Problems with WoD dataset
 

1) Normally, I tell my players to make a up a character as a 'base' with an addition of thirty XP or so. How do I add experience points, in bulk, to the character to use in the advancement tab?

2) When selecting custom skill specialisation through the advancement tab, Hero Lab kept stating:

"Reference to non-existing component compset 'Specialise' for compset Evolution. Attempt to access field 'smenuskill' that does not exist for thing iSpecAdd."

This was at -12 Xp, since I couldn't figure out how to pump in XP to build a more powerful character starting out the gate. Also, I could not select either the skill or its custom specialisation at the advancement menu. I had to go back to the skills tab to do this.

3) You should get White Wolf to announce the release on their site, too, so more people know about it.

Problems with WoD dataset
 

At 03:58 AM 12/2/2007, you wrote:
When you create a new character, you're first presented with the Configure Character window. On the left of this window are four choosers. The bottom one specifies the character type, which defaults to a standard starting character. Click on it and one of the options is "Experienced". Select that option and a field appears where you can enter the starting XP for the character (e.g. 30). After character creation, you can add XP to the character via the Journal tab.

I recommend a quick read-through of the WoD documenation. This particular detail is one of the first things covered. I'm guessing that a few minutes scanning through the docs will avoid at least the same amount of time spent trying to figure out how to do something that might not be immediately obvious. :-)

Crap. I just reproduced the error. Fortunately, the error is innocuous. One of the specialization scripts is trying to access something that doesn't exist for custom specializations and is therefore being ignored after the error is reported. I'll log this and make sure it gets fixed shortly.

Custom specializations are, well, special. Selecting the skill and specialization within the advancement window is something that is currently on the todo list. We're going to have to add one more piece of functionality to the core HL engine to enable that easily, and it hasn't been added yet.

As you discovered, you can easily add the selections on the Skills tab. And the validation mechanism includes a message that directs you to the Skills tab for just this purpose. So it might not be the ideal solution at the moment, but it should work smoothly for you in the interim.

My understanding is that they will be doing so on Monday. We didn't release until late Friday night, and they couldn't announce anything until V1.3 went live.