From the how-did-I-not-know-about-this-before dep’t:
Hero Lab for the Pathfinder Beginner’s Box (AKA Hero Lab Starter Edition) is exactly what it says on the tin: a fully functional and complete version of Hero Lab designed just for the Pathfinder Beginner’s Box. Unlike the regular Hero Lab Demo you can save characters, print ’em out and save them as pdfs.
The rules set contains everything that’s in the Beginner’s Box meaning you can generate a Human, Elf or Dwarven Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, Wizard or Barbarian and advance them all the way from 1st to 5th level. That’s 22,999 worth of XP, folks (1 less than 6th) including all of the equipment and magical items from the Boxed set. That’s a lot of gaming use, and all for free.
That’s not all. This copy of Hero Lab also contains the GM side of things including all (as far as I can tell, they’re all there) of the monsters from the Boxed set so you can set up and manage your combat encounters through the Tactical Console and add class levels to critters to make custom NPCs.
All for 100% entirely unrestricted free.
There’s a catch, right? A small amount of advertising when you open and close the app to entice you to buy the full Hero Lab system (short review: expensive, but worth it) and it only contains the subset of the Pathfinder rules from the Beginners Box itself meaning fewer Feats and no multi-classing, but that’s a part of the charm of the Beginners box itself. It’s D&D 3.75, simplified.
Whether you own the Beginners Box (or Pathfinder itself, but you want to learn the rules) or not this is an essential download. Can’t recommend it enough.
Would be wonderful if they had a macintosh OSX version. You know.