Witchblade

[wdmartin]

I'm thinking of implementing the Witchblade from the long-running multi-class archetypes project. Some of it is pretty straightforward -- armor proficiencies, etc -- but other bits not so much.

One of the first hurdles is skills. The class gets all the default Fighter skills as class skills, but also gets to pick 3 skills from the Witch skill set to gain as class skills. I'm just trying to figure out how to approach that. Would that be a gizmo on the Witchblade tab where you can pick things?

Not that I've ever managed to get a gizmo to do anything useful. They're pretty ... involved.

Further on, implementing the Athame Bond ability is going to be a headache. It's like a bonded object, except it gets ability scores and special abilities like a familiar, except it's an intelligent item. Eep?

I don't know if I actually expect any responses to this post. Just sort of musing aloud, really.

[Aaron]

I'd add class specials with selectors to select the 3 skills. As for the athame, look at the black blade item, I guess?

[wdmartin]

Well, I've started taking a crack at it, and I think it's going tolerably well for one evening's work so far. I've attached my file in case anyone's interested. Todo list:

[X] Skills
[X] Weapon and Armor proficiencies
[ ] Athame Bond
[@] Patron Spells
[@] Battle Tactics
[@] Bonus Feats
[@] Hexes
[@] Spellcasting
[ ] Athame Training
[@] Major Hex
[ ] Athame Mastery

X = done
@ = in progress
blank = not started

Witch Skills These work. As you suggested, Aaron, I just made three selectors that offer the skills from the Witch list that do not also appear on the Fighter list. It's annoying that the Knowledge skills don't show up in the selector until you've added them as picks on the Skills tab, though.

Patron Spells: I got it to let me pick a patron. It isn't actually adding the spells to the spells known list, though -- I'm guessing I need to add an eval script to do that.

Battle Tactics: is working okay. I've got an eval script in there which correctly calculates how large the bonus is and assembles a string to tell you what it is. For example, "Battle Tactics (+3, 6/day)" at level 11 with 16 INT. Unfortunately the live name is not getting updated. It's stuck as "Battle Tactics (6/day)", lacking the +3 bit. I'm not sure why not. Timing issue? The bit that's supposed to update the sbName is running at Render 10000.

Bonus Feats: working fine, with one issue, which is that "Extra Hex" complains that the PC doesn't have the hex class feature. Which it actually does. It looks like the validator for that feat was written to test a bunch of specific classes/archetypes, but there's no generalized HasAbility.witchHexes or anything. I suppose I could write a custom copy of Extra Hex specific to Witch Blade and include that on the bonus feat list. That'd probably do the trick.

The original text didn't specify whether or not the class counts as fighter levels for purposes of feat pre-reqs. I made an executive decision and went with "yes, plus it counts as witch in case that ever matters."

Hexes: you can pick hexes just fine, and they work normally. Major Hexes complain about the PC not having 10 Witch levels. The validation seems to tie into a field reqLevWit with a value of 10 on the custom ability. Maybe I need to write an eval script to assign that field to the hero with an appropriate value at level 11? Not sure.

The other issue with hexes is that the "Allow Custom Abilities" inherits ALL witch hexes. I'd prefer to exclude Grand Hexes -- since the PC will never qualify for them, they may as well not be on the list. Not sure how to do that. Just specifying the class to inherit abilities from is super-easy, but also pretty all-or-nothing. I really hope there's a better alternative than re-implementing all of the Witch hexes as Witch Blade custom abilities, because that would be ... tiresome.

Spells: I've entered the spellcasting progression and characteristics. It lets the PC learn and prep witch spells, the save DCs are correct, and so forth. The one downside is that it's showing the whole witch spell list, including cantrips and level 5+ spells which this class doesn't have access to. I set the lowest and highest spell levels to 1 and 4, but I guess it doesn't trim the list using those?

So that's all for one evening. Decent progress, I think, though honestly, this is the easy stuff. I'm dreading Athame Bond.

[Aaron]

Originally Posted by wdmartin

Patron Spells: I got it to let me pick a patron. It isn't actually adding the spells to the spells known list, though -- I'm guessing I need to add an eval script to do that.

Yes, your eval script will need to apply tags to the bootstrapped spells. Add a spell to your known spells normally, then compare what the bootstrapped spells are missing.

Originally Posted by wdmartin

Battle Tactics: is working okay. I've got an eval script in there which correctly calculates how large the bonus is and assembles a string to tell you what it is. For example, "Battle Tactics (+3, 6/day)" at level 11 with 16 INT. Unfortunately the live name is not getting updated. It's stuck as "Battle Tactics (6/day)", lacking the +3 bit. I'm not sure why not. Timing issue? The bit that's supposed to update the sbName is running at Render 10000.

Is the +3 stored in the abValue field? If so, just have the ability apply LvNamePar tags as appropriate.

Originally Posted by wdmartin

Bonus Feats: working fine, with one issue, which is that "Extra Hex" complains that the PC doesn't have the hex class feature. Which it actually does. It looks like the validator for that feat was written to test a bunch of specific classes/archetypes, but there's no generalized HasAbility.witchHexes or anything. I suppose I could write a custom copy of Extra Hex specific to Witch Blade and include that on the bonus feat list. That'd probably do the trick.

You could replace the original with your new version, if you like.

Originally Posted by wdmartin

Hexes: you can pick hexes just fine, and they work normally. Major Hexes complain about the PC not having 10 Witch levels. The validation seems to tie into a field reqLevWit with a value of 10 on the custom ability. Maybe I need to write an eval script to assign that field to the hero with an appropriate value at level 11? Not sure.

Use PreReqCaP1 tags for the matching abCategories.

Originally Posted by wdmartin

The other issue with hexes is that the "Allow Custom Abilities" inherits ALL witch hexes. I'd prefer to exclude Grand Hexes -- since the PC will never qualify for them, they may as well not be on the list. Not sure how to do that. Just specifying the class to inherit abilities from is super-easy, but also pretty all-or-nothing. I really hope there's a better alternative than re-implementing all of the Witch hexes as Witch Blade custom abilities, because that would be ... tiresome.

If you need more fine control over what is available than "all of certain class", overwrite the candidate expression field.

Originally Posted by wdmartin

Spells: I've entered the spellcasting progression and characteristics. It lets the PC learn and prep witch spells, the save DCs are correct, and so forth. The one downside is that it's showing the whole witch spell list, including cantrips and level 5+ spells which this class doesn't have access to. I set the lowest and highest spell levels to 1 and 4, but I guess it doesn't trim the list using those?

Same as with above, overwrite the candidate expression field.

[wdmartin]

Thanks!

I spent the evening working on this again, unfortunately not making as much progress this time.

I successfully limited the hex selection to just regular and major hexes by setting the field cCstSpExpr on cHelpwbl to:

(SpecSource.cHelpwbl | abCategory.WitHex | abCategory.WitHexMaj) & !Helper.Secondary & !Helper.Tertiary & !Helper.Quaternary & !Helper.Quintenary & !Helper.Obsolete & !thingid.cWitBouEye & !thingid.cWitFamFea

That also removes a couple of specialty hexes that don't make sense for the class. That bit's working fine.

I have so far totally failed at restricting the spell list to just witch spells level 1-4. I went and looked up the Red Mantis Assassin prestige class, which has some similar spellcasting limitations. Based on that, I've got this script:

hero.childfound[cHelpwbl].field[cSpellExpr].text = "(" & hero.childfound[cHelpwbl].field[cSpellExpr].text & ") | (sClass.cHelpWit & (sLevel.1 | sLevel.2 | sLevel.3 | sLevel.4))"

It's running at Post-Levels 10,500, just like the Red Mantis Assassin script it was originally based on. If I examine my cHelpwbl thing using "Show Selection Fields", I can see that cSpellExpr is being written to. The super-long series of tags ends in the expression that I added. But it doesn't work. For a long time the selector for the spellbook (athame, rather) kept saying "Nothing to choose" when I tried to add spells to it, until I went and added level 1 versions of Detect Magic, Read Magic, and Stabilize specifically for Witch Blades. Those three show up okay, but there's nothing else.

Could it be a timing issue? I've tried a bunch of different timings, including Final 9999999999 (that's ten nines). Not sure what I'm missing.