Forcing choice of Weapon Focus?

[TCArknight]

One of the choices for a Bonus Feat of the Soulknife class is Weapon Focus (Mind Blade). I'm running into a possible issue for getting this to work correctly.

I have three weapons (Mind Blade (Light), Mind Blade (One Handed) and Mind Blade Two Handed) each of which is tagged with a IsWeapon.wPfMindBld tag.

At the moment, I have a custom feat applying the Broadcast.WepFocus tag to all the 3 Mind Blade weapons.

I would like to be able to use the existing Weapon Focus feat and somehow force the choice in the Chooser to be "Mind Blade" and not worry about specifying the Light, One Handed or Two Handed.

(I also would like to hide the Mind Blade weapons from the Weapon Selector (but not the Magic Weapon creation screens since Magic Weapon abilities can be applied to these weapons at higher levels) but that can wait a bit until I get the rest working. :) )

I don't want to have to create a new Greater Weapon Focus feat ( and all those related feats) just for Mind Blade.

Is this possible to do?

Thanks!
TC

[ShadowChemosh]

I would like to be able to use the existing Weapon Focus feat and somehow force the choice in the Chooser to be "Mind Blade" and not worry about specifying the Light, One Handed or Two Handed.
Not sure this will all work the way you want but can help with this part at least. To get the weapon focus feat to auto-select/choose add the Tag Target.? to the Feat where you bootstrap it. Replace ? with the weapon ID that you wish to use.

For an example of this take a look at the Wolf, Dire under the races tab.

[Mathias]

Another way that will work is to copy the "Weapon Focus (Sawtooth Sabre)" class special of the Red Mantis Assassin - that assigns the appropriate tags directly to the weapon, without adding anything to the feats table.

[TCArknight]

Thanks to both of you! :) I'll try these when I get home this evening.

I was thinking that I could create a dummy 'Mind Blade' weapon that bootstraps the others. That one would be visible to the chooser, but if I added 'Helper.hidden' (I think that's it, but I could be wrong) it wouldn't show in the character's weapon list, right?

How does Weapon Focus (unarmed) give its bonus to something like a Monk's Flurry of Blows?

[TCArknight]

Ok, I created a 'Mind Blade' weapon and changed the other weapons to Helpers and Don't display for selection. That seems to work ok.

Now though, I'm trying to keep from having two Weapon Focus (Mind Blade) feats showing. If I add the "Helper.Helper" tag to the feat, I can't choose it in my Bonus Feat selection. Without the tag, since I'm bootstrapping the normal Weapon Focus feat, I get two entries:

Weapon Focus (Mind Blade)
Weapon Focus (Mind Blade) (Weapon Focus (Mind Blade))

Here's the Feat:
<thing id="fWepFocMB" name="Weapon Focus (Mind Blade)" description="{b}Prerequisites{/b}: Proficiency with selected weapon, base attack bonus +1.\n\n{b}Benefit{/b}: You gain a +1 bonus on all attack rolls you make using the selected weapon.\n\n{b}Special{/b}: You can gain this feat multiple times. Its effects do not stack. Each time you take the feat, it applies to a new type of weapon." compset="Feat" summary="You gain a +1 bonus on all attack rolls you make using the selected weapon.">
<usesource source="pPUClass"/>
<tag group="fCategory" tag="Combat" name="Combat" abbrev="Combat"/>
<tag group="HasFeat" tag="fWepFoc"/>
<bootstrap thing="fWepFoc">
<autotag group="Target" tag="wMindBlade"/>
</bootstrap>
<eval phase="PostAttr" priority="1000" index="2"><![CDATA[ ~ If we're disabled, do nothing
doneif (tagis[Helper.FtDisable] <> 0)

~If we've already been taken, hide us
perform assignstr["Helper.Helper"]]]></eval>
</thing>

Thoughts?

[Mathias]

Helper.Helper prevents the user from selecting a thing - it's used on those things that will only be added by bootstrapping them from something else.

Helper.FtHide will keep a feat that's on the character from being shown anywhere once it's on the character.

If you know exactly what tag you're adding, assign[] is much prefereable to assignstr[] - much less processor time required. (No quotes if you're using assign[]).

[TCArknight]

That was the tag I was looking for, thanks! :)

Any suggestions on the Weapon Focus: Mind Blade (Weapon Focus (Mind Blade)) thing? I tried assigning just "Weapon Focus: Mind Blade" to shortname field on the bootstrap, but then it gave me "Weapon Focus: Mind Blade": Mind Blade (Weapon Focus (Mind Blade))
<thing id="fWepFocMB" name="Weapon Focus (Mind Blade)" description="{b}Benefit{/b}: You gain a +1 bonus on all attack rolls you make using the Mind Blade." compset="Feat" summary="You gain a +1 bonus on all attack rolls you make using the Mind Blade.">
<usesource source="pPUClass"/>
<tag group="fCategory" tag="Combat" name="Combat" abbrev="Combat"/>
<tag group="HasFeat" tag="fWepFoc"/>
<bootstrap thing="fWepFoc">
<autotag group="Target" tag="wMindBlade"/>
<assignval field="shortname" value="&quot;Focus: Mind Blade&quot;"/>
<assignval field="livename" value="&quot;Weapon Focus: Mind Blade:&quot;"/>
</bootstrap>
<eval phase="PostAttr" priority="1000" index="2"><![CDATA[~ If we're disabled, do nothing
doneif (tagis[Helper.FtDisable] <> 0)

~If we've already been taken, hide us
perform assign[Helper.FtHide]

hero.child[fWepFoc].field[actName].text = "Weapon Focus: MindBlade"]]></eval>
</thing>

Just a wierdness going on. :)

[blzbob]

I'm not very good at the coding thing. I was wondering if the double close brackets at the end are a problem.

You have:
hero.child[fWepFoc].field[actName].text = "Weapon Focus: MindBlade"]]></eval>
</thing>

What would happen if you dropped the last "]" after MindBlade?

[Mathias]

Without two close brackets to match the two open brackets that told HL to look for some code:


<![CDATA[

(See how that has two open brackets?)

Without that, HL won't recognize what comes in-between them as code.

This is why the editor exists - so that you don't have to worry about understanding XML in order to add something to HL.

[blzbob]

I was looking for, but didn't see that first open bracket. Oh well. I was trying to be useful. Off to do something other than code...:D