Custom Psionics Help

I am still relatively inexperienced with HeroLab, but I have managed to create archetypes, races, templates, properties and some less sophisticated elements for core Pathfinder. Now I am looking to recreate a PrC for my wife for a psionic character.

This presents me with two problems.
First, what is the best way to create a customization leveraging the Psionics Unleashed data set? Can I create additional user files that link to the Psionics Unleased files? My first attempt didn't seem to pull in the psionics powers tabs. I tested creating a new class in the Psionics Unleashed data set and that looks better. But I would prefer not to do that since any updates to the dataset will overwrite my cusomizations.

The second issue is the PrC for my wife.
She wants a Ghostbreaker PrC from Malhavoc's Mindscapes. How would I create a PrC for a psionic class that would have channel energy based on manifester level?

I think I need to create a new class ability and structure the scripts similar to other classes channel energy abilities. But it looks like more complexity than I have worked with so far.

Any guidance would be really appreciated.

davidmoore said:

This presents me with two problems.
First, what is the best way to create a customization leveraging the Psionics Unleashed data set? Can I create additional user files that link to the Psionics Unleased files? My first attempt didn't seem to pull in the psionics powers tabs. I tested creating a new class in the Psionics Unleashed data set and that looks better. But I would prefer not to do that since any updates to the dataset will overwrite my cusomizations.

Click to expand...

You totally can make new .user files that access the UP data. We built with this in mind to happen actually. If you change the .user files we provide directly then your data will be overwritten when you upgrade to a new version.

For a new class make sure you did a "reload" (CTRL-R) to have it load correctly. But nothing stops anyone from building on to the UP data set.

davidmoore said:

The second issue is the PrC for my wife.
She wants a Ghostbreaker PrC from Malhavoc's Mindscapes. How would I create a PrC for a psionic class that would have channel energy based on manifester level?

Click to expand...

You would need to bootstrap the xChannel helper ability. And then manually override/change its abValue fields to match your classes ML instead of filling it with class level.

OK, I have the class properly created in a custom file. The part that was tripping me up was having a blank character and then hero lab automatically adding a level of the PrC to the character. Then I would delete the class level, add psion levels, and then try to add the PrC and it would be broken.

Reloading in between the process helped!

I will be looking at the bootstrap for the xChannel, but with travel for Thanksgiving, it might be a couple of days before I have a chance to really work on it.

Additional query: For grins I was making a copy of the Psion class in my custom files, just so I can understand it better. I can almost completely make that work with a new name, but I can't choose a discipline.

The custom ability is defined, but in a character screen, if I try to select a discipline, I receive a "Nothing to choose from" message.

How is the selection for discipline defined? Would I need to copy/create that selection in to my custom file for it to work?

I feel like I am missing something that will seem obvious in retrospect.

Thanks!

davidmoore said:

Additional query: For grins I was making a copy of the Psion class in my custom files, just so I can understand it better. I can almost completely make that work with a new name, but I can't choose a discipline.

The custom ability is defined, but in a character screen, if I try to select a discipline, I receive a "Nothing to choose from" message.

How is the selection for discipline defined? Would I need to copy/create that selection in to my custom file for it to work?

Click to expand...

Custom Abilities are linked to a specific class by the "Unique ID". Sense you made a "Copy" you don't have the same Unique ID as the base class Psion. So HL does not know they are the same class.

To fix this you need to look under the "Custom Abilities" section in the "Class" tab and look for the blue button for "Allow Custom Abilities....". This allows you to select the base Psion so that HL knows that it should be allow Custom abilities from another class.