HEROLAB'S 5E Update Is Here!

D&D 5th Edition has changed overnight into a game that has a wide range of electronic support. I've mentioned Fantasy Grounds, Roll20, and a range of 5E mobile apps, all of which now support 5E. Lone Wolf Development told us a couple of weeks ago that 5E was coming to Hero Lab and Realmworks - and now it's here! Probably the most popular character creation software around, you can now build 5E characters in Hero Lab.

The 5E update costs $20 for existing users, or $29.99 for new Hero Lab customers. You can get Hero Lab for PC, Mac, or iPad here. I've used it extensively on an iPad at the game table for Pathfinder and found it quickly became indispensable for managing a character, and toggling effects, conditions, abilities, and so on.

Here's what Lone Wolf says about it:

"The D&D 5th Edition SRD game system in Hero Lab includes everything in the official SRD, such as races and their traits, character classes and class features, spells, equipment, magic items, and other character creation necessities. It will also include all of the monsters and DM mechanics outlined in the SRD later this month.

For those of you not familiar with the SRD, it differs from the rules presented in the Player’s Handbook, Dungeon’s Master’s Guide, and Monster Manual. Specifically, the SRD omits certain options that appear in the full rulebooks (e.g. certain spells, feats, etc.), so those options aren’t included in Hero Lab. Fortunately, Hero Lab’s extensibility allows users to fill in the holes and readily go beyond the limits of the SRD.

As a commercial product, we take pride in everything we deliver to our users. We’ll be rolling out support for D&D 5th Edition SRD in stages, and we’ve spent the past few weeks ensuring that everything works as intended. This initial release features character creation support for the D&D 5th Edition SRD, and DM-specific tools will be incorporated throughout the month of February."

 

[Jester David]

The price is a little steep as a player, especially for what you get. But, really, making a character isn't so hard in 5e that I need some help with the math and picking through options.
But I think the benefit of the program is really to DMs. There are a lot of monsters in the SRD to manage and making balanced encounters can be a bit finicky. They just need to get those tools working.

While a full licence would be better, I expect that to be significantly more expensive. Fantasy Ground's pricing is likely set by WotC, so I'd expect $50 per book as well.

 

[Agamon]

I'm not really trying to convince anyone to spend their money if they don't think it's worth it to them. I saw you had mentioned a example of not being able to do the Mountain Dwarf and I did it in 10 minutes. Coding it once I knew what I was doing was like 2 minutes. I really do get it but my gaming buddies are cheap ass gaming bastards, I buy what I think is fair for me.

Yeah, there's a bit of a learning curve to the coding, but it's not tough to figure out, and once you do, it's pretty easy. But I get not wanting to have to do that. I personally hate making maps for games, but some people like doing that. Different strokes, and all.

 

[BrockBallingdark]

The price is a little steep as a player, especially for what you get. But, really, making a character isn't so hard in 5e that I need some help with the math and picking through options.
But I think the benefit of the program is really to DMs. There are a lot of monsters in the SRD to manage and making balanced encounters can be a bit finicky. They just need to get those tools working.

While a full licence would be better, I expect that to be significantly more expensive. Fantasy Ground's pricing is likely set by WotC, so I'd expect $50 per book as well.

The beauty of 5e is that you don't need a program to do the math like Pathfinder requires. That is the only reason my table bought HL back in the day, Pathfinder was insane as we went up levels.

Since I'm not playing Pathfinder any more but own HL, buying the $20 5e SRD lets me still use HL and store the players characters and so on. Right now it's the best tool for DM's, adding monsters will be most of my time spent.

 

[JohnnyZemo]

I'm okay with the price; I'd be happy to pay the price if it included all the options from the PHB. Only having the SRD content is a deal-breaker for me.

I've been creating 5E characters using editable PDFs, and it is sooooo easy. I'm going to stick with that method for now.

 

[LWDLiz]

The rest of the PHB backgrounds, class options, feats, and more are available for FREE in the D&D 5e Community "Packs"! These packages were created by volunteer members of the Hero Lab community and are available to anyone with the D&D 5th Edition SRD game system for Hero Lab. There's more information on the Lone Wolf forums.

 

[pickin_grinnin]

The GUI is so unnecessarily ugly and unintuitive. Maybe not enough people have complained and they are satisfied. Maybe I'm a design snob who embraces the last few decades of interface design and expects excellence, especially for $30. How in this day and age is this level of design acceptable? I'm not being snarky... I really am startled. My initial gut reaction was surprise and laughter. Maybe the important parts, the actual guts of the system are excellent. Function over form? I honestly couldn't get past the first few screens. That's never happened to me before. Other than that, steep learning curve for newbies. I'll try to play with it a bit more but I honestly can't see myself wasting time on this. I think your point about the simplicity of 5E is very apt here. This level of software complexity is overkill. Look at Pathguy's character creation site. It's clunky but workable. It makes sense and is still usable, even if simple and stark (and perhaps ugly).

I haven't found Hero Lab to be very useful since I stopped playing Pathfinder, to be honest.

It looks like something that was designed in the late 80s or early 90s, for sure. It's really not that well done in terms of function, either. The only reason I own it is that it saved a lot of time creating Pathfinder characters, and was the most functional of the very limited software options at the time.

Being the best product out of a tiny handful doesn't mean it's a very good one, though. It looks and acts like something written by a person or group with no real professional experience. The whole customization option is a joke. You shouldn't have to be editing files to create your own stuff - that should be purely menu driven.

You see the same types of problems in many other small industries. You would be amazed at the really bad state of support software for public libraries, for example.

 

[pickin_grinnin]

It's a challenging piece of software to write so i think there is truth behind the function over form statement. I'm playing in the editor having a look through the significant amount of content that's available for 4e and the cogs in my head as struggling to comprehend the layers of complexity required to ensure everything works and that if a new feat is released... that can work to.

It shouldn't be a challenging piece of software to write, and shouldn't be that complex to add new stuff to it. It's only challenging because it hasn't been designed in a professional way. It's like somebody's home coding project that got beefed up a bit and then put out for sale.

Back when I was doing professional coding full-time, I would have been in a lot of trouble if I had turned something like that in to a client.

 

[BrockBallingdark]

The rest of the PHB backgrounds, class options, feats, and more are available for FREE in the D&D 5e Community "Packs"! These packages were created by volunteer members of the Hero Lab community and are available to anyone with the D&D 5th Edition SRD game system for Hero Lab. There's more information on the Lone Wolf forums.

Just downloaded it Liz.. PERFECT! Love the HL Community! Easy as pie to add on. Even less data for me to input for my stuff. You guys are awesome!