Trying to merge parts of 3e and 4e and pathfinder

[VampireYuriGirl]

I am new here. I'm a disabled housewife that runs a lot of homebrew games in my spare time. I found this program and am trying to use it so I can expand my player base by consolidating my house rules and stuff I allow into one character editor for ease of access and sharing.

So I'm trying to homebrew my own system based on 4e and pathfinder/3e unearthed arcana. Its a system I use for all the games I run IRL. Right now I'm having three big issues.

1) Trying to figure out how to make skills with check boxes and a flat value the way 4e does it.

2) I also use an array system for stats and I have no clue how to set that up either. Players get a random array to work with out of a balanced set I came up with over the years. Though I sometimes let them pick.

3) I need to create a casting system similar to 3e's sorcerers.

Any tips for any of those would be helpful. I'm going back to futzing with it myself until then.

[RavenX]

Well I'm not sure how much experience you have in xml, I'm still learning as I go, but you may want to look through the 4e skeletal data within hero lab's skill set to see how it works for doing what you are suggesting with the skills.

I'm not sure but I think there is a way to put an array in for character creation purposes in the editor. Tools Menu >> Launch Editor create a new datafile and see what you can do with it. As for the casting system I don't know what you are referring to specifically, as I did not think there was much of a difference between 3.0 Sorcerers and 3.5 aside from tweaks and name changes made to spells. If its a spells / day deal, you might be able to fix that by going into the editor and making a copy of the existing sorcerer and just changing how many spells per day the sorcerer gets, or removing class features you don't want. You can then use the preclude tab to hide the actual pathfinder sorcerer class and just have your custom copy show up.

[Kevlyn]

I will definitely preface this by saying I am still learning as I go, and my advice here is just that, advice. :) With that being said.

1) Trying to figure out how to make skills with check boxes and a flat value the way 4e does it.

You don't need to have check boxes during the creation portion, this is a big thing I had to struggle with as I started out. Don't think of the HeroLab program as a character sheet, it's just a means to collect and process the data. What you want to look at is using the ability system from the skeleton files, that will let you list skills and you can add them to the player. Later, during printout you can have a unchecked box and checked box graphic that gets displayed based on whether or not the skill is attached to the hero.

2) I also use an array system for stats and I have no clue how to set that up either. Players get a random array to work with out of a balanced set I came up with over the years. Though I sometimes let them pick.

Where stats are concerned, you can drive yourself crazy trying to focus on something that might be easier to handle by DM verification. I'd recommend getting familiar with the data files and modifying the more important parts, and looking over the final sheet to verify it's done properly. Later, after you're more familiar, you can start considering how you want to handle this. I decided that with my system I'd just track the points needed if the player buys the stats. Then I can validate that at least they bought the right amount of stats.

3) I need to create a casting system similar to 3e's sorcerers.

You can do this, since how many spells the user can cast per day is tied to their level. As far as the number of spells go, that's a fixed number too. What I'd do, and I'm not sure if this is the best approach, is to add a new component (traits.str) and call it something like Spell, then add fields to that like LevelOne, LevelTwo, etc where you can store how many spells per level the user can pick from. (Check out thing_abilities and tab_abilities for ideas on how to pick spells)

You can also check out the RuneQuest thread, because my problem with Cultures may be similar to spell levels for filtering out spell choices.

Hope that helps,
Kev