Class variant/ Prestige Class
 

I'm trying to make a class variant or prestige class for the campaign that i'm playing in. We play in Iron Kingdoms, and the goal is to make a rogue variant who is dedicated to one of the gods of the realm.
Basically the class is an appropriator of goods for the temple, using his rogue abilities to acquire items at all cost.

It's basically just a rogue class with one special ability added to a normal rogue class. The class is supposed to be an over lay, so that the class counts as normal rogue levels. At the first level it allows the user to build a focus device which is basically a magic item. Then once a day per two levels, the character can use the ability of the magic item.

My problem is, I can't figure out how to make this happen. I can copy and make a variant class, but I'm not so sure how to make the special ability work. It's also treating the variant class like its not a rogue class, which it should be. This is causing issues with the level related class abilities for the rogue class.
Any help with this would be awesome. Thanks in advance.

I'd have to see it, but make sure your class variant is for Rogues first. It should count as a Rogue. Also, make sure it is not removing any class features.

As for the special ability, it depends on what the magic item does. If you don't need a script for the magic item, then you can create a special that you bootstrap to the class variant. Have this special show in charges and use a script to determine how may charges. Something like:

It will need to run post-levels.

If you need a script for the magic item itself you'll have to say what it does.

Well, I kind of got the special power to work. The math is off though because its using Rogue.
It should start with 1 use at first level, and then get an additional use at 3rd level, and so on.

Also, the variant class wants me to either replace an individual level with this class, or replace all levels. Is there a way to just replace certain levels with it?

I thought that a variant class would allow for special ability progression to flow the way I am trying to make it, but its not working out very well.
It's supposed to be a prestige class for a rogue, but the levels in it are supposed to keep adding to the normal rogue levels for purposes of gaining special abilities at various levels, so that Sneak Attack keeps going up, along with Trap Sense and what not.
I've tried making a Prestige Class, but it doesn't count for the levels of those special abilities. I've gotten some of the special abilities to track correctly, by changing when I gain them in the Prestige class. I would have to figure out how to change when I get the bumps in rogue abilities like Sneak Attack, Trap Sense and the like.

Ok, well, I would need to know more about it. A Class Variant and a Prestige Class are two very different things. The script above is for using a Class Variant. If you want to use a prestige class, that would require a different script. One thing you could look at it is the Assassin's Sneak Attack ability, which stacks with the Rogue's. You can use new(Copy) to see it. Or, if you have the community set, I'm sure there are other examples you could look at.

I'm not in front of HL today, but if you are still having trouble by tomorrow, let me know more about the prestige class you are adding and I can help you out.

As for using Class Variants, if you are trying to change more than one level, but not all of them, you need to do multiple class variant levels.

Thanks. I didn't realize that I would have to make each level for a class variant. That's not gonna work so well.

The original idea is supposed to be a prestige class. The class is a rogue, with a couple of custom special abilities. The idea is that one reaches a certain level of rogue and is "chosen" by a goddess to do her bidding. Her bidding them becomes the reason that the rogue uses their skills, to acquire rare items, schematics, lost lore, etc for the church of the goddess. The goal was that one would be able to progress from a rogue to the prestige class, while still advancing the special abilities of a rogue as if the character was just a plain rogue the whole time. So things like Sneak Attack would continue to advance and the like.

I've started trying to make the Prestige class, and feel like I'm making some progress. I'm not seeing some things though, like how to put in pre-requisite limits for things like skills (must have 5 levels of Open Lock, for example) or level limits (the class isn't available until one has 10 level in rogue). I have managed to get some of the special abilities for the rogue class straightened out so that the progress continues from 10th level rogue into the beginning levels of this prestige class.

I know there are some other threads about creating prestige classes, I'm gonna do some digging and see if I can find some answers in some of them. I'll post again to here and let you know.

Thanks a ton for your help.

Whew. It's taken a lot of work, but it appears that I made it work.
With some research in the forums I was able to find hot to set up the pre-requisites that I wanted. I have almost the whole prestige class figured out.
I copied the rogue class, and made the prestige class from it. I changed the name, limited it to 10 levels, and them went through and changed all the special abilities to match what they would have been at each level of the prestige class. So if a rogue changes over to this prestige class at level 11 being the first prestige level, all of the special abilities will still land in the same places as they would have.

At this point, I have two things that I need help figuring out.
1) How to put a level prerequisite for the prestige class. The level would be Rogue level 10.
2) I still need to show the uses for the special ability. Once per day, per 2 levels, starting with one use at level 1 of the prestige class.

I highly recommend looking through the community set. Most feats, and all of the prestige classes use pre-reqs that you can use to model yours after. That said, there probably aren't too many that call for levels of a specific class. For that, you can use:

The code I gave you earlier will still work. The only change needed is the tag for your new class.

To find the tag for your new class, go to the entry in the Class tab of the editor and look at the tags (button is found in top-right corner). Look for the Classes.XXX tag, and copy the TagID into the above script in place of the "XXX".

There's a category of class variants in the game that replace a single level of a class, altering its hit dice, attack bonus, saves, etc. That's what the option to replace a single level is used for - it's only needed if you're fooling with those statistics of the class, and only if you're altering them by different amounts at different levels.

If you're just affecting the class' abilities, you have the option to use the "replaces all levels" option no matter how many or how few of the class' abilities you're replacing.

Yes. Sorry if I wasn't clear on that.

Mathias, thank you for the clarification.

Sendric, no worries sir. You have been a huge help, and I couldn't have been successful without your help.

I ended up making it a prestige class, it basically replaces level 11 through 20 of the Rogue class. It's taking some work, but so far with your help I'm making my way through it just fine.
I did search through a bunch of the other classes to find some scripts that I needed for prerequisites, but finding the level one was not working out as well as I had hoped, that was a huge save. Thanks again.

I did notice though that the math in one of the scripts that you gave me was off from what I need it to be, but I fixed it to suit my needs after I monkeyed with it a little bit.

[QUOTE=Sendric;186559]
The code I gave you earlier will still work. The only change needed is the tag for your new class.

Your code gave me the power at every second level, 2, 4, 6, 8, etc.
What I needed was it to start at level 1, and then give me a new use ever 2 levels after that. I'm sorry if I wasn't clear. The new math that I figured out looks like this.

Thanks again to both of you for helping me to make this, and other stuff I've put in Hero Labs a success.