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Back in the days when players were allowed to temporarily level up an existing character to play sanctioned modules, we had a lot of problems with players not advancing their low-level characters to high-level properly, so we started requiring character audits before confirming a player's registration to high-tier Modules.
Example: we've run the Ruby Phoenix Tournament PFS sacntioned module for 11th-level characters three times now, and each time my (then) VL RyanK required a character audit before confirming a player's registration to the table. In almost every case, those who built their characters in Herolab were built correctly, while those who built their characters by hand were riddled with errors and incorrect rules assumptions.
The clear message here is that human error occurs much more frequently than Herolab error.
Based on this experience, I wholeheartedly recommend Herolab to all Pathfinder players. Just remember to bring your sourcebooks or PDFs with you to the table - Herolab on it's own doesn't qualify your character as PFS legal.
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The issue being Pink Dragon, the player needs to be responsive enough so that when a gm asks 'How did your Perception get to +9 at level 1?', the player can answer them just as quickly.
If you notice on a Herolab sheet it dosnt show the calculations made. You will have the player uming and arring to figure this out.
Now I use Herolab myself but to really understand the mechanics of the game you need to understand how the calculations are made, and for that you honestly need to start out making manual characters.
You also run the risk of saying,
"here is my Oracle of Metal , Caspar Bronzebones!."
GM: 'Awesome, how did he get A Knowledge Nobility of +9 already. Also, you dont seem to be carrying any books on you"
Player : "Oh, I didnt know I needed to bring those with me, I bought all the books in Herolabs I needed. You mean I need to buy the pdf/hard cover AND Herolab licenses? That sucks!
and yes Ive seen the conversation above a couple of times
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The issue being Pink Dragon, the player needs to be responsive enough so that when a gm asks 'How did your Perception get to +9 at level 1?', the player can answer them just as quickly.
If you notice on a Herolab sheet it dosnt show the calculations made. You will have the player uming and arring to figure this out.
I've had this happen to myself. You notice a number that looks wrong, and your first response is "Oh, Herolab's got it wrong again!". But then you back-track and try to calculate everything manually, and you realise there's an obscure ruling you weren't aware of or forgot, and that Herolab's got it right all along.
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I am pretty meticulous when making my characters. I take a great deal of time looking over and verifiying things. I think people generally learn the rules better writing out their character.
I know a group of people that have a very poor understanding of the rules because of herolab being so easy. Also the fact they usually only play within their own group makes the issue worse.
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The issue being Pink Dragon, the player needs to be responsive enough so that when a gm asks 'How did your Perception get to +9 at level 1?', the player can answer them just as quickly.
If you notice on a Herolab sheet it dosnt show the calculations made. You will have the player uming and arring to figure this out.
Now I use Herolab myself but to really understand the mechanics of the game you need to understand how the calculations are made, and for that you honestly need to start out making manual characters.
You also run the risk of saying,
"here is my Oracle of Metal , Caspar Bronzebones!."
GM: 'Awesome, how did he get A Knowledge Nobility of +9 already. Also, you dont seem to be carrying any books on you"
Player : "Oh, I didnt know I needed to bring those with me, I bought all the books in Herolabs I needed. You mean I need to buy the pdf/hard cover AND Herolab licenses? That sucks!
and yes Ive seen the conversation above a couple of times
That some people can not seem to manage to understand/accept the rules regarding having the Additional Resource in a legitimate format is completely separate issue from Herolab. People will take issue with having to bring the resource no matter whether Hero Lab exists or not. So honestly half of your example is irrelevant to topic at hand.
Just because someone is too lazy now to do all of their characters manually does not mean that they never did their characters manually. Also doing your characters in Hero Lab does not stop you from using your books at the same time.
All of my Pathfinder RPG characters, PFS or not, are done in Hero Lab. Frankly I hate writing anything by hand. I still know more about what makes my character tick than most people who write all of their characters by hand.
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One more point about hand filled character sheets. I don't know about the character sheets you use but mine don't have enough space to list what every bonus to a given skill is and the name of the Feat, ClassFeature, etc. it comes from.
At least with Hero Lab I can print out a sheet that delineates the effects of each of my Feats, Traits, Class Features, etc. Something that I have NEVER done on a hand-filled character sheet.
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I used it much more when I first started playing. I still use it to double check things some times, but now that I generally pull from more additional resource books Hero Lab is no longer worth the money.
I think it's a good tool if used as a tool and not a crutch. Since I had not done much role playing prior to Pathfinder it was great for learning the rules. Often I would calculate out my stats and Hero Lab would be different, it was almost always right so it was a chance to learn what I was missing.
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Graywulfe: Again I also do all my characters via Herolab in PFS. Ive no problem with people using it, I also often use it to create far in the future versions of my PFS characters to see how I want to take the character.
Id likely never do that manually as it would take far too long.
I still occasionally create a character manually however, I guess its mostly out of nostalgia (as I come from a 2nd ed/3e background where character creation software was average at best).
My major concern is with people who start out using Herolab ( and bypass the whole manual phase altogether) and then have horrendous issues when trying to explain to the gm how they got the statistic the program is saying they have.
I apologise for going aways off topic (but hey every second thread in this place does) but Herolab brings up a variety of issues that really do need to be examined.
It could also be very much a generational view. I might be in that older gen of players who start of with the 'back in my day'. I hope not but I still want the feel of paper not just the feel of the screen/keys.
Venture-Lieutenant, Indiana—Indianapolis
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If you are too lazy to do a character manually, you are too lazy to be playing Society!
The arrogance of your statement aside, you say later that you use HL to make your characters and that you "still OCCASIONALLY create a character manually..."
[sarcasm]So, does that mean you are lazy the times when you do not make them manually?[/sarcasm]
That aside, seriously, your comment was incredibly insulting to many (in my case, I CAN make my characters by hand, but I prefer HL becuase it's sufficiently faster.) I'd perhaps rephrase or rethink your statement.
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If you are too lazy to do a character manually, you are too lazy to be playing Society!
Come 2015, I will have been playing D&D and its derivatives for 30 years. I've filled out more than my fair share of character sheets by hand and I hope to not go back there again!
My lawn. Get off of it. ;)
-Skeld
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Hero Lab is an awesome tool.
I use it for all my characters, and so does my wife.
But just like any tool, its only as effective as its user. I have noticed that players who depend on Hero Labs as source for how the game works, often end up not knowing how the game works.
That's why I suggest folks new to the game, learn the rules manually first. Then learn how to use the tool.
Just like when I was in elementary and junior high school. We had to learn math and algebra by hand before we were allowed to use calculators.
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I'll reenforce what others here have said-learn how to do it yourself first. I don't use Herolab myself, but over the weekend I was at a con playing a few 10-11 tables, and two of the players using herolab had no clue how their basic abilities worked. In the case of a knife master rogue, it was specifically because of confusion on how herolab formatted his sneak attack damage.
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Herolab comes generally in one of two prefences. Either you love it or you hate it.
I personally think herolab is better for vetern players. Players need to know how to make a character from scratch, otherwise they will rely on it and not even know the basics. Especially players who are new to RPGs.
Recently, I completed a series of audits for my group going through Eyes of the Ten. Yes, there were far fewer mistakes on the herolab character sheets, then those of the manual. However, it was alot harder to figure out where some bonuses where coming from. There where some I could not even figure out and had to ask the player.
Overall, Yes, Herolab is very useful, it just isn't my cup of tea.
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If you cannot do your character manually I would recommend going through the exercise of writing up your character and verifying with what you got in HL. I use HL but I also can calculate conditions on the fly without having to check buttons in HL. I like HL because it makes it easy to read all the available options for a character in one place.
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HeroLab is nice, but it does have some limitations.
It can print out the information on your class abilities, feat effects and gear specials, which helps, but it doesn't calculate some special abilities or attacks, or at least doesn't publish them in any obvious places.
Trip, disarm, sunder, grapple, etc.
And, last time I checked, it had trouble with the PSFG version of Dueling.
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If you are too lazy to do a character manually, you are too lazy to be playing Society!Manually makes mistakes too. I believe manually makes more mistakes than Hero Labs, especially for players not supremely proficient at Pathfinder Rules.
I think Hero Labs is a good place to build characters, but The Flying Photon is correct that each player needs to think about how the numbers were generated in order to understand how the character can respond to individual situations.
I do double check evrything that it does, and the shorter amount of time i spend doing all the math i can spend memorizing my sheet and tweaking it as i think of a new issue that may arrive. I rarely show up to a table unprepared, not knowing the rules that apply to my character. (unless it is a class ive never played).
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I'll reenforce what others here have said-learn how to do it yourself first. I don't use Herolab myself, but over the weekend I was at a con playing a few 10-11 tables, and two of the players using herolab had no clue how their basic abilities worked. In the case of a knife master rogue, it was specifically because of confusion on how herolab formatted his sneak attack damage.And I'll reinforce what others have said by stating that I've seen players who created their characters by hand, played said characters for months at tables with people who do know how said characters work, and still have no clue as to how the core functionality of said characters work.
Don't blame Hero Lab for stupid people being stupid.
And 9 times out of 10, this is a function of the other players not being (willing to be) good teachers.
The ignorant people will continue to be ignorant until shown the light. If other players aren't willing to help show the light, then they are contributing to the ignorance and their irritation at the ignorant players is their own fault.
Granted, there are some players who just refuse to learn, no matter how much light you shine their way.
But largely, if you help new players, the new players will learn.
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Hero Lab does tend to allow players to more easily break the game though. As all your choices are available right from the computer screen, instead of having to pour through 15 or 20 books.
Another issue I've seen, is the new player character creation stations having all options checked as available. They show up at your table, obviously without even the Core Rulebook, have no idea what book their abilities are in or what it does, and then get mad at you when you don't know what some obscure ability does and won't let them use it.
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Hero Lab has saved my butt more times than I can count now. I would have absolutely messed up on manually trying to get all the bonuses/penalties correct on my characters. I'm pretty good at being meticulous with stuff like this, but it's easy to overlook things like a Gnome's plus to hit on AC due to size, etc. Hero Lab makes all of this very easy. And, I totally agree, that once Hero Lab prints out my character, I review the stats to make sure I understand why certain things are set the way they are.
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For new players I can totally understand wanting a program that gives you all the options and puts everything together for you, but I can't imagine ever wanting to use it myself. For starters it doesn't actually give all the options, if you are using material from some player compendium or other obscure splat book it's not all on HeroLab. And second I'd just have to copy it out onto another sheet or be stuck with their formatting.
I don't like premade character sheets. I prefer a text document, or blank sheet of paper if I'm not using my tablet for some reason. Every character I make has a different set of important oft used information. For a fighter type I want a section with all my different weapon attacks written out, cmbs for different maneuvers, for other charcters that information is irrelevant. For my witch I have a list of hexes, touch attack and concentration modifiers, and spells. For my dragon disciple I have written out separate attack calculations for normal, raging, raging & enlarged, etc, so I don't have to recalculate every time.
HeroLab may be great for ease of character creation, but it's terrible for ease of play. So many times I've seen players hunting through their 5 page hero lab printout trying to find where it printed their cmd or their concentration etc. If you use HeroLab a lot, I recommend getting very familiar with their layout so it doesn't take you any time to look up what you need to. (Actually I recommend to everyone to write out each character separately with often use modifiers already calculated out like I do, saves a lot of play time, but I expect you're too lazy to do so, so at least be able to find the relevant info quickly)
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One of the alternate sheets for HL, AncientOne's sheet, is in HL, and it does print the table of combat maneuvers, with the CMB and CMD of each. I realize that's only one part in your list of things, but it's there.
I believe that's the one that I vastly prefer to see and use - it looks like the standard character sheet. That makes it much easier for others to help, and the weapons they use to attack are actually on the front page usually (shock!).
I've seen terrible things with and without HeroLab, and I've seen perfect characters with and without. The major difference I've seen is that with HeroLab ignorance tends to fall on the over-powered side than the under-powered (printing (or I-Pad'ing) the character sheet leaving bardic performance and bless spells activated...)
That, and not tracking consumables - grrr! I had a 7th level Gunslinger who'd never bought ammo after the first time.
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I tend to use Herolabs, much of it for quick looks at alternatives.
For the actual printed sheet I take to sessions for play, I tend to use the statblocks, heavily modified from what herolabs produces. This modification works as an editing pass for me, so I can remember why certain numbers are the way they are.
A feature I would really like added is a notation of the source of features that get used. I often find myself saying, "What book is that spell in?", or "Where does that come from?" when I have to pull out the additional material.
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For new players I can totally understand wanting a program that gives you all the options and puts everything together for you, but I can't imagine ever wanting to use it myself. For starters it doesn't actually give all the options, if you are using material from some player compendium or other obscure splat book it's not all on HeroLab. And second I'd just have to copy it out onto another sheet or be stuck with their formatting.
I don't like premade character sheets. I prefer a text document, or blank sheet of paper if I'm not using my tablet for some reason. Every character I make has a different set of important oft used information. For a fighter type I want a section with all my different weapon attacks written out, cmbs for different maneuvers, for other charcters that information is irrelevant. For my witch I have a list of hexes, touch attack and concentration modifiers, and spells. For my dragon disciple I have written out separate attack calculations for normal, raging, raging & enlarged, etc, so I don't have to recalculate every time.
HeroLab may be great for ease of character creation, but it's terrible for ease of play. So many times I've seen players hunting through their 5 page hero lab printout trying to find where it printed their cmd or their concentration etc. If you use HeroLab a lot, I recommend getting very familiar with their layout so it doesn't take you any time to look up what you need to. (Actually I recommend to everyone to write out each character separately with often use modifiers already calculated out like I do, saves a lot of play time, but I expect you're too lazy to do so, so at least be able to find the relevant info quickly)
I always make sure i wrote out anything that Hero Lab excludes that I deem would be important to my character, I simply use Hero Lab because of My lack of writing it out not lazy character creation style
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I use HeroLab because I have like 12 characters for PFS and I would never be able to keep them straight without it.
I have 16 (I like spreading my GM credit around).
I also am acutely aware of it's shortcomings. I have, to date, reported something like 11 or so errors. Equipment errors, archtypes, and so on. The folks at Lone Wolf are enormously good at coding, quick (given the sheer volume of content they add) and fairly quick in responding to queries.
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As a quick aside, I find it useful to annotate what book a feat/trait/whathaveyou comes from, so that you can pull that book up quickly during play if the GM asks for it, and you don't know it off the top of your head.
I don't use herolab personally, but that might be worth doing if you print out your sheet (or have notation space in esheets).