Hero Designer in a Star Hero Campaign?

[Dave Baum]

I'm trying to decide if Hero Designer is worth buying for a Star Hero campaign. I am planning on using the Terran Empire setting, so I'll primarily be using the aliens, equipment, etc from that book. Since this is my first time running a Hero campaign, I really don't know how much item/alien/NPC creation I'll be doing.

 

I can see where Hero Designer would be very helpful for a Champions campaign, but I'm not sure for Star Hero. It seems like most of my generic NPC creation would be starting with one of the alien packages, filling out the characteristics/skills, and adding equipment. For major NPCs, the big work would be the non-rules stuff. In short, I don't see that I'd be creating lots of powers.

 

What has everyone else's experience been? Is a lot of your prep time spent creating characters, equipment, ships, etc? Has Hero Designer been a real time-saver for you (or alternatively has it enabled you to create a richer game)?

 

Has anyone used the character packs (for Star Hero and/or Terran Empire/Spacers Toolkit)? The web site is a bit brief in their description. Do the packs include all of the equipment from the books as prefabs?

 

Thanks,

Dave

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Hero Designer in a Star Hero Campaign?

 

I've toyed with the idea of buying Hero Designer, but I've never given in. The fact that my FLGS doesn't have a copy staring me in the face every time I go in helps with that decision.

 

If you plan on using prepublished stuff almost exclusively, you can probably do without it. I understand that there are add-on packages for HD that makes it supereasy to build a character with prepublished package deals and equipment, but for most purposes it's really not necessary at the heroic level of play.

 

If, on the other hand, you want to work up all sorts of weird psychic powers and high tech gadgets that aren't a standard part of the Terran Empire background, HD may be a good buy. It should cut down on a lot of math, not to mention all the flipping through the book.

[Teflon Billy]

Re: Hero Designer in a Star Hero Campaign?

 

I'm trying to decide if Hero Designer is worth buying for a Star Hero campaign. I am planning on using the Terran Empire setting, so I'll primarily be using the aliens, equipment, etc from that book. Since this is my first time running a Hero campaign, I really don't know how much item/alien/NPC creation I'll be doing.

 

I can see where Hero Designer would be very helpful for a Champions campaign, but I'm not sure for Star Hero. It seems like most of my generic NPC creation would be starting with one of the alien packages, filling out the characteristics/skills, and adding equipment. For major NPCs, the big work would be the non-rules stuff. In short, I don't see that I'd be creating lots of powers.

 

What has everyone else's experience been? Is a lot of your prep time spent creating characters, equipment, ships, etc? Has Hero Designer been a real time-saver for you (or alternatively has it enabled you to create a richer game)?

 

Has anyone used the character packs (for Star Hero and/or Terran Empire/Spacers Toolkit)? The web site is a bit brief in their description. Do the packs include all of the equipment from the books as prefabs?

 

Thanks,

Dave

Character Packs usually contain most of the write ups from the books (equipment, vehicles, NPCs, etc...)

 

It is less useful for Package Deals since Hero Designor doesn't in and of itself support Package Deals as a construct (some of the aspects of a Package Deal can be covered by Custom Templates, for example characteristic adjustments for Racial Package Deals, but not the "pick 5 pts in appropriate KS, PS, etcc" that are common in Package Deals)

 

It all comes down to whether you like having uniform well formatted character sheets for all of your characters and vehicles or need to write up powers and know that you are getting the math right.

 

Otherwise, you'd be better served doing by hand.

 

TB

[Michael Hopcroft]

Re: Hero Designer in a Star Hero Campaign?

 

I am a very happy Hero Designer user. The software is very handy for several reasons that have not been mentioned. It keeps all the character, vehicle, race, etc. stats in one convenient place on your hard drive, which can be wherever on your hard drvie you want it to be. It provides a convenient way for users to share data -- chsaracter files are surprsiingly compact, and you can give them to any other HD user to print and get comments on -- making it useful for collaborative settings. As your PCs and NPCs grow, you can alter their character sheets "on the fly" and print out new ones as needed.

[Dave Baum]

Re: Hero Designer in a Star Hero Campaign?

 

Thanks for the advice. I wound up purchasing Hero Designer. Pen and paper would be fine for the stuff I'm creating so far, but I really like the idea of keeping everything organized on my computer.

 

Dave

[Dust Raven]

Re: Hero Designer in a Star Hero Campaign?

 

Thanks for the advice. I wound up purchasing Hero Designer. Pen and paper would be fine for the stuff I'm creating so far, but I really like the idea of keeping everything organized on my computer.

 

Dave

That's got to be the best feature of any character creation software.

[AlHazred]

Re: Hero Designer in a Star Hero Campaign?

 

One feature you may want to explore is "Prefabs." While they are less useful for Package Deals (since they can't hold Characteristics) they are very useful for things like equipment and such, keeping them in one place and making them easily available for the player.

[GreyGuardian]

Re: Hero Designer in a Star Hero Campaign?

 

One feature you may want to explore is "Prefabs." While they are less useful for Package Deals (since they can't hold Characteristics) they are very useful for things like equipment and such' date=' keeping them in one place and making them easily available for the player.[/quote']

 

[i just re-read my post and it sounds a bit harsh, I don't intend it to be harsh.]

 

I don't understand what you would want the software to do that you can't accomplish in about a minute by starting a character off with the stat changes in a package deal. It also seems that prefabing every package deal is a waste of time unless you are building many characters. Flip through the book find the packages you want .. add the skills and stats and then finish the character if you are a player. Unless the game is very bloody (i.e frequent character deaths) you are done other than spending exp and changing equipment as the game goes on.

 

If you are gm'ing and writing up npc's and minions how much detail do you really need? Some combat info and key skills should be written down. Big villains and their lieutenant types you'll probably flesh out but ideally you can re-use some of those. But how many of those do you need to generate every month? maybe 5? The first time you do a character sheet for a new race just save it after you made the racial modifications then add the profession and other skills etc and save as "char name" or whatever.

 

Prefabing powers, talents, etc. does make sense if you will reuse them a lot - in star hero that would mostly be equipment.

 

I might be missing something, but I don't see how or why you would even want package deals implemented in hero designer.