Context :

Aims : We intend to present complete spectroscopic analysis of 455 stars observed within the Penn State - Toruń Centre for Astronomy Planet Search ( PTPS ) with the High Resolution Spectrograph of the 9.2 m Hobby-Eberly Telescope .
We will also present the total sample of 744 evolved stars of PTPS and discuss masses of stellar hosts in our and other surveys devoted to evolved planetary systems .

Methods : Stellar atmospheric parameters were determined through a strictly spectroscopic LTE analysis of equivalent widths of Fe I and Fe II lines .
Rotational velocities were obtained from synthetic spectra fitting .
Radial velocities were obtained from Gaussian function fitting to the cross-correlation function .
We determined stellar masses , ages and luminosities via Bayesian analysis of theoretical isochrones .
The radii were calculated either from derived masses and \log g or from \thinspace T _ { \mathrm { eff } } and luminosities .

Results : We present basic atmospheric parameters ( \thinspace T _ { \mathrm { eff } } , \log g , \thinspace v _ { \mathrm { t } } and [ Fe/H ] ) , rotation velocities and absolute radial velocities as well as luminosities , masses , ages and radii for 402 stars ( including 11 single-lined spectroscopic binaries ) , mostly subgiants and giants .
For 272 of them we present parameters for the first time .
For another 53 stars we present estimates of \thinspace T _ { \mathrm { eff } } and \log g based on photometric calibrations .
More than half objects were found to be subgiants , there is also a large group of giants and a few stars appeard to be dwarfs .
The results show that the presented sample is composed of stars with masses ranging from 0.52 to 3.21 \hbox { $ \thinspace M _ { \odot } $ } of which 17 have masses \geq 2.0 \hbox { $ \thinspace M _ { \odot } $ } .
The radii of stars studied in this paper range from 0.66 to 36.04 \hbox { $ \thinspace R _ { \odot } $ } with vast majority having radii between 2.0 and 4.0 \hbox { $ \thinspace R _ { \odot } $ } .
They are generally less metal abundant than the Sun with median [ Fe/H ] = -0.07 .
For 62 stars in common with other planet searches we found a very good agreement in obtained stellar atmospheric parameters .
We also present basic properties of the complete list of 744 stars that form the PTPS evolved stars sample .
We examined stellar masses for 1255 stars in five other planet searches and found some of them likely to be significantly overestimated .
Applying our uniformly determined stellar masses we confirm the apparent increase of companions masses for evolved stars , and we explain it , as well as lack of close-in planets with limited effective radial velocity precision for those stars due to activity .

Conclusions :