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.

 

[Henry]

So they write them themselves. The character creation and advancement rules weren't in the d20 SRD either, but Paizo still managed to put character creation rules in Pathfinder. Just means there's no text they can copy; they have to write their own. Which, with software, isn't that much text anyway. It's all code.

Actually, there's already D&D character creation rules published as open content:

http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/gettingStarted.html

These are 90% the same as what is needed for 5E (Determine Ability Scores, Pick Your Race, Pick Your Class, Pick Skills and Select Feats, Buy Equipment, and Finishing Details), just reference these in your OGL, tweak them, and you're done - so if Wizards were to challenge this piece of open content, they'd have to challenge a piece of content that's been in their own license, of the number two most popular role playing game, for the past six years.

One thing I don't see enough of in the OGL content is cross-pollination - mixing good game mechanics across different rules systems. It's been done, but my perception is that's it's been very seldom.