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Hero Labs is actually really good, but it is far from cheap. You buy the base game and then pay for additional packages for the supplements including books beyond the core rule book. If you purchase all the packages, it has all the official content. You can also get 3rd some 3rd party content for free other 3rd party content may cost.
The requirements for Hero Lab are not that high. I have been using it since I started playing the game when it came out. But as I said the cost is going to be high. My purchases were spread out over the years, so it did not seem like that much, but it did add up. They also used to have sales once a year that cut down the cost a bit. I think now that they now have some bundles that may save some cash but be prepared to shell out some money.
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I think you're already there... the good people on these here forums can turn out characters pretty quickly, or just post characters we already have built. You give us some guidelines and parameters, we post characters that you can scroll through and pick out what might work.
What races are common? What sort of point buy are we working with? How optimized should they be? What sort of equipment would fit in? What do you need these NPC's to do? What sort of things would look out of place?
I know I'm not the only one on here with piles of random character builds. And, honestly, I enjoy building characters... it's my happy place, the perfect distraction, my meditation... so I am always willing to build more characters.
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I know I'm not the only one on here with piles of random character builds. And, honestly, I enjoy building characters... it's my happy place, the perfect distraction, my meditation... so I am always willing to build more characters.
Same. Building characters is fun. Seeing the different things I can do. It can be frustrating at times, but still fun.
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I know I'm not the only one on here with piles of random character builds. And, honestly, I enjoy building characters... it's my happy place, the perfect distraction, my meditation... so I am always willing to build more characters.
Oh, I definitely have a veritable treasure trove of character builds floating around in my HeroLab vault. From creating a mythic and non-mythic versions of Bruce Banner/The Incredible Hulk, to a simple 'farmer John' NPC that has a pig familiar and the Chosen One Paladin archetype.
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Honestly if you are just looking for the basics even the aonprd character generator is good. You can flesh out any specifics afterwards if you need it.
That more of a background creator for characters, not exactly what was asked for (NPC's with character levels).
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It's fun making no-name, low-level NPC's focusing on the alternative racial features available to the core races. Or capitalizing on different racial weapon proficiencies in classes that otherwise lack access to such weapons...
CR 1 Dwarf "assassin"... Sylvan Trickster cRogue can have the Slumber Hex at level 2... delivering a 5D6 Coup de Grace with a Heavy Pick and Sneak Attack is probably game over. And nobody expects a Dwarf Rogue, like WTF.
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Get Combat Manager. You can create NPC's and monsters in 30sec to 3-5 mins, depending on how many you need. And then you can instantly level them up, add HD, templates, etc., whatever you need to customize the monster/NPC.
Fantasy Name Generators is a great site for naming them if they're going to stick around for a while.
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Hmmmm. Five bucks is certainly reasonable, though I'm usually adverse to spending money on anything "frivolous" for myself. Will Combat Manager actually let me build characters inside of it, or is it just for tracking information I plug in?
It should be free, unless they recently started charging a fee I'm unaware of. As far as building characters inside of it and saving them, I'm not sure, I've never tried. I usually build whatever character that I need, then copy/paste it over to an excel document that I use for my Campaign File, and then build a new creature, then copy/paste that one over as well. Rinse Lather repeat until I have all the monsters/npc's I need for an encounter.
The first time you make your first monster, it's going to take you a little while to get used to all the options/templates you can add, but once you build about 10-20 characters, you're going to be building these characters in 30-45 seconds. It's so easy and fast that you can come up with an entirely random encounter in 5 mins or less, even in the middle of sesh.