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I've played pen and paper rpg's for over 15 years now and i have to say that not for a long time have I been so excited about creating characters as I have for the last couple of years With Herolab.
I buy most pathfinder books in print, but for Herolab I buy everything. Not only is it cheaper to buy in herolab, but I find it gets more use there.
I buy the most important books in print/paper, and they are invaluable as references during gameplay, but these days we create most of our characters in Herolab, and I must say I do prefer it. It just goes so much faster and easier.
One Catch though is i've had to help some New players that I GM for make some characters that didn't have Herolab and I was surprised how fast my know how/skill at creating characters the old fashioned way on just paper had faded. It really is a skill that needs maintaining.
In conclusion I say that Herolab is great if you already know the basics of the game, but if you have access to herolab as you learn this game it might be a hinderance towards really Learning the rules. What say you all?
Before Herolab I always used PCGen, so I can't really recall the last time I've had to make characters by hand for D&D/Pathfinder. I do have to make them for other games, but I much prefer the automation.
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HeroLab sure is awesome (I am a bit unhappy about the situation with a particular weapon enhancement, but that is hardly their fault)and I really appreciate the fact, that I was able to buy the add-on for Mythic Adventures even before I could get my pdf (even if not everything seems to be working yet).
I love Herolab sadly I find it a bit slow and expensive. But when I'm doing chars is absolutely amazing
I really like herolab for giving a rough idea of what a character would look like. I use it to make NPCs often, however, when I play in a campaign I always take the time to fill out a c-sheet by hand because too often I run into issues where the herolab stat block is cumbersome to use in game and doesn't seem to apply modifiers in ways I like. (Speed weapon property is the most recent example of this for me.) Also, choosing feats and spells especially for high level games is a chore.
Hero Lab is good. I like its funding model (buy your data) so much more than WotC's DDI (rent your data). I use Hero Lab exclusively and don't want to have to enter a lot of data by hand. This means that only 3PPs and Kickstarters offering a Hero Lab option (I don't mind paying a bit more for this) receive my support.
I also really like the customization options offered by Hero Lab. I am no programmer but I find it fairly easy to reverse engineer their scripting.
The one thing I don't really like about Hero Lab is the character sheet templates. They are kind of ugly, automatically cut off descriptions in places, display duplicative info, and take tons of pages. They need to offer better options to create aesthetically pleasing, efficient, and concise character sheets so characters don't require a ream of paper each. This one enhancement would greatly improve the program.
Overall, I am a pleased Hero Lab customer.
Hero Lab is amazing. It's actually taught me a lot about the game. I use the iPad app as my character sheet durning games, and it is SUCH a time saver. I absolutely LOVE it.
During game days when we do character audits, I have never found a sheet produced by Hero Labs to have an error in it that wasn't user induced.
If you don't like the standard output there are a couple of user created ones. I can't remember the name of the one I really like, I think it's called the ancient one...maybe?
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I'm a big fan of HeroLab. I've been using it for the last few years and it really makes the NPC/character generation process more efficient. I've also recently begun using it in-play through my iPad and that has been helpful when it comes to using abilities/feats/conditions/etc. For what it saves me in time, I think it's far justified it's cost.
That said, there are a couple things I wish they would work on. One is the aforementioned character sheets. Being that this is a product licensed by Paizo, it would be cool if they would just replicate the character sheets offered in the back of the Paizo books. Heck, I'd pay a few bucks for a "data pack" that just contained some various character sheet formats.
The other thing I struggle with sometimes is the importing monsters from the stock heroes. It's not very well organized. Maybe just putting everything in alphabetical order would work better, instead of separate files for dragons, giants, and so on.
-Skeld
Skeld - As I mentioned there are alternate character sheets. One of the alternates IS the sheet in the back of the book.
Here here for one of the greatest tool for GMs and a good tool for players!
I tried several of the 3rd party character sheet options but, unfortunately, didn't find them much better than the standard character sheet.