Hero Lab With DnD 5th Edition SRD Review

When WOTC announced they were bringing the SRD/OGL to 5E. That opened up the flood gates for everyone to include anything that was in the SRD into there products.

One of the people that jumped on this and added support was Hero Lab.

At it’s core Hero lab allows you to create characters for your game. But it goes much further than that.

I can’t say it much better than Lone Wolf Development does on it’s on page

At its core, Hero Lab provides flexible character creation that readily accommodates house rules. The rules are all flagged, plus you have the freedom to adjust them – or simply ignore them. However, Hero Lab is vastly more than just character creation, as it includes multiple DM tools that are all woven together. Create custom monsters, build some NPCs, blend them into an encounter, and manage the combat – all in one convenient place. There’s no need to bounce between disparate apps that can’t share data.

A key aspect of Hero Lab is its extensibility, which allows both the user community and publishers to add custom material – much like mods to computer games. The SRD and DM’s Guild make extensibility a cornerstone of D&D, and we have long-standing relationships with the big third party publishers that have already begun offering a host of D&D 5th Edition material, such as Kobold Press (Tyranny of Dragons, Tome of Beasts), Green Ronin Publishing (Out of the Abyss), Frog God Games, and many more. Look for announcements about third party D&D products in Hero Lab in the near future.

 

The 5th Edition SRD Will be coming to Hero Lab Friday January 29th (Tomorrow). But I had a chance to sit down with the software and test it out.

 

I have to say this is one of the best “software” creation tools I have used. It’s very streamlined and easy to use. You have tabs for everything you want to do.

 

 

As you can see from my screenshot you can choose to start out at any level. Another nice touch I really enjoyed was The journal part, it lets you track your XP and coins  but it also has cool little tidbits of information like “You started the game at this level, since then you’ve amassed this much XP, and this much coin”. If you love to micromanage you character then here you go!

 

The system is streamlined so it makes creation easy as filling in the choices that you want, and behinds the scenes it will check to make sure the choices you are making are legal and valid.

 

Once you have tweaked your character the way you want, you then are presented with a few choices on what to do with your new hero

 

I was impressed with the “look” of the character sheet, it was easy to read and laid out well. I’ve see other creators where the character sheet was pretty much useless.

I can’t stress this part enough, I really appriacte how the charterer sheet look printed out, it’s touches like this that set Hero Lab apart from the others.

 

 

Hero Lab is not just for Dungeons And Dragons

 

Hero Labs support for D&D 5th Edition SRD will be available on Windows, Mac, and iPad. Current Hero Lab users will be able to add it to their license for $20, and new Hero Lab users will be able to select it as their initial purchase for only $29.99.

This price includes all the DM tools and access to community-created content.

I will be checking out the iPad version as well soon, so I’ll be posting my thoughts on that as well.

My Final Thoughts:

There are plenty of other “Free” character creation software out there, but for all the features (And I”ll be the first to admit that I did even cover EVERYTHING this can do) I would say that Hero Lab is well worth the money you will invest. It saves so much time and makes creation fast (unless you want to really dig into your character) and fun.

Easy to use, but yet complex as you would like it to be. Hero Labs does 5E Character Generating right!

I think the cost is well worth it, as I can see this being a god send for the DM as well with the robust DM Tools, that I did not even touch in this review! I’ll have to do a review of just those. So with all that I would recommend this product, if you looking for a great tool to help you mange and create characters.

 

You could buy Hero Lab at the official website here.

Pricing

Hero Lab is $29.99,  This allows you to use Hero Lab on two separate computers (your purchase includes one free secondary license, and additional secondary licenses can be purchased later).

You can then add on the different game systems *Note these are an EXTRA cost ON TOP of your purchase of the core program*

• Pathfinder Roleplaying Game – $20.00
• Pathfinder Beginner Box – free!
• Shadowrun 4th Edition – $20.00
• Shadowrun 5th Edition – $20.00
• Spirit of the Century – free!
• Fate Core – free!

 

We are setting up an interview with the folks behind Hero Lab, so look for that coming soon.

A very special thanks to Lone Wolf Development for the early review copy!