Yeah, something's wonky, that's why I was confused by these two errors. The charges one was easily solved, just no idea why this one is blowing up. I will try to recreate my Barbarian and see if I did something to make it go boom. Otherwise, I'll just make my own illiteracy bootstrap.

Ugh, fix one thing, the other stuff breaks. And think you fixed something, only to have it fail to be fixed after all. The table problem for my custom specials is showing up again. Essentially, I have two custom abilities I am bootstrapping to each class that halves the Strength bonus to melee and Dexterity bonus to ranged. However, my classes kept getting the table problem shown in one of the jpgs above. I THOUGHT I had fixed it by designating those custom abilities as user sourced. But then the melee and ranged ability bonuses weren't being halved anymore. Ergh. So I un-sourced them, and back to the custom special table problem. So when I have them user sourced, they don't show up on the hero, and when they're not, the tables blow up. I even created my own user source, selected it in hero configuration, and all the tables are blowing up everywhere. Do I need to designate everything that I am doing as user sourced?

Well, I set everything to that, and selected the user content, same error. It's becoming a vicious cycle. I'm about to throw my hands in the air. All because 2 custom abilities are refusing to work with the files. Argh.

Are they custom abilities or specials? Custom abilities are something that must be picked by a certain class, while Specials are not specific to classes. Try making them a special instead.

I feel like a dunce, about 5 minutes ago, I noticed that the blurb at the top of the Editor (which I have been wholeheartedly ignoring) said that the Custom Ability is for a list. I thought, well I'll put this in Special and see what happens. It worked. Then I saw your post. Doh! Well, that did, indeed, solve that problem. I'm sure another one will crop up, no doubt.

The barbarian illiteracy bug is just unfixable as far as I can tell. I just can't seem to get that one fixed. Giving up for the night, maybe something fresh will hit me later and I'll figure it out.

Why don't you send me a copy of the user file at lawfulg48 at the yahoo. I'll see if I can work out the barbarian thing.

Hey Kendall. I didn't mean to disappear on you yesterday, so sorry about that. Back at it this morning. I've been trying to re-create your error, and to be honest, I can't. Here's what I did:

1) In class tab, choose New (Copy)
2) Select Barbarian...I named the new class Barber just because.
3) After allowing HL to re-load so that the new class would be available, I added a replace ID to the Class Level. I then hit Test Now, and allowed HL to reload. I received no error.
4) I closed the editor, selected change game system, and re-loaded D20. With a new portfolio, I chose the Barber class, and no error occurred.

I honestly don't see any reason why it wouldn't work. Like Lawful said, maybe you could send one of us the file so we can take a look at it. My address is sendric at gmail. I'm beginning to wonder if maybe there's something screwy with your environment.

When I get a chance, I'll send this to you guys. Time is in short supply lately. I'm almost entirely sure its my environment then, just have no idea why my environment can't find the kLiterBbn when it shows up quite well in the Skills tab of the Editor. The Editor knows it's there, but can't see it from the Barbarian. Just odd.

Ok, sent you guys the user file. I'm still in the midst of getting my campaign setting into there, so please ignore the mess. I've been having to do it piecemeal when I can find the time. :)

Unfortunately, I can't reproduce the problem which tells me that there isn't anything wrong with the file itself. I did come across several "duplicate ID" errors (I sent you the list in an email). I assume these are items found in the user files Shadow compiled for us.

You might consider re-installing HL. Or removing any other .user files you may have. The error with Illiteracy doesn't seem to be caused by your file, so its either something within the environment of your HL, or another custom file is stomping on it. At least, that's my guess.

Update: Actually, I do see the error with no Literacy in the Skills tab. I'll play around with that some.

Update2: Ok, fixed that problem. Add this to the eval script of your Class Level and Literacy will show up in your skill tab:

What's happening here is that when you copy the Class, it creates a new Class Level, but it doesn't copy the Class Level, so anything additional (such as this eval script) won't show up. Something to keep in mind with any other classes you are making.

One thing I don't get is why the Barbarian's abilities don't show up on the Barbarian tab with the new class. I have the same problem when I do it, so its not unique to your file. I don't see anything different between the new class and the old, so I don't know why it wouldn't show up. Maybe that's something the developers can answer.

Edit: Apparently this is because the selected class abilities use the original Barbarian class as the "Source". I'm not sure if there's an easier way to fix this other than duplicating all the class abilities. IMHO, it's probably not worth taking the time to do that.

Have you considered using a Class Variant to modify the skills? I didn't look closely at everything you were doing, but I made a quick class variant that uses the same Eval Script you put in your Barbarian class. Once you select "Use Variant Class" in the Configure Hero tab, it seems to work just fine. I see two downsides to this:

1) It creates a Variant Classes tab in the character portfolio. Not sure if you care about that.

2) There seems to be a bug in the editor that doesn't allow you to select - None - for Will Save Override so you will have to be careful about selecting the appropriate will save for any class you want to use the variant for.

The upside to this is you make one Variant, then duplicate it for each class, and make the necessary changes (ID, Class to modify and Will save override) and you're done. Also, it retains all the class abilities in the class tab, resolving the issue from above.

It makes sense about the Class Level tab, it didn't even occur to me to look there and see if something else was attached to the originals. I'd be willing to bet that would clear up the Bard issue I was having that I was able to fix. As for the Class Variant stuff, I thought about that, but there were some issues with that. I'd still have to code for each individual class unfortunately, even for the variants. To me that's six in one hand, half a dozen in the other, since the script for the skills differ from class to class (and Rogue doesn't need the script, but then I wholely re-wrote Rogue for my game). Anyways, thanks for the help, and I'll let you know how it goes.

EDIT: PROBLEM SOLVED! Thanks Sendric, I feel stupid for not looking at the Class Level stuff, but the Editor was pretty much doing that for me, and I thought it WAS copying everything there as well. Good catch!

Ah. I didn't realize the scripts would be different. Fair enough.

Glad I could help. :)

I want to do some tricky things with Clerical Domains, as they work a little differently in my campaign. Domains are kind of an odd animal to deal with so I need to ask about these.

Is there a way to "gray" domains in the domain selection list?

Is there a way to query if a domain has been selected, specific and just in general?

Is there a way to query how many domains have been selected?

Yes. Create a pre-requisite. Some domains are already like that (like Chaos).

As for your other two questions you may need to be more specific, but I imagine that both are possible. HL knows when you have 2 and knows which ones you have, so I don't see any reason you couldn't query those.

Well, I got my domain pathing to partially work. I still need to know how to tell if a domain has been selected. Is there a way that can be done? I've got the regular domains according to the srd, but also my own diety specific domains as well. Every character chooses a diety specific domain, then one of that diety's srd domains (for the 2 total). Right now it's set up that only the diety specific domains are highlighted for the first choice, then after that choice, only the domains offered by that diety are highlighted. Only problem is, all the other diety specific domains are also highlighted, and I want them to be un-highlighted as soon as one of the diety specific domains is chosen. Right now, that means checking if even a single domain has been chosen. Any ideas?

Ok, got it pathing correctly. Thank you Mathias. I could have had this solved a couple hours ago if I only remembered to put hero in front of the tagcount. There is an issue, a bug I would call it. I'll put it in the bugs for d20, but worth mentioning here. The reason my Domain. tags weren't showing up in my version is, I was using my newly created domains (that I built up from scratch) and now I notice that they are not automatically assigned to the Domain group upon creation. I had to do that manually.

It looks as though domains may have originally been created before the identity tags mechanism was added to Hero Lab, so unfortunately, each new domain needs to have a new tag designated manually. That can't be done automatically, and they can't be retrofitted to use a proper identity tag without breaking all the existing code dealing with domains. Sorry about that, but I'm afraid its something that the d20 files are locked into now.

Making good progress. Finding out my whole rewrite of the Rogue class is a bit of a pickle, but I am solving that problem, just painstaking. Essentially, besides sneak attack at every odd level, the Rogue gets Trapfinding and every even level gives a special ability (this includes evasion, improved evasion, uncanny dodge, many of the 10th level specials, etc.), some of which require prerequisites. The Rogue becomes more about specializing in a specific area, rather than a strict template. But like Domains, Special Abilities are custom and have to be worked from the outside in, but I've got it down it seems.

I may have a solution for Extra Slot and Extra Spell after a bit of brainstorming earlier this morning. Not sure if it will work, but I'm going to give it a try tonight and see if I can get it to work. I'll keep you updated.

Ok, I've painted myself into another corner. I am making a new Rogue from scratch, which gets a Special Ability every even level (2, 4, 6, ...), and I am trying to use the Special Ability mechanic that is already in place on the Rogue. Unfortunately, I believe some stuff is hard-coded, so I have to find out if this is feasible. I've been weeding through tags and looking for specific instances, but with the way Special Abilities work, I can't tell what is giving the Special Ability and what isn't. I can assign Custom Abilities to be Special Abilities for the Rogue as they show up in the list, but I can't chose them when I want to.

Is there a tag that can be assigned to give a Rogue more Special Abilities?

Is there a way to change at what level the Rogue receives those special abilities?

No ideas? Nobody knows? It can't be done? No help... :(. Still plowing through the tags and fields, but can't find anything :(.

EDIT: Ugh, nevermind. I was completely ignoring the custom ability count. I swear, it's the obvious stuff I overlook completely. No worries now.

Ok, I have read this entire thread and I am probably missing something obvious. I have collapsed the skills in my d20 games, basically removing about 12 skills in favor of about 5. I want to have characters in the build that will be built with the new skills. Is there a way to have them replace the skills that are autoloaded? Also am I correct in assuming that I am going to have to modify each class to reflect the new skills? I have read the HLWiki and the editing site, redirected from the authoring kit. Its possible I am just being ignorant and missing something. Any help would be most appreciated.

That sounds about right. but it might be easier to copy the 3.5 system and rename it to something else. then make the mods to all the skills there. it would be like having a test environment.

i have had to do the same for of thing for a Pathfinder version of DragonStar i am working on.

I did that, thanks for the suggestion. This way I can change what I need, and eliminate what I dont want and not have to foul up the original game mode. When I get done just create all the characters from the modified game mode.

Currently swamped, but I'll tell you what I ended up doing. I made a class variant of each class, and in that you can remove skills from Class Skills add what you want to be Class Skills. This is what I did, except I didn't collapse my skills, so I'm not sure how I'd go about that. I did exactly the same as chiefweasel suggested, I duplicated my d20 system and made changes to it without touching the main d20 files. I've got my skills doing exactly what I needed, which is three-tiered Class Skills (1 for 1, max HD +3), Cross-Class Skills (2 for 1, max [HD+3]/2), a General Skill (1 for 1, max [HD+3]/2). Those kind of a changes could have broke my d20 files with all the altering and testing I did, so a duplicate set of files is always a good way to start testing and trying out new ideas. With the exception of a few special cases (which I believe I will at some point find a solution to) I've got my system jumping through hoops. :)