Achtung! Cthulhu datafile

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Originally Posted by zarlor

I'll add it to the list of things to look for if I get some time, which it just seems this is the wrong time of year for. I haven't been able to be too much help here lately beyond something I might remember. At any rate, maybe it is possible, if a bit convoluted. Presumably you could set a tag if the condition of Dementia => Sanity is met, but have the tag be the first thing it checks for. So if the tag is set (<> 0) then you would check if Dementia => Sanity, but if the tag is not set you would only check for if Dementia < Sanity, in which case you would unset the tag. Thus you wouldn't be setting something every time Dementia hit the mark, only the first time it did it.

I think that might do it for you. Don't ask me why I didn't think of it earlier.

Sorry, I wasn't clear there. When I said that you could have your sanity modified multiple times by the Dementia => Sanity thing I meant this is what should happen, not what may happen by accident. I think the general idea may work though, I'll have a play with it tonight and see if I can work out some logic that just uses the tags for the permanent sanity adjustments rather than adding additional wounds. My only concern with that approach would be how to undo sanity adjustments if someone starts playing with the character... hmmm something to think on.

On a different note, so far I cannot find anything in the wiki discussing the Permanent Adjustments option and how to create new ones. I suspect that it may be a black box built into the core SW system, unless Caped Crusader can offer any tips on using it differently.

[zarlor]

Yeah, it is core rules thing, but that's the part of the Wiki where you would need to look to find it, the stuff on how they created the SW rules. Just because it's there doesn't mean it can't also be done to add something extra within a .user file, though. If I get some time I'll try to look as well, although finding that time isn't looking too good right now, I'm sorry to say.

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I appreciate the help you've provided so far; it's good to just have someone to bounce ideas off

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Ok, so on Friday night I had a trawl through the wiki and found how to create new Permanent Adjustments with the scroller. To go with this I've created a new Trait (trACDmnt) that shows up on all the tabs with the other trait details that shows what the current Dementia level is. This value is changed using the new Adjustment

<thing
  id="adjACDmnt"
  name="Manage Dementia levels"
  compset="Adjustment"
  description="Modify the user's Dementia score"
  uniqueness="useronce">
  <usesource source="sepActCth"/>
  <tag group="AdjustShow" tag="Increment"/>
  <tag group="Helper" tag="UserAdjust"/>
  <tag group="InPlay" tag="PermOK"/>
  <eval phase="PreTraits" priority="5000"><![CDATA[
      var ACDmnt as number
      ACDmnt = field[adjUser].value
      perform #traitadjust[trACDmnt,+,ACDmnt,"Dementia update"]     
      ]]>
      <before name="Calc trtFinal"/>
  </eval>
</thing>

This can be added as a permanent adjustment and updates trACDmnt perfectly. There are, however, two interesting bits left to do before Sanity is finished and I can move onto the next pain that will be Magic.

1) If I try to bootstrap this Adjustment to the character, it does not appear on any of the tabs. I know the Adjustment does get bootstrapped because I set an additional test Eval statement that added 20 to the Sanity score. I'm sure I saw somewhere in the wiki how to tell an item which tab to appear on, but I can't for the life of me find it at the moment.

2) I still need to work out the best place to do the calculations on when to add the sanity loss. At the moment I'm tempted to leave it as a manually added injury, but it would be nice to automate it at some point.

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One thing I forgot to mention was that there is a way to show a dropdown of known skills in the Permanent Adjustments section that allows you to modify a skill of your choice. This is an example

<thing
  id="adjACattrD"
  name="_A!C Skill test"
  compset="Adjustment"
  description="Select this adjustment a!c to...">
  <fieldval field="adjUsePick" value="1"/>
  <fieldval field="adjCandid" value="component.Skill"/>
  <tag group="AdjustShow" tag="Increment"/>
  <tag group="AdjustShow" tag="Menu"/>
  <tag group="Helper" tag="UserAdjust"/>
  <tag group="InPlay" tag="PermOK"/>
  <tag group="InPlay" tag="TempOK"/>
  <eval phase="Setup" priority="8000">
    <before name="Calc trtFinal"/><![CDATA[
    if (tagis[Helper.Activated] <> 0) then
      field[adjChosen].chosen.field[trtInPlay].value += field[adjUser].value
      endif
    ]]></eval>
  </thing>

Fieldval field="adjCandid" value="component.Skill" populates a dropdown list created by tag group="AdjustShow" tag="Menu" with all your known skills and allows you to modify them (either positively or negatively).

I can't remember, but I think you can change component.Skill to component.Trait or component.Edge. I'll check this tonight and update this.

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Some more notes on the Permanent Adjustments

It's possible to set the upper and lower bounds for the incremental counter using

    <fieldval field="adjMinimum" value="0"/>
    <fieldval field="adjMaximum" value="10"/>

I've been experimenting with the dropdown list content options for the Perm Adjustments too.

For example:

  <fieldval field="adjCandid" value="component.Skill"/>

These values are useful to pull back for adjustment. Be aware though that if you change the dropdown, the incremented value switches to the new choice.
List attributes - component.Attribute
List assigned skills - component.Skill
List derived values (e.g. Charisma, Toughness, pace) - component.Derived
List all traits (attributes, derived values and a few others) - component.Trait

These ones less so as there is nothing to increment.
List abilities* - component.Ability
List Powers* - component.Power
List all Edges* - component.Edge

Some other component. values that I've found, but not tried yet are .Equipment, .Defense, .Shield, .WeaponBase and .WeapRange. I'm sure there are plenty of others.

Still not found the wiki page that explains how to force something to display on a screen yet, but hey. More info is more info, right?

[zarlor]

Great stuff. Thanks for sharing!

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Note to self. Tracker issue broken out into a separate thread

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My brain has had enough of the Tracker issue for the morning, so I"m switching over to the new problem area of joy. Magic

The first area that I'm dealing with are the tomes of mythos knowledge and the age old problem of add/increase a skill after creation.

In the Acthung! Cthulhu setting, the only way to gain Knowledge(Mythos) is to successfully translate one of these Tomes. Each tome has a different number of tests that need to succeed in order to successfully read it. No advancement points are needed to gain this knowledge skill. If they already have the skill, then we need to increment it by 1.

So, with those important points set, I decided the best way to track these translation elements is to use a Permanent Adjustment so the player can try reading the book over time, even if they do not carry the book with them all the time. Once the PA hits the maximum value, it should (in theory) then carry out the skill check and adjust/create it as needed.

<thing
  id="adjACtTM"
  name="Translation (True Majick)"
  compset="Adjustment"
  description="Language - English (-1)"
  uniqueness="useronce">
    <fieldval field="adjMinimum" value="0"/>
    <fieldval field="adjMaximum" value="4"/>
  <usesource source="sepActCth"/>
  <tag group="AdjustShow" tag="Increment"/>
  <tag group="Helper" tag="UserAdjust"/>
  <tag group="InPlay" tag="PermOK"/>    

<!-- check counter. If counter is equal to adjMaximum then
check to see if Knowledge(Mythos) is already a skill
If not, apply at d4
otherwise increase by 1
-->

    <eval phase="Setup" priority="8000">
      <before name="Calc trtFinal"/><![CDATA[
      if (field[adjUser].value = field[adjMaximum].value) then
    	foreach pick in hero where "thingid.skKnow"
	 		if (compare(lowercase(eachpick.field[domDomain].text),"mythos") = 0) then
				perform eachpick.field[trtBonus].modify[+,1,"mythos"]
			else
~ At this point I need to be able to add the Knowledge skill if it doesn't already exist.
	 		endif
   		nexteach
      endif
      ]]></eval>
</thing>

The other issue I have with this is that if I then try to add Knowledge (Mythos) in any way, it starts at D6 instead of D4 because the first part of the IF statement picks it up.

I thought about creating it as it's own skill, bootstrapping it to everyone and trying to hide it if they havn't translated something yet, but wasn't quite sure how to go about hiding a skill until certain criteria are met. That seems to be what is being discussed over in the Conditional Bootstrapping thread, but as no-one has worked that out yet...

[einhager]

I've been searching around the forums to see if anybody was working on Achtung! Cthulhu data files for Hero Labs and I found this thread. Has there been any recent updates now that the core books are out?