we will see.
I'm glad you brought it up. I have no idea what mistakes WoTC have made with computer gaming, nor what 'Gleemax' is/was - we think the computer support available through the DDI subscription is excellent both in terms of quality and value. Nonetheless, I'd quite like to play pathfinder and it won't really suit my group until there's something as good as the character builder and the monster builder.
Of course, given I have the monster builder for 4th edition it's ridiculously easy for me to convert pathfinder modules to 4th edition, so it doesn't really matter I guess.
I know Wizards has done certain mistakes such as Gleemax. Yet I'm not asking Paizo to do something similar to Gleemax. A simple character builder is all I'm asking. Why does doing anything remotely digital either place them into a computer programming territory or Gleemax territory. I wish I had never brought this topic up.
I don't know how you think someone can make a "simple" character builder (for whatever definition of "simple," given a complex rule set) but not be a "computer programmer." Guess who makes all those other simple character builders littering the net? Computer programmers. It's kinda in the definition of programming, you know, a computer.
How simple is OK for you? Is it OK if it just handles the core rules and not any magical gear? The character builder WotC released with 3.0 was like that, and it was actually pretty good for the first couple months before you needed higher level characters with gear and/or incorporating any new rules. Anyone still find that useful? No.
Also, PCGen. Free, open source, cross platform, and has Pathfinder support.
I never was able to get it to work. I admit I did not put a lot of effort into it either, but if I have to put a lot of effort into it, then the purpose is defeated. Is there a tutorial online somewhere?
I never was able to get it to work. I admit I did not put a lot of effort into it either, but if I have to put a lot of effort into it, then the purpose is defeated. Is there a tutorial online somewhere?
Since I'm not on Windows, I generally just download the latest .zip file, unzip it and run pcgen.sh. There'll be a pcgen.exe in that folder for Windows users as well.
Rather than send this thread awry, I'd recommend that you start another one. I or some of the other kind PCGen users/developers would be happy to help however we can.
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I am also glad you brought the subject up.
I vaguely remember Hero Lab at Gencon 08' but forgot about them.
Going to look at them a lot closer now.
I agree it would be cost prohibitive to have to buy a new "module" when a new book is published by Pazio three or four times a month (core rule book anyways).
I of course would look closely at a subscription if I always had access to the material after I decided I no longer wanted a subscription.
I'll probably buy the full version here before I go to Gencon. First time doing a society game and want to be prepared for it as vest as possible Saturday night and Sunday morning.
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After reviewing HeroLab, I am going to wait and see how they handle the closed content and the APG. If I gotta spend PDF value or more for every book that comes out, there's no way I'm gonna be buying HeroLab. A subscription at a reasonable cost per year depending on how much is added each year, I can handle. It would also have to be updated to current releases within a reasonable amount of time.
Sometimes I wonder if people realize how much work goes into these things. These people aren't doing it for charity work. They are trying to make a living supporting the games they love. As someone who has used entered some of the stuff found http://www.d20pfsrd.com/extras/community-creations/hero-lab and some personal creations, I can tell you that it can be very time consuming for the more difficult creations. I'm no where near an expert when it comes to creating things either. There is a lot to know and understand. People should be paid for their services.
I purchased Hero Lab with the same assumption that many others have, it's expensive and I don't want to have to pay for extras. After buying it and seeing how much work goes into it, and the customer support they give, I found the cost was excellent. Also, it looks like Lone Wolf will try to charge less for upcoming products but the more work they have to do, the more it will cost. For example, the Bestiary took a lot of work because much of the data had to be created from scratch. Bestiary 2 will have much of that already available to simply copy so they expect the cost to be lower.
Folks keep referring to "closed content" so I wanted to note that there is actually very little of this in Paizo materials. Almost every prestige class, feat, trait, monster, spell, magic item, etc. that Paizo puts out is Open Game Content (OGC). They've released two monsters to my knowledge that are closed due to rights-retention from the IP owner. Beyond those, anyone can take the OGC Paizo puts out and build their own stuff, enter it into a free HeroLab data file, etc. If you don't want to pay for this content from HeroLab and you already own the material, you do have an option. It simply requires you to do the work. If you don't want to/cannot do the work, then you pay these folks for doing it for you. If the thought process is "there's not that much that Paizo puts out, why should I pay for it" then you should go the do it yourself route. If the thought process is "Paizo puts out way too much stuff per year for me to keep up with" then you should pay for it. As an example of the scope of this, there are now 225+ new feats and 300+ traits available in Paizo materials. I've taken the time to enter every one of these in my own tool, so I have a frame of reference for the effort. This doesn't even get close to the data that would fall under the other OGC areas. I can't quite understand not wanting to pay more than $20 for that much work in a year (that's less than $2 a month--I bet you pay more than that for snacks each RP session) unless you are also willing to do the work yourself (and again, HeroLab supports that option for you).
Well, this has sure been a lively discussion. I hope I'm not arriving too late. :-)
There are just too many comments above for me to respond individually, so allow me to summarize a few key items from our perspective. If I've neglected to answer anyone's concern, please re-state it and I'll do my best to provide an answer. Here goes...
First, I believe that a major reason why Paizo officially licensed Hero Lab is because developing their own tools in-house is an extremely expensive and risky venture. Paizo's expertise is in RPGs, which is a vastly different realm from software development, and they recognize the fact that creating their own tool will be fraught with pitfalls and require a major financial investment. If creating quality digital tools were easy, why haven't there been more successful tools over the years?
Paizo has seen firsthand all the various failed efforts from other companies in the industry. So it could be readily argued that Paizo *has* learned from those mistakes and is electing to go the safer route of partnering with a software company that has an established and proven product. Lone Wolf Development has been successfully developing software for the tabletop gaming industry for 12 years now. Our Army Builder product is the industry standard for tabletop miniatures, while Hero Lab has already won one ENnie award and is nominated for another. Given the risks and rewards, the advantages of a partnership seem to greatly outweigh the disadvantages.
A few incorrect assertions were made regarding disadvantages of a partnership with Hero Lab. There is nothing preventing Paizo from providing Lone Wolf with advance access to new releases. In fact, we received the APG from Paizo the week following the license being signed and have already been hard at work on getting it all implemented. In the future, we'll generally have plenty of lead time to have the data files completed at the same time the new books hit the streets.
Third party publishers can also provide their content through Hero Lab. We're in discussions with a couple of the major 3PPs right now for Pathfinder. All such content would be properly tagged regarding its source, thereby allowing users to toggle on or off material from different sources for a particular game, in accordance with the restrictions set forth by the GM. This capability is already heavily used within Hero Lab for controlling access to material from APs and the like, although I'm not sure to what extent user-created content is leveraging this feature.
With regards to the question of cost, there is no way that we'll ever be able to make everyone happy. If we charged $300 dollars for the product, there would be people who consider it a worthwhile investment. If we charged $5 for it, there would be others who complain it should be free. So we have to figure out a pricing model that will allow us to sell enough copies to recoup our investment and ideally make some profit. That's how businesses work, and we have a staff that expects to receive their paychecks every month.
So how do we do it? Well, the first step is to figure out how much it actually costs us to develop the product - or an add-on. Once we know how much we have to spend, then we need to figure out how much to charge. If something takes us a week to do, our cost is a lot less than if it takes us a month, so we can charge a lot less for it. Then we need to figure out how many copies we think we'll actually sell. If something is for GMs only, then we'll sell fewer copies compared to something that's useful for all players.
Part of this process involves assessing the price elasticity. The lower the price, the more we'll sell. The higher the price, the fewer we'll sell. Somewhere along the curve is a point where we maximize revenues, which allows us to finance the development of two new products we have in the works (Realm Works and Tournament Ace). It's a complex process and it's always just a "best guess".
Regardless of what the analysis ends up indicating, some people will feel like they're getting the product dirt cheap, while others will feel that we're charging way too much. This can already be witnessed in the preceding posts. Those stating an opinion of how much we "should" charge are essentially just stating how much it's worth to *themselves*, and different posters ascribe a different value to what Hero Lab provides. Every Pathfinder player will ascribe his or her own value to Hero Lab. We make the product available in demo mode to ensure that everyone *can* make their own assessment - instead of relying on other people's opinions regarding price-worthiness.
For those with a limited budget for digital tools, the core Hero Lab product makes it possible to add all the content yourself. That way, everyone can make their own tradeoff of time versus money. If money is tight, enter the content you need yourself or leverage the goodwill of other users. If time is precious, pay a few extra bucks for the content being added for you and maintained in a professional manner.
For those with no budget for digital tools, the fact that Pathfinder is OGL is a huge boon. There are quite a few solid options that are free, ranging from spreadsheets to standalone programs.
For those who aren't sure where they stand, all the various tools can be taken for a free test drive, including Hero Lab. Then each person can make their own assessment regarding what makes the most sense for their personal requirements.
There were a few additional points made above that I didn't address in the above post. So I'll respond to them here.
* Once you've purchased a game system or an add-on, you've got it for life. There is no expiration date associated with Hero Lab.
* There are no subsidies from Paizo for Hero Lab. In fact, just the opposite. Paizo is being paid a generous royalty on all Pathfinder sales. A subsidy would definitely influence our pricing, but that's not how the license is structured.
* Hero Lab provides the ability to configure which supplements are allowed for use. This is done on the Configure Hero form that appears whenever you create a new character. You can also save your configuration so that all subsequently created characters use the same configuration settings.
* All material added by Lone Wolf to the Pathfinder data files is properly tied to its source, allowing it to be controlled via the Configure Hero form. However, we don't have control over user-created content, so not all the user-created material utilizes the source mechanism properly.
* We strive to keep the data files updated to comply with all published errata. Heck, we've already reported a bunch of stuff for the APG to Paizo that they'll be including in the errata when that book gets released.
* Hero Lab also includes the ability to construct monsters. It is not limited to characters. You can also assign class levels to monsters if you wish, providing significant flexibility when prepping for games.
* Hero Lab includes the Tactical Console, which is immensely helpful when running encounters. Last I looked, this is something for which no equivalent exists within the D&DI tools. We actually have quite a few users of Hero Lab for 4E that prefer how HL works over the D&DI tools.
* A cost comparison was made to D&DI that didn't make sense to me. At the best price available, one year of D&DI costs $71.40. At the end of that year, you either need to keep paying or lose access to everything. With Hero Lab, the price is significantly less, and there is no ongoing payment required to continue using Hero Lab.
* All material added by Lone Wolf to the Pathfinder data files is properly tied to its source, allowing it to be controlled via the Configure Hero form. However, we don't have control over user-created content, so not all the user-created material utilizes the source mechanism properly.
Hey, thanks for stopping by. Good product; I'm definitely feeling like I got my money's worth from the purchase.
On the point I quote above - that's fine, but as a feature suggestion, each item should say, visibly in the interface, where it comes from. I've been doing a lot of NPC building lately and I say "sure, include all those splats" and then I see a feat I don't recognize - and have no way of tracking it down to what source it's in. There's "control" on the front end but also research/discovery during use.
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When you buy Hero Lab you get one game system of choice. Let's say you choose Pathfinder. That gets you the core book. For $15 more you get the entire Bestiary, and soon you'll get the APG for around the same price, although that's TBD.
Hyrum.
Hyrum, how long until you and the Geniuses get one of the HeroLab monkeys to start adding in the Adventures Handbook and some of the other SSG content. I'm so waiting...and waiting and waiting for some sort of announcement.
I've done what little I can - and my friend entered in the WarMaster - but I want more...more..more.Theocrat Issak
On the point I quote above - that's fine, but as a feature suggestion, each item should say, visibly in the interface, where it comes from. I've been doing a lot of NPC building lately and I say "sure, include all those splats" and then I see a feat I don't recognize - and have no way of tracking it down to what source it's in. There's "control" on the front end but also research/discovery during use.This is on my to-do list, so, Coming Soon.
Cool. Like I mentioned, I think it's also a big selling point to publishers - "can we take your content and put it in there for people to use" makes them want money from you, but "anyone who sees your feat sees it's from Sunken Empires and therefore you get advertising" is a lot better value prop.
Something else that wasn't mentioned concerning the cost: you actually get two licenses for your purchase. You can purchase additional licenses at a discount. So if you bought it for the gaming group as a whole, you could save money by sharing the cost. I don't recall if you can purchase one or two additional licenses but I think they are only $10 or so. So you could purchase essentially three copies at $20 each for your group. Sharing user files is very easy if you add new content.
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* A cost comparison was made to D&DI that didn't make sense to me. At the best price available, one year of D&DI costs $71.40. At the end of that year, you either need to keep paying or lose access to everything. With Hero Lab, the price is...
That was me and you are right about the cost for HL being better than DDI. Still I wanted to ask if I were to get HL as a downlaod. What happens if my hard drive was to be out of commision and I can no longer access anything on it. Would I have to purchase everything again?
* A cost comparison was made to D&DI that didn't make sense to me. At the best price available, one year of D&DI costs $71.40. At the end of that year, you either need to keep paying or lose access to everything.
This is NOT true, for the record. You do not lose access to anything you've already downloaded, including the Character Builder and whatever updates you'd gotten to it during your subscription. You can't access any new updates, but whatever you already had remains fully operational. The only thing you truly "lose access" to is the Compendium.
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That was me and you are right about the cost for HL being better than DDI. Still I wanted to ask if I were to get HL as a downlaod. What happens if my hard drive was to be out of commision and I can no longer access anything on it. Would I have to purchase everything again?
* A cost comparison was made to D&DI that didn't make sense to me. At the best price available, one year of D&DI costs $71.40. At the end of that year, you either need to keep paying or lose access to everything. With Hero Lab, the price is...
Iirc, the purchase allows you to download it to two different computers.
Of course you would need all your characters backed up to a flash drive or something, or you would lose those.
The program license is tied to your email address you set up with a unique key for each copy you have. I am pretty sure that if you lost a hard drive you could use that key and email address to validate a download as legit. And even if not I think an email or request for help on their forums would correct the problem if it is a legitimate problem and not trying to scam a free copy. But that is just my impression as I not part of Lone Wolf or anything so take my comments with a grain of salt.
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That was me and you are right about the cost for HL being better than DDI. Still I wanted to ask if I were to get HL as a downlaod. What happens if my hard drive was to be out of commision and I can no longer access anything on it. Would I have to purchase everything again?
* A cost comparison was made to D&DI that didn't make sense to me. At the best price available, one year of D&DI costs $71.40. At the end of that year, you either need to keep paying or lose access to everything. With Hero Lab, the price is...
If that where to happen, you would just email support to reset your licence so you can install in on a new system. I already got this done when I had to reload my OS on my system.
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That was me and you are right about the cost for HL being better than DDI. Still I wanted to ask if I were to get HL as a downlaod. What happens if my hard drive was to be out of commision and I can no longer access anything on it. Would I have to purchase everything again?
* A cost comparison was made to D&DI that didn't make sense to me. At the best price available, one year of D&DI costs $71.40. At the end of that year, you either need to keep paying or lose access to everything. With Hero Lab, the price is...
As a matter of fact, my hard drive had a complete meltdown a couple of weeks ago, needed to be completely replaced and I wasn't able to get any data off of the old drive at all. I downloaded HL and entered my license information and had access to everything I had on my last HD. (I had to rebuild the characters I hadn't taken active steps to save before the final crash, but that's not an issue with the program.)
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* A cost comparison was made to D&DI that didn't make sense to me. At the best price available, one year of D&DI costs $71.40. At the end of that year, you either need to keep paying or lose access to everything.This is NOT true, for the record. You do not lose access to anything you've already downloaded, including the Character Builder and whatever updates you'd gotten to it during your subscription. You can't access any new updates, but whatever you already had remains fully operational. The only thing you truly "lose access" to is the Compendium.
Unless you have a crash as mentioned above. Then you are SOL.
Hyrum, how long until you and the Geniuses get one of the HeroLab monkeys to start adding in the Adventures Handbook and some of the other SSG content. I'm so waiting...and waiting and waiting for some sort of announcement.
I've done what little I can - and my friend entered in the WarMaster - but I want more...more..more.Theocrat Issak
If you scroll down you'll find the Hero Lab files for the War Master. We're working on getting the other classes and feats and magic up soon.
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/extras/community-creations/hero-lab
Hyrum.
Unless you have a crash as mentioned above. Then you are SOL.
This is what CD-Rs, DVD-Rs, and flash drives were invented for. You can install and update the Character Builder without having any connection at all to the internet. The files aren't even large. You could probably get a free gmail account and email them to yourself to have a permanent secure copy.
HeroLabs is the Official Sponsored Pathfinder Character/Monster Builder.
It just became official so it will be a bit of time before all the closed content is added.
I haven't checked out HeroLabs for awhile, so I thought I would try the demo again. I am very critical of character builders, and their past HL products might have only got a D grade from me, at best.
Their current product now appears pretty decent. It is still rough in some of its interfaces and pop-ups. In my opinion, their product is still in need of some polishing. I consider it to be about 80% user friendly, since they are missing some standard user-friendly features.
Now, with all that said, I am impressed with their current product. There are a lot of little obscure rules that I have realized when building my Excel character generator, that HL has picked up on too.
I may consider using their product in the future should they continue to develop it. (Despite having a fair amount of disposable income, I have never paid for a character generator, since none have been able to pass my scrutiny. If you want my money, you better have a decent product!)
Currently I give their product a B grade... which is the highest I have ever given a purchased character generator. I only did use the Demo version, so I was not able to generate a charater sheet. If they output only into the official 2 page character sheet, then downgrade my rating to a C+. This game has become far too complicated for that old format. (Conditional skill/ability bonuses, typed (enhancment/insight/morale, etc) skill/ability bonuses, feat descriptions, class and special ability descriptions should all be contained in a character sheet.)
I'm also assuming they have a spell sheet creator... which prints out the name, description and details of each spell chosen (similar to Ema's old spell sheet creator). If for some reason they don't, well... they are not going to like the grade they get from me :)
I also appreciate all the time that goes into adding new content, and I would be willing to pay on the following basis:
- Set fee for 1 year of Adventure Path material
- Set fee for 1 year of Chronicles material
- Set fee for 1 year of Companion material
- Single fee for any book whose page count is over 150.
I would not pay a fee on a resource-per-resource basis, (AP's, Chronicle, Companion) unless it was ridiculously low like $1-$2.
Their current product now appears pretty decent. It is still rough in some of its interfaces and pop-ups. In my opinion, their product is still in need of some polishing. I consider it to be about 80% user friendly, since they are missing some standard user-friendly features.
If you wouldn't mind spelling out some of these shortcomings, I would appreciate it. We're constantly improving and refining Hero Lab, and we prioritize things based on how many people flag them as an issue. I'd like to get your "votes" recorded on this end. :-)
Currently I give their product a B grade... which is the highest I have ever given a purchased character generator.
If we've secured the best grade you've ever given, we're definitely on the right track. We've still got a lot of cool stuff on the todo list, so hopefully we'll work our way up to an A- in the months to come. :-)
I only did use the Demo version, so I was not able to generate a charater sheet. If they output only into the official 2 page character sheet, then downgrade my rating to a C+. This game has become far too complicated for that old format. (Conditional skill/ability bonuses, typed (enhancment/insight/morale, etc) skill/ability bonuses, feat descriptions, class and special ability descriptions should all be contained in a character sheet.)
You can view the character sheet within Demo mode. You can use Print Preview for this purpose. At present, the character sheet output offers only a moderate amount of customizability. A high priority for the next big feature release is full support for customized character sheet output. So that's in the works.
I'm also assuming they have a spell sheet creator... which prints out the name, description and details of each spell chosen (similar to Ema's old spell sheet creator).
Absolutely present. You can view this via the Print Preview mechanism within Demo mode, as noted above.