Custom Ability choices based of ranked Skills

[Matt Droz]

Here's what I'm looking to do (based on the Zhentarim Spy in Player's Guide to Faerûn).

The character can have a cover identity for each Craft or Profession skill that has two or more ranks. I've got it so that I can do a count of the skills and get how many Cover Identities they can choose for a Custom Ability. What I would like is if there is a quick and dirty way to create the list it pulls from instead of my adding a list item for each Craft and Profession skill and setting a prerequisite to display it based on its ranks.

Any ideas/suggestions?

[Mathias]

a foreach through all the craft and profession skills - for each one with 2+ ranks, add its tagids[thingid.?] to field[usrCandid1].text. That way, you're building up a selection list that includes only the valid skills at that time.

[Matt Droz]

Okay, do you have that in code form? I've tried a couple of different things, but it's giving me a error on the "candid1" item. Here's what I've got, in the Eval Scripts on the Class tab:

Phase: First Priority: 100 Index: 1

      ~search through all the craft skills we have and count how many we have 2+ ranks in
      foreach pick in hero from BaseSkill where "Helper.SkCatCraft"
        if (eachpick.field[skUser].value >= 2) then
          field[candid1].text += foreach.tagids[thingid.?]
          endif
        nexteach

      ~search through all the profession skills we have and count how many we have 2+ ranks in
      foreach pick in hero from BaseSkill where "Helper.SkCatProf"
        if (eachpick.field[skUser].value >= 2) then
          field[candid1].text += foreach.tagids[thingid.?]
          endif
        nexteach

[Matt Droz]

The red text is just something I put in to show how I'm thinking. I've tried a couple other bits of code and can't seem to get the right one.

[Mathias]

&=, not += when adding text to an existing text string. += is for adding numbers to each other.

Also,

foreach pick in hero from BaseSkill where "Helper.SkCatProf | Helper.SkCatCraft"

so you can combine the two foreaches into one.

You'll also need an OR: " | " between each Id you place in there:

 
field[usrCandid1].text = splice(field[usrCandid1].text,eachpick.tagids[thingid.?]," | ")

Sorry about mis-typing the Id of the usrCandid1 field earlier - I was typing too fast and not thinking hard enough about what I was writing.

Phase & Priority: never use First unless there's a specific reason to, and don't use priorities of less than 1000 unless there's a specific reason to. I'd say Final/10000 for this.

You may also want to use skRanks, instead of skUser, so that it also finds those skills whose ranks have come from racial skill ranks or from a headband of vast intelligence.

[Matt Droz]

Thanks!

It's compiling fine now, but when it completes, I get a list of the following error multiple times:

Attempt to access field 'usrCandid1' that does not exist for thing 'cHelpZht'

I tried putting it in as a User Tag, but still get the error.

      ~search through all the craft skills we have and count how many we have 2+ ranks in
      var bonus as number
      foreach pick in hero from BaseSkill where "Helper.SkCatProf | Helper.SkCatCraft"
        if (eachpick.field[skRanks].value >= 2) then
          field[usrCandid1].text = splice(field[usrCandid1].text,eachpick.tagids[thingid.?]," | ")
          endif
        nexteach

[Mathias]

Oh, I thought you were on a class special and were building the list for a drop-down.

How are you doing this?

[Matt Droz]

On the Class tab, trying to build it as a Custom Ability list.

[Mathias]

Suggestion: Have only one (not unique) "Cover Id" ability that can be selected - each Id you add then uses a drop-down to select which skill it applies to. The user adds a new copy for each cover Id they want.

[Matt Droz]

Okay, I'll take a look and see if I can make it work that way.