There's an apparent paradox in character creation for an unfamiliar game: to effectively and confidently make a character requires knowing the game, but to know the game you have to already have made and played a character. It's not really a paradox, but it can feel like it when you have limited time to play and want to get started as soon as possible in order to get right into the fun of an ongoing campaign.
There's a simple solution that has worked well and consistently for me, but which requires trusting that patience pays off.
Play a demo session first
What has been successful for me across RPGs is to run a one-shot demo session using the new game before we make our real characters in our real campaign. This introduces the players to the moving parts of a character through hands-on playing experience, which gives them a basic understanding of what's important when making characters. This can also effectively introduce the players to the setting and playstyle that they will be making characters for later.
Whether the demo characters are pre-made or made by the players doesn't seem to matter. (If they know these are throw-away characters, they don't suffer nearly as much analysis paralysis in making their own.) What matters most is that the demo session gives them an experience that reflects the realities of play that should be informing their character creation choices.
For example, in a game where understanding the skill system is critical for character creation and evaluating character effectiveness (RuneQuest 6), I have run an "obstacle course" session where they made characters and then played through an in-setting coming-of-age trial that involved a lot of skill use (but no combat or risk of death). By the end, players had a visceral understanding of what was and wasn't a good skill rating — one player initially thought that 35% was a good skill and spread their points around to hit that number in as many skills as possible, and came out of the demo realising that she'd underestimated that by half and that choosing a few core skills to maximise first, before spreading the other points around, was key. They all also profited from the crash course in the cultural context they'd later be playing in.
In another game where the interplay of character creation choices and combat is a big deal (Savage Worlds), I had them make one-off characters and then threw them into a dungeon that I knew well enough to run on-the-fly. They had the freedom to go where they wished and test their characters in a variety of non-combat and combat situations. As a result, they got a good sense of how the game functions overall and in its combat, magic, opposed skill, and healing subsystems in a very short time, and were confident making characters for the longer-scale fantasy campaign we later kicked off. Notably, when we started that campaign we had a new player, who had a much harder time creating her character than the ones who had the demo session initiation.
In both these examples, taking the time to give the group early hands-on experience with characters and the system meant that the players were confident and quick in future character creation for the real game. The difference was like night and day: where before they were lost and stumbling through the options, afterwards they were focused and dove into the chargen process with clear goals in mind.
The Hero Lab material is based on the 5e SRD. That's not the full corpus of PHB/DMG/MM, it's just the 400-pages or so that they have "open-sourced". If you look at sites like 5esrd.com, which are based on the SRD, you will notice that they have limited class information. In particular, the Beastmaster Archetype is not part of the SRD, so the core product can't support it.
To side-step the limitation, Hero Lab has a Community Pack for 5e. This means that everything outside of the SRD is supported by Community developers. If you don't yet have the Community Pack installed, please start there.
As of right now, the only officially licensed full character generator for 5E is Fantasy Grounds. I know that Hero Lab is "working on it", but it's not yet a reality.
UPDATE 2018:
- D&D Beyond is currently the gold standard for character generation. You have to pay for the character pieces you need. But they have this nice piece meal system that lets you pay for just the content you want for your character without buying whole books.
- Likewise, the Roll20 team has launched the Charactermancer that lets you build and play characters within their Virtual Table Top. As with D&D Beyond you have to pay for the material you want included in your character sheet. They are still rolling out support for all of the books, but if you're reading this in 2019 I would expect everything to be fully available for purchase.
Best Answer
Proficiency Bonus additions and HD increases
On pages 5 and 6 of the article from UA, you'll find a change in how to apply proficiency bonuses and HD advancement.
Proficiency Bonuses
Once the creature (for example, a wolf) becomes your animal companion its proficiency bonuses are tied to yours. You no longer use the ones on p. 8 of the Monster Manual.
When you are 3rd level, its bonus matches yours at +2.
When you are 5th level, it's proficiency bonus matches yours at +3
Wolf AC 13 (natural armor)
HP 11 (2d8 +2)
Speed 40
STR 12(+1) DEX 15(+2) CON 12 (+1) INT 3(−4) WIS 12 (+1) CHA 6 (−2)
The animal companion's proficiency bonus is applied to (this is sometimes significant):
Armor Class
skills
saving throws
attack bonus
damage rolls
The new damage roll for the wolf's bite is 2d4+2+2 at 3rd level; 2d4+2+3 at 5th level; 2d4+2+4 at 9th level, and so on. While early on that + to damage is nice, having +6 damage at 18th level won't make anyone swoon.
That's a nice feature. Every saving throw the animal companion has to make gets the proficiency bonus (on top of any ability based bonus).
Skills
Your animal companion gains proficiency in two skills of your choice. Whether or not these replace any proficiency or unusual skill from the MM, or adds to them, isn't specified. (These are play test rules, so maybe try it both ways at your table). Pact Tactics and Keen Senses (hearing and smell) would be fine to stay, but that's a DM's call.
If you get to 11th level, you'll have added a hit die at each level 4-11. (11d10+con bonus) Your animal companion will add a die at each level up: the wolf would have 10d8(+con bonus) at that point.
ASI based ability increases
Leveling up the animal companion is tied to your Ranger level. Bumping the Dex to 16 at 4th level will help attack and damage a bit. It's up to you where to put the points.
If you play a straight ranger, you should see ASI increases at 4,8, etc. Do the same for your animal companion. It can't take feats, as you may be able to, but you can boost its stats just as you'd boost your own. If you are multi-classing, you'd see it at Ranger level 4, 8, etc, for the animal companion.