Hero Lab Character Creator Is Coming To 5E Very Soon!

Yesterday, I reported that popular character builder Hero Lab support for D&D 5E was very likely to be coming. Then WotC announced their new SRD and OGL - at which point, Lone Wolf announced that Hero Lab support for D&D 5E is DEFINITELY coming, along with the Realm Works campaign management tools. Not only that, but they anticipate that it'll be here pretty soon - they've already done a lot of the work. It'll cost you $20 to add 5E to your existing Hero Lab license. This is all based on the SRD - they are still talking to WotC about upgrading that to an official license; using the OGL and the SRD, they won't be able to use the brand names and other trademarks, so I'm guessing it'll just be called "Hero Lab 5E" or somesuch.

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The image above is from the Pathfinder version, but it should help give you an idea of what Hero Lab looks like if you're not already familiar. It enables you to create characters, and to manage them in-play. I used it for a recent Pathfinder campaign, and it's great to be able to toggle statuses and spells and other things on and off and have everything auto-calculate.

"When will it be available? The SRD has been openly discussed by Wizards of the Coast for over a year, so we’ve already built preliminary Hero Lab data files for D&D 5th Edition. We’re currently poring through the SRD to figure out what we have to omit and what holes we need to fill. We’ll provide a more informed release estimate by the end of the week, but we expect it to be a pretty short wait."

Realm Works is another beat entirely - it's a campaign management suite. It will soon be launching its own Content Market with loads of Pathfinder material. They say "We’ll obviously be making the D&D 5th Edition SRD available as well. Beyond that, the SRD will allow us to work with publishers to offer D&D 5th Edition adventures, settings, and more."

More news as/when I hear it! In the meantime, here's Lone Wolf's website, where you can find out more about both packages.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

Call me skeptical, but if I was designing a program, I would make it very easy to input data so as not to need a whole lot of coding to add a new system or content. It already costs $30 for the program.

Your value judgement may be different, but my time is worth more than the $20 it would cost me to input all the 5E data (assuming you could just buy the empty 5E shell so all the calculations worked once you had input the various races, classes, spells, etc.).

 

[the_redbeard]

Hero Lab will have both an encounter builder and a tactical console for GMs.

AND THERE WAS MUCH REJOICING!

How many customers do you need to justify the monster builder as well?

 

[Tyranthraxus]

Im guessing the coding for this was actually done some time back. Possibly even months.

THe Encounter Generator sounds awesome.

 

[pickin_grinnin]

Hero Lab's Pathfinder stuff was worth purchasing back when I was playing Pathfinder. It's clunky and poorly designed, but it saved me enough work to make it worth it.

D&D 5 is a much less complicated system, though, so I'll just stick to doing it the old-fashioned way.

 

[RealAlHazred]

Count me as another Hero Lab customer who is eagerly awaiting 5E material, and the encounter builder and tactical console! I already use it for Pathfinder and Shadowrun 5E.


And Fate 3.0, which seems like overkill for such a simple system, but it's nice to use the tactical display in-game...

 

[Nikosandros]

That's one thing that makes Hero Lab unique compared to many character creation apps out there. A key part of Hero Lab is its extensibility and customizability, and that will be critical to many D&D players. What does that mean? There's an editor where members of the community can readily go beyond the limits of the SRD. If you aren't familiar with the Hero Lab community, just know that it won't take long before many of those holes are filled.

Yes, people in the community will fill-in the missing material, but how will they distribute it to others? Wouldn't it be a copyright violation to, say, share it on a forum?

 

[LWDLiz]

AND THERE WAS MUCH REJOICING!

How many customers do you need to justify the monster builder as well?

Keep an eye out for our announcement tomorrow (I'll post a link here).

Yes, people in the community will fill-in the missing material, but how will they distribute it to others? Wouldn't it be a copyright violation to, say, share it on a forum?

In the past, users have shared community-created content in many ways. Some put files on dropbox, others put it on their own server. For example, here's a page specifically devoted to Pathfinder community content: http://www.d20pfsrd.com/extras/community-creations/hero-lab. Much (if not all) of these files are hosted by one community member. That same community member has already offered to host 5.0 files.

 

[darjr]

anyway if it's only rules, it's probably ok, maybe.

 

[smiteworks]

Your value judgement may be different, but my time is worth more than the $20 it would cost me to input all the 5E data (assuming you could just buy the empty 5E shell so all the calculations worked once you had input the various races, classes, spells, etc.).

I think it took us roughly 15 hours to get the SRD content into Fantasy Grounds, test it and proof-read it. We were also able to short-cut a lot of it because we already had templates and tools built for when we did this for the PHB, MM and DMG modules. Starting from scratch would have taken us much longer. I don't see any issue with charging a fair price for this work.

I will be buying a copy of it for my Hero Lab copy that I run.

 

[LWDLiz]

The latest update, including release date: http://www.wolflair.com/blog/2016/01/15/dd-5th-edition-srd-hero-lab/