Am I doing Preclude the hard way?

[Paragon]

Just to make sure there's no better way to do this.

I'm getting ready to put together a .user file for the Broken Earth setting, mostly just for the hell of it. One of the thing I'll need to do at some point is get rid of the various Arcane backgrounds and skills it doesn't support. This isn't a big deal with most of them, but given how Savage Worlds handles Super Powers (each power has its own skill) doing it one at a time there by manually typing in the ID into a Preclude box is going to be pretty tedious.

There's no faster way to do that, right?

[EightBitz]

You can edit the .user file directly.

[Paragon]

Ah. With the "<preclude id="edgArcMir" source="XCOMXC"/>" type construction. That does help, though I'd still need to know all the IDs before doing it. Anyone know if there's a way to just look at those as a set?

[EightBitz]

Originally Posted by Paragon

Ah. With the "<preclude id="edgArcMir" source="XCOMXC"/>" type construction. That does help, though I'd still need to know all the IDs before doing it. Anyone know if there's a way to just look at those as a set?

If you go to the appropriate tab in the editor, for example the "Skill" tab, and click "Copy", you'll see a list of all the skills (or whatever tab you picked) with the IDs in parentheses.

[Paragon]

The problem with that is Savage Worlds, which I'm generally using this for, doesn't actually do it as separate tabs; it has them as selectable entries in the pull-down, but even then it shows everything from both the core book and other books that aren't in use. Its a pretty long list...

[EightBitz]

Given that we're having a different experience here, and I'm not sure where we're diverging, I'm going to start from the beginning to tell you how I'm getting to where I'm getting.

Open Hero Lab.
Select Savage Worlds.
Click OK to bypass the "Configure your character" window.
From the "Tools" menu, select "Show Editor"
From the "File" menu, either open your data file, or select "New Data File".

Now you should see several tabs at the top. One of those tabs will be "Skill" and one will be "Arcane Backgrounds".

Click on either one of those tabs.

Near the bottom left, you'll see the standard group of buttons. Click "New (Copy)"

Now you should see a window with a list of all the items relevant to that tab. And each item will have its ID in parentheses.

[Paragon]

Yeah, I was thinking of general selection rather than the category tab. Sometimes that's still a long list, but that tends to be on edges or gear, not skills, which don't change enormously from setting to setting.

Out of curiosity, do you know if you can do New (Copy) on thing after they've been precluded?

[EightBitz]

Originally Posted by Paragon

Yeah, I was thinking of general selection rather than the category tab. Sometimes that's still a long list, but that tends to be on edges or gear, not skills, which don't change enormously from setting to setting.

Out of curiosity, do you know if you can do New (Copy) on thing after they've been precluded?

When you do a "New Copy", you give the thing a different ID, so yes. The ID you precluded will be precluded, and the copy (with a different ID) will not.

[Paragon]

Originally Posted by EightBitz

When you do a "New Copy", you give the thing a different ID, so yes. The ID you precluded will be precluded, and the copy (with a different ID) will not.

I just wasn't sure they'd still show up on the list after they were Precluded, but I guess I should have known they would, since you get items that aren't even present in that .user file.