Review: Hero Lab by Lone Wolf Development

From the Publisher

At its core, Hero Lab is an incredibly versatile engine, designed to accommodate just about any system the RPG industry can come up with. It’s flexible enough to adapt to any roleplaying game on the market, and expansive enough to keep up with the most intricate of rules systems.

Hero Lab presents a wealth of highly detailed information in a manner that is easy to navigate and intuitive to use. Through the use of adaptive summary panels, all the inter-dependencies of your character are readily visible. Mouse-sensitive help keeps all the details at your disposal without cluttering up the screen.

Hero Lab manages the complex inter-connections of your character automatically and transparently, so you’re free to experiment. As you make changes to your character, Hero Lab automatically applies appropriate bonuses, penalties, and modifiers, immediately showing you the results of those changes. Don’t like what your changes did? Try something different. Similarly, if you step outside of the defined rules for the game, the validation engine will automatically alert you to the situation, telling you where the problem lies. The validation engine alerts you to the error without directly enforcing correct behavior – this allows you to ignore the error, making it easy to accomodate house rules.

Characters aren’t just about numbers and choices, however. Every character is a story in the telling – how they came to be, who they are, and their hopes for the future. With an innovative journaling option, Hero Lab gives you the ability to track key events in your character’s life, and the comprehensive In-Play mode allows you to easily manage your character during the game, from applying temporary effects (from spells, abilities, etc.) to tracking limited use items (such as arrows, potions and the like), to activating special abilities (such as Barbarian Rage).

First Thoughts

I’ve always been a sucker for neat gadgets and tools that make my job as a game master easier and more streamlined.  I’ve tried a huge number of character design tools over the years (though I still have my first characters from the early-1980′s in a notebook, on the old-school paper character sheets).  Not only is ease of use important to me (I don’t have time to overcome a huge learning curve), aesthetics (both on screen and in the final, printed version of the character sheet) are extremely important as well.

Honestly, I was prepared to be underwhelmed when I fired up this software.  I’m an old, jaded curmudgeon of a gamer who can be resistant to change at times.  I was incredibly wrong.

The Good

Once I got the product installed (complete with core rules for Paizo’s Pathfinder RPG, I started creating a basic starting character.  The process was logical, intuitive, and easy to follow.  It took me only a fraction of the time it would’ve taken to write the character out by hand.

Next, I decided to challenge the software by leveling up my original character, adding items and notes, and reflecting the changes of an ongoing campaign.  This went without a hitch.  I then tried to make a few more complex characters.  I added additional classes, prestige classes, templates, etc.  My favorite creation was a high-level Vampiric Drow Antipaladin.  I stumbled a few times at first trying to get rid of the messages that pop up when you’ve done something the rules don’t support, but I quickly got the hang of it.

The printed character sheets came out great as well.

Creating and printing a character for Pathfinder just could not be easier than this.

Finally, I switched over to the World of Darkness and ran Hero Lab in demo mode (since I didn’t buy the additional supplements required for the full version of the game).  Creating a character for this system was just as intuitive as it was for Pathfinder (and slightly less complex, just by nature of the rules systems in use).  The software actually ran smoothly in all of the systems I tried (as a big fan of the Pinebox, TX setting, I must say: Savage Worlds, anyone?).

The Bad

The old adage that you get what you pay for is true.  While the core system is quite affordable at $29.99, and comes complete with one core system of your choice, just as they do in physical gaming books, the costs of the additional supplements can add up quickly.  As a game master and storyteller in multiple systems, I can easily spend a small fortune purchasing the components to create monster-based characters from the Pathfinder Bestiary and kindred for Vampire: the Requiem.

I know, gaming is an expensive hobby, and at only around $20.00 per additional system and an average of $9.99 per supplement, it is actually very reasonably priced.  The double-edged sword at work here is that I quickly decided that Hero Lab was indispensable for my weekly/monthly gaming (I’m almost always game master and I occasionally have to make a bunch of pre-gens for a demo or a con) and wanted to download everything available, at least for Pathfinder and World of Darkness (there are currently eight game systems supported).  With my current budget, this is just not possible on top of the PDF’s and hard copies I already purchase (I’m old school, I need both at the gaming table).

The only other thing I’d love to see is support for All Flesh Must Be Eaten and Hunter: the Vigil.

The Ugly

Other than me wanting to spend a ton of money I don’t currently have an an incredible product that is definitely worth it and would make my gaming life much easier, there is nothing ugly here.

Final Thoughts

If you are a player or game master of any of the supported systems (Pathfinder, Shadowrun, 3.5 D20 OGL, Mutants & Masterminds, Call of Cthulhu, World of Darkness, Dungeons & Dragons 4E, Savage Worlds), you need this.  I’m not kidding.  I’m hooked.  Being able to create even the most complex characters in a fraction of the normal time investment is extremely valuable to me.

Now I just have to save up some cash.

Overall Rating