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Are they any alternatives to HeroLab?
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JavaScript Editor is new to me, I'll check it out.
Ivan, I used to use PCGen long ago. Can you tell me how supportive of Pathfinder it is? How many of the supplements does it include, if any?
Thanks for the input so far! =)
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If you used PCGen long ago, it's much better now. It has most of the core hardbacks (not Bestiary 4 yet, I think), and many of the other books, as people write them up.
Okay, cool. I'll check it out when I have the opportunity =)
If you used PCGen long ago, it's much better now. It has most of the core hardbacks (not Bestiary 4 yet, I think), and many of the other books, as people write them up.
I tried the latest build of PC gen a few months ago and for me it was buggy as hell. I have a high powers gaming PC and it caused a huge slowdown when running. They might have fixed it by now but if the current version causes problem try downloading an older version.
Do you mean buggy, or slow? I haven't had any speed issues with it, myself, but I tend to only have one character open at a time.
Mostly slow, it would freeze up requiring a reboot to fix. When it didn't cause a system freeze it would be so slow that it would take about a minutes between clicking a radio button and the program recognizing it. Stuff like that.
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Huh. I've never run across anything like that, at least not any time recently. What's the last version you tried? (They're on 6.3.1 or .2 now.)
How many sources were you loading?
Only the Pathfinder sources, no third party.
I've never had PCGen get really sluggish on me in any of the installations I've had, no matter how many sources I've had loaded.
Certainly not to the point of having to reboot or having to wait more than a second or two for it to do anything (what usually takes the longest is if I switch to the character sheet tab - and that's usually only a couple of seconds).
This is on either a Windows XP or Win7 computer.
win7
I meant that all installations/versions I've had have been on either a Windows XP or a Win7 computer. :-)
JavaScript Editor is new to me, I'll check it out.
Ivan, I used to use PCGen long ago. Can you tell me how supportive of Pathfinder it is? How many of the supplements does it include, if any?
Thanks for the input so far! =)
I haven't used it in a year or 2 myself, so I couldn't say how up to date it is, though obviously that question has more or less been answered. Last time I used it, Ultimate Combat still hadn't been added. I would likely be using the program on occassion if a friend hadn't purchased Hero Lab and most of the datasets for my Christmas gift last year.
PCGen looks okay. It's changed since I last used it (pre 6.0). I just wish there was a better alternative to Hero Lab that is actually complete. I won't pick up HL, and if there isn't really anything comparable right now, I'll just do without.
I do appreciate any past (and future) responses however, so for that, thank you!
What's your objection to HL?
My stance is my own, and I'm not here to pick a fight. I'm simply going to say I'm a big advocate of the "OpenSource" movement, and leave it at that. If you have other questions, or want me to be more specific, please PM me.
What would you term complete? And how can PCGen improve this?
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PC Gen is still a little buggy but I submit about a bug a month for strange things that don't work in it. Good thing is they have a Jira frontend for bug submissions and all the bugs have been fairly responsive since I have been using it.
Let me clarify buggy, there are a ton of edge case rules that aren't always taken into account. Part of the ruleset it is just complicated.
What would you term complete? And how can PCGen improve this?
The very first thing I noticed was that there's no longer an NPC generator. There was when I used it a long time ago, but not any more. This was a feature I used [strong]very[/strong] frequently.
A previous poster mentioned not all sources currently available for Pathfinder are also available for PCGen (such as Mythic Adventures and Gamemastery Guide). And many still are still in Alpha or Beta, I'm noticing.
My stance is my own, and I'm not here to pick a fight. I'm simply going to say I'm a big advocate of the "OpenSource" movement, and leave it at that. If you have other questions, or want me to be more specific, please PM me.
I have no problem with that. The only problem I have is when people expect open source or fan driven software to be up to date and of a commercial standard. It is a labour of love and with most people neither having the time or funds to invest you need to make do with what is available.
The best free software I have seen is Kyle Olsens Combat Manager. I recommend that everybody takes a look.
HL while having an ugly UI and being somewhat unintuative, does the job well for me and I am more than happy to pay for the hours of data entry and coding I would have to do my self.
The very first thing I noticed was that there's no longer an NPC generator. There was when I used it a long time ago, but not any more. This was a feature I used very frequently.
A previous poster mentioned not all sources currently available for Pathfinder are also available for PCGen (such as Mythic Adventures and Gamemastery Guide). And many still are still in Alpha or Beta, I'm noticing.
Okay the NPC generator is a definitely valid issue. The developer that originally did that left the project, and none of the developers that are part of the project (new or old) have any knowledge of the code he used to make that, and since it was seriously out of date and causing bugs in the rest of the program it was cut out. There are plans to bring it back with properly documented code in the future.
As a volunteer project we can only work on as many sources that the volunteers chose to pick up. Of course we are always looking for more data monkey's, wink, wink, nudge nudge... :)
I understand what you're saying 8th Dwarf. I wasn't truly expecting a totally complete "open source" answer, despite my wording before. I will take a look at the software you suggested. PCGen will suffice for now, though I do hope progress will be made on it.
And if there is any way I can contribute to making PCGen complete, anyone reading this thread, please let me know.
I want to help!
Well of course you do! OK, there are a vast variety of ways in which you can help us here at PCGen. We can use:
JAVA Coders (Code Monkeys)
LST file editors (Data Monkeys)
Admin Monkeys
Documenters (Doc Monkeys)
Public Relations (PR Monkeys)
Checking Licensing (Data License Monkeys)
Anybody who wants to, no matter your level of experience!We could go into vast detail here on how you could help in any particular section. But the way to join is posting a message to Yahoo! with the title:
"I WANT TO HELP"
Someone will claim your soul shortly afterwards and help you offline on how to go about doing things.
Needless to say, this is one of the most fun and rewarding communities you can join! PCGen is about FUN, just read an average day of the message boards and you'll see what I mean!
See Monkey Teams Explained for details on the various PCGen teams.
&
http://pcgen.org/autobuilds/pcgen-docs/faqpages/faqiwannahelp.html
Although it looks like the Yahoo groups we use might be down right now.
I'm surprised they still use Yahoo. I'll browse it when I have the opportunity, but I purged all my Yahoo accounts, so I hope I won't need to rejoin.
We still use it because we haven't found a forum software that lets people post to or create threads via email.
And you can sign up with a non-yahoo email last I knew.
Yes, and James and Andrew appreciate you identifying the corner cases :)
Thanks for the help everyone. I can't access Yahoo, so I'll do what I can with PCGen.
TOS+ is one of the most powerful and easy to use tool for character management for both Pathfinder and the 3.5 edition...
It handles the stacking rules so you don't have to worry about it (and practically all the Math), and can be used Dynamically during a gaming session (either on a laptop or on a tablet through remote control of your PC). For example, if your character gets Haste, you just add that to the Laptop worksheet, and voila, all the details are updated in real time for your character.
A ton of stuff has been created and shared on the TOS community forum.
Note that if you use 5e, you can use TOS FIVE!