Conversion Advice - Ancient Dead
 

Alright, gang! Sorry to keep bugging you all, but this is a 'best practices' sort of question. I am working on the classic monsters of Ravenloft, starting with Ancient Dead. (AKA Mummies) Unlike in core PF, Ravenloft presents them as a template - and what's more, the Ancient Dead have an age rank from 1 (least powerful) to 5 (most powerful).

There are a couple of ways to tackle this, but there are some complicating factors : Rank 1 Mummies get one vulnerability and one immunity to energy of their choice, and the higher ranks can get more. Also, Rank 2+ Mummies get to choose from a list of bonus powers, some of which get more powerful with rank.

So, my thought is this - to simplify coding, I would create five templates - one for each rank of Ancient Dead. That keeps me from having to program an extra variable to track the creature's rank and a bunch of conditionals that key off of it. That also lets me determine the number of immunities/resistances with certainty, and the number of salient ability picks.

Now, for the abilities, I was thinking I could use the Racial Custom Specials, and just allow them to pick the appropriate number. I don't see any problems with that approach, but I thought I might ask the more experienced folks if they see an issue.

The resistances and immunities are a bit stickier - I haven't been able to think of a monster that allows that number of choices to use as a coding example. The closest thing I could think of was the half-dragon, which picks a parent color and gets resistances or immunities based on that, but at Rank 5, the Ancient Dead have two immunities, a resistance, and a vulnerability - that's a lot of tricky coding! I have thought of a possible workaround - just give the ancient dead an ability called "Mysterious Versatility" (for instance) that basically reminds the GM that all those items can vary, and let the templates have fixed defaults. It's hokey, but it serves the purpose.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Am I just in over my head? :) Or am I missing something obvious?

This seems like the sort of thing a Configurable would be perfect for. You could make each type of ability be added to a different table.

I don't favor making multiple templates if it can be helped, but if you decide on that method they can all bootstrap the same configurable with different values in the field allowing X number of things for each of the tables.

For an example of a template which bootstraps a configurable (including granting variable numbers of abilities), look at the Ghost.

thanks very much! I will look at the Ghost and see what I can figure out.

Follow-up - it looks like that creatures can only have one configurable, is that correct? So that would handle the salient abilities, but not the resistances, immunities, and weaknesses..

Configurables have the option to have more than one table on the same tab. The ghost only needs one of those tables.

Or maybe that's Secondary, Tertiary, etc? Hmmm.

I am still learning how things go together here, let me see if I can figure it out now..

I am getting close! Thanks for the advice so far. Question, though - I am trying to get the save DCs for some abilities to come out correctly - the Fear ability, for instance. The DC should be 10 + half HD + Cha; and I have the ability set up to use Charisma under the Racial Specials. The problem is that my 5HD Barbarian Ancient Dead with a Charisma of 14 should have a DC 14 Fear save, and it's showing as 12.

Now, a Bard Ghost I built has a proper save DC for its corrupting touch ability; but that ability is a Racial Cust Special, so maybe they work differently?

What I need to know is if there's some trick to getting a template-granted racial ability to consider the Hit Dice of the base creature for the save DCs.

You may have uncovered a bug. Use the bug report thread to report it...

Thanks, RavenX. I have now reported it, just in case it's a bug!

When it comes to bugs, better safe than sorry. Sometimes the Wolf Pack has to dig under the hood to fix bugs that we can't get to.

Racial Abilities only consider the Racial Hit Dice not Class Hit Dice. So your Barbarian Levels won't add to increase the DC.

So if you look up the Universal Monster Rule (Fear) you see it says "DC 10 + 1/2 fearsome creature’s racial HD + creature’s Cha modifier"

One only uses Racial Hit Dice. So no bug its how Pathfinder works. :)

To change this you can go to the "Adjust" tab "Other Adjustments" and add the "Ability: DC" adjustment to increase the value if you wish.

Then why does the Ghost's Corrupting Touch include the DC based on the Hit Dice of the Bard levels?

I just want my Fear ability to calculate its DC the same way Corrupting Touch does. They're both granted by a template, but one's a Racial Special and the other is a Racial Cust Special..

Yea templates get even more interesting. See Ghost Template.

If I follow everything correctly when a template says "Ghost HD" that includes both Racial and Non-Racial Hit Dice. So in that case it should include both.

Yep here is a fix note from HL release notes that says "Ghost abilities from Classic Horrors Revisited were calculating their DCs from racial Hit Dice not total Hit Dice."

So a standard Racial Special should NOT calc from non-racial Hit Dice. But Ghost template abilities should.

If you want a Racial Special to calculate its DC based on ALL Hit Dice (Racial and non-Racial) the fix is to add a "Tag" using the Blue Button "Tags". Left mouse press "Click to add another tag".

Then enter the following:
Group ID: Helper
Tag ID: DCUseTotHD

Save and Test Now!.

P.S. - My bad mentioning the adjustment at first as I didn't catch you where making a new Undead creature in the editor.

Corrupting Touch has a special tag which says use the total HD for calculating the ability DC

That tag is "Helper.DCUseTotHD", so you can add that to your template's racial special to do the same.

Argh, Ninja'd!

Ah-ha! Bingo. That's what I was looking for. Aaron, please disregard the bug report then! That helper tag is just what I need.

Next up : I will be updating this thread to ask people's opinions on converting abilities that really don't make as much sense in PF as they did in 3.5...

Tomorrow or Sunday, though. time for a break.

You ninja'd me! I was taking too long constructing a complete answer! Sometimes I should just go simple... :p

Hah! Not me! Hollis has bugs next week!

Okay, gang! I am in the home stretch on my Ancient Dead conversion - all I have left to do are the choosable powers. A couple of them are a little odd, going from 3rd to PF. So I would like some "best practices" advice.

From the book :

Animal Command (Su) : The ancient is able to exert control over one specific species of animal. (...) The ancient can rebuke or command animals of this species just as an evil cleric can rebuke or command undead. The ability takes effect as if used by a cleric of level equal to the ancient's hit dice.

And :

Command Undead (Su) : The ancient gains the ability to rebuke or command undead as if it were a cleric of level equal to its hit dice. If the ancient already has this ability as a former cleric, it may add 4 to its effective level when rebuking.

Because of the PF changes to turning and commanding undead, I'm unsure how best to model these. Thoughts?

And the bonus question - the Elemental Affinity ability gives an Ancient Dead who is already a cleric a bonus (third) cleric domain, chosen from one of the four elemental domains. Is there anything in the game that gives a cleric a third domain already that I can clone?

Command Undead is in PF and in the CORE rule book. I would just mimic its rules but in the first case it would be control of a specific animal.

Domain, Rage Powers, Rogue Talents, etc are all just custom abilities and their is a field on the Class Helper that holds the number. You just have to increase it by one.

So add a level cleric and then go to "Develop->Floating Info Windows->Show Selection Fields". In the new list you want to check mark "Cleric" but you want the Class Helper not the Class Level. So you want to pick the one with the unique id starting with cHelpXXX where XXX will be the three character id for the cleric. Then look through the fields listed do you see one that is holding the value you need to increase?

[QUOTE=candidgamera;179986]

Command Undead (Su) : The ancient gains the ability to rebuke or command undead as if it were a cleric of level equal to its hit dice. If the ancient already has this ability as a former cleric, it may add 4 to its effective level when rebuking.

[QUOTE]

You just need to go into the editor and look at the feat Turn Undead for this. There should be a field that sets the level of the power. You can make a copy of the feat and add a Helper.Helper tag to it, then bootstrap it to the ability. Your copy can then modify the script to account for the level change.

The problem is that the Ancient has no underlying Channel Energy ability to determine, for instance, how many times per day it can be used. (Unless it was formerly a cleric)

I am aware of the feat, but the feat modifies the Channel Energy ability , which the Ancient may not have.

I assume then that the answer to my question is 'No', so I'll have to look into doing it this way.

Aside from the fact that Command Undead is an extension of Energy Channeling, my other main boggle on converting those abilities is that Rebuking doesn't appear to be a thing in Pathfinder.

Right which is exactly what your looking for as mechanics will be the same. Remove the wording for Channel Energy and you have the mechanics for the ability you want instead of the old 3.5 rules.

Don't get caught up in to many small details many times its better to look at these things in a more Generic sense.

I am showing you how to "solve" your current issue and many future issues. I am teaching you how to fish instead of just giving you a fish. Learning how to find the tags/values yourself is going to be MUCH more useful than always requiring something to copy from. :)

Except how many times per day can the Ancient use it?


Heh. That's very didactic of you. But my hope was there was a built-in ability that I could just bootstrap - far lower chance of introducing a bug that way. I would have assumed that something in Pathfinder actually granted a cleric an additional domain.

Hmm, that may have sounded too harsh. What I am trying to convey is that I know I can achieve the effect the way you describe; that is a correct solution to the problem. But it's also the worst correct solution to the problem. It requires the greatest effort and offers the greatest chance of error. What I trying to determine is if there are other possible solutions - bootstrapping an existing object (or at the least, re-using code) reduces both the effort required and the chance for error.

Sorry if I sounded ungrateful, before.

No problem. I do try very hard to no take things in a bad way on forums. Written word is a AWFUL medium for relaying emotion so I assume people are just writing in a hurry or don't mean things to sound bad. Unless they put swear words in then NO mistaking that idea. ;)

You make a valid point and I can understand it. Where I am working currently I am in a lead/manager roll and I was recently told I need to "lead people" not direct people. Basically I need to lead people to their own answers not just give them an answer. So I recently started using this forum as my guinea pig to practice. I admit its harder to do than it sounds.

For an actual example I honestly can't think of something that gives an extra Domain except a archetype which is not helpful. Oh actually really close would be the "Extra Rogue Talent" feat actually. Remember in HL all Custom Abilities are the same thing so that would work with some tweaks to go after Cleric instead of Rogue. Only other example was one of my adjustments but that is coded to allow the class as a selection.

My opinion is that monsters last 3 rounds of combat tops. It makes little difference at the end of the day if its 1/day or 20/days. The creatures dead and off the game table way before it matters. Yes their is some exceptions but that is why I don't put much stock in fine details on monsters. Player's character heck yea. Monsters blah not worth it.

If you want it be some value make it the same as Channel Energy (3 + her Charisma modifier) a day. Which fits pretty well as Undead now have Cha scores as that is what gives them their Extra HP.

Thanks! Those are both very helpful tidbits. I'll take a look.

Thanks very much, gang! I think I've got my Ancient Dead templates in working condition. I'm sure a more experienced developer could make them a single template with a selectable rank, but I think this way will work for now. On to some other monsters, now!