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?