What to purchase

[Gandalf970]

I noticed there are character packs in the store with the Hero Designer format, what does that mean.  If I buy Hero Designer do I have to buy the Fantasy Hero pack, the Advanced Players pack, bestiary pack etc?  Just wondering before I make the plunge and wondering the expense of it all.

 

Is there an example of what a character sheet looks like from Hero Designer?

[Simon]

Character packs contain the characters/items from the relevant book pre-entered in HD format.  They are not necessary — you can enter everything on your own into HD if you so choose...or only enter those items that you decide you want to copy out of the books, etc.

HD itself will give you everything you need to create characters, items, etc. in accordance with the rules of the system (either 5E or 6E).  It is not a replacement for said rules — you’ll still need to know the system in order to know what HD is doing, how it’s calculating points, etc.

As for examples of the character sheet, HD uses an export format which allows for moderately free customization of the character sheet output. You’ll find a number of examples in the Downloads section of this site.

[Scott Ruggels]

Hero Designer has no set format for character sheets. You pick a template that you like and HD will put it in. Templates are free and there are a lot of them available on this site. There is even a JSON template that one uses to. Load your characters into the Hero TTS mod. 

[Vanguard]

You don't have to buy any of the Packs if you don't want to.

 

While they are immensely helpful in that you'll already have them readily accessible in Hero Designer format and can easily load and modify them,  you can also forego that convience and just as easily enter what you need when you need it.  But that is a bit time consuming.

 

If you DO decide to purchase the Packs. I'd recommend purchasing what you need as you need them.  Same monetary expenditure in the long run but less of an upfront ouchie.

 

The printed output of Hero Designer is a bit complicated as HD doesn't have its own native print feature.  It relies on various export templates for page layout/setup and then prints from there.  The good thing about that is, I believe, those export formats are created in XML so you can, pretty much, get any output format you want.   There's tons of export formats in the Download section and if none of those strike your fancy, there's a several people on the forums that might be willing to whip something up for you.

 

All in all, Hero Designer itself is definitely worth the money.