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Originally Posted by zarlor
Definitely the latter. The comma is the giveway separator for the sentence that breaks the two sections apart from each other so it's Edge+Skill OR Cultural Package.
I think most of the weapon-based scripts actually look for tags instead (or they usually should, anyway) as the tags should be the defining grouping for weapons rather than just the name, but there probably are some scripts out there that do work on now maybe because it affects a specific weapon or type of weapon that always seems to have that word in the name? I can't think of one right now, mind you. The only other "gotcha" on that would be that, at least in some of my settings files, dual-purpose weapons end up as two entries, such as a spear, for example, can be purchased under either melee or thrown weapons and doing so bootstraps an otherwise hidden, no-cost, no-weight version of the other version of that weapon. So if the named weapon was one of those it might seem a bit odd, I guess.
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I guess my thought process here is why should it be that much extra work to give a weapon a name? I know in fantasy novels and the games I ahve played in for 30+ years or so, people giving their weapons names has happened hundreds of times. Granted, in my more recent experience as a GM, I have taken the tack that found magical weapons ALREADY have a name, but that's something I have only recently started in my personal world. Anyway, this is not a big deal, but it's one of the tiny annoyances I have with HL and a nice to have the ability to assign a name to weapons.
I also noticed that when taking Trademark Weapon as my test case, it presented me with all weapons are listed(which is fine), but when taking Improved Trademark weapon, again, all weapons are listed. However, the latter should only show the list of weapons which have already been "assigned" trademark weapons status. Having the ability to set a name per item would allow that to be possible while it's not now.
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Originally Posted by zarlor
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Originally Posted by jfrazierjr
4) no PP for magic, but has Casting Modifier instead that would be nice to be able to add to the power(but we can't). In theory, IF PP could take a negative number and I assume it can, one could make copies of each power in the setting and put in the casting modifier in place of the PP cost. Basically, this is a modifier to the skill roll, BUT you can buy down during the actual casting by taking longer to cast the spell. For example, the spell Astral Walk has a -10 Casting Modifier, so no one with one or more raises and/or a very high skill dice can cast in 1-2 rounds, but if you spend 10 rounds, it the skill roll has no modifiers. Thoughts? Is there a better way to model this with what we currently have or would it make more sense to extend what currently exists. I have not thought to much about the details, but would the way Super Powers work in the current Hero Lab handle this since they don't have PP's but have some kind of negative casting modifier based upon the original PP cost? I have not played with it, so I don't know.
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Honestly, that's the kind of thing I would have never bothered trying to code into a data file in the first place. There are just too many variables there, just like a normal No PP setting (Bolt has various casting modifiers depending on how you cast it, for example.) That's almost like trying to code in situational modifiers, like lighting conditions, cover or aimed shots. Not something you really code into Hero Lab at all. If it's coded anywhere it seems to me the place to do that would be in a VTT program. |
See this is one thing that bugs me about that thought proccess. When I use a character builder, the goal is to both make it easier to build and maintain a character as well as help during gameplay in some way. For the later, that means to me that all the meta information, things such as PP, name, duration, range, etc be clearly and quickly available to me via a print out or pdf on a tablet at the table. I am a bit less pedantic about full rule details as that level of copy/paste can then potentially run afoul of copyright laws, but the high level stuff should be in the editor in some way so that it can get output to the character sheet and not have to be constantly looked up.
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Originally Posted by zarlor
I'd have to check some of the other rank-based things, but I seem to recall some code for handling that being out there, and in this case being a relatively easy implementation of just bootstraping the Edge.
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If you can find an example of this in the existing game files(or one you can send if it's not in the downloader), please let me know. As I mentioned this seemed like a hard one to handle and I was thinking vaguely of doing something like this in my personal game just a few hows before reading it in the Lankmar source book(though it's still a thought and not an absolute going to do). My end goal is to try to not add things to my personal game unless they can be modeled in HeroLab AND modeled in a way that does not seem clunky to my players.
From technical level, I have the personal expertise to rebuild Savage Worlds
from the Authoring Kit exactly the way I want it to be(with some guidance on how to accomplish certain tasks of course). But the primary issue is with time. I am still waffling on the decision if the "get it my way" is worth the huge time investment. Heck, I know enough programming languages that I could build a character builder from scratch for any specific game system, but that's even MORE time vs me extending Hero Lab via the Authoring Kit. I know for a fact I won't do the latter not only because of the actual programming time commitment, but also the data entry time which is humongous and would be a one game system thing.