Wish List Items - Gods & Homeland

[Thazar]

All,

I just saw the new posts for Pathfinder plans. Overall it looks great.

I do have a couple of "Wish List" items for the "To Do" list.

1. Would it be possible to add a drop down choice where the Deity section is that would hold all of the Golarion and racial gods?

2. Would it be possible to add a drop down choice for a Homeland field similar in format to the Bakcground/Faction settings?

These are future item requests, as getting the items you listed in the sticky above much higher on the want list.

[rob]

Gods should be in shortly. We had to wait on those until after the license was signed, since those are not OGL.

Mathias will need to comment on the Homeland request.

[Mathias]

The "Use Factions/Backgrounds" optional rule was intended to be able to cover things like Homelands - expanding the Faction selector beyond just the Pathfinder Society Factions.

The Faction tab in the editor will allow you to add new options for that list.

[Thazar]

Cool. I was entering factions from the Faction Guide there and was hoping to have a Faction tab and a Homeland tab. That way they can join one of the actual factions in play and keep it separate from homeland. But I can make them work as a single selector.

Thanks for the feedback, and good to hear about the gods choice.

[Mathias]

Are either factions or homelands exclusive - can you have only one of each?

Is it impossible to write a backstory that will get you the benefits of more than one homeland or more than one faction?

In my opinion, that sort of thing is too flexible to be represented by fixed choices within Hero Lab. I'd personally rather use the background tab or a Word document to discuss homeland and faction affiliation for my character, rather than tying them to specific picks in Hero Lab.

[Thazar]

That is true. But there are feats and traits that require a specific region or faction to be able to select them.

For example I have added the Hellknight faction from the faction guide.

If you are from Cheliax you could select that at character creation. This would allow you to take the trait Devil's Mark. If you later joined the Hellknights and then wanted to take the the feat Ominous Mien you could. (That feat requires a PC to be a member of the Hellknights before the feat can be selected.)

I had coded the new feat just like the trait so that both of those items would be grayed out unless the proper faction was selected. I then realized I would make it so a player could not pick both.

You are correct that this can be tracked in the text of the journal. I can also set up the feats so they verbally warn, within the feat text, the player not to select the feat unless they are a member of the correct faction or homeland. I do not need to make it so they gray out and create a validation error.

Again, this is not a make or break deal in any way... just a nice to have. I agree that there could be MANY ways this could go. But I thought, perhaps naively, that a single Homeland and single Faction drop down would be a feature others may like.

(I have added to the faction choice all of the regions from the campaign guide book and all of the factions from the faction guide... about 75 or so of them. So that is what led me to the idea that there really was two choices for common PCs)

So thanks for the feedback, and whatever works best for you guys is fine. I like what I have so far and look forward to how you bring in the new Golarion specifics going forward!

[Mathias]

I also haven't read the faction guide yet, and there's the Pathfinder Campaign Setting: World Guide / Player Companion: Inner Sea Primer coming down the pipeline. If those have specific rules for what's required in terms of joining factions or homeland affiliation, those will of course be implemented when those books are made available for HL.

I'm just worried about what happens if a character comes up with a background/in-game events that allows them to take the Ominous Mien feat without being an official member of the Hellknights, or breaks ties with the Hellknights after gaining that feat - we have to be able to handle those situations, too.

[jkthomsen9]

Originally Posted by Mathias

Are either factions or homelands exclusive - can you have only one of each?

Is it impossible to write a backstory that will get you the benefits of more than one homeland or more than one faction?

In my opinion, that sort of thing is too flexible to be represented by fixed choices within Hero Lab. I'd personally rather use the background tab or a Word document to discuss homeland and faction affiliation for my character, rather than tying them to specific picks in Hero Lab.

It would be nice to be able to pick multible Factions. I use the faction function to support Affiliations. You could easily be a member of multible Affilations.

[Thazar]

If the option to add multiple factions were added, I think only the very top one would need to be spelled out at the top as part of the main character info. The others could be listed in the personal or background section when printed.

[Silveras]

Adding my voice to the chorus looking for this kind of functionality.

The Faction Guide presents the ability to create additional Factions as needed.

The trick is tracking Prestige Awards, Current Prestige, and Total Prestige per faction when the characters can be members of more than one simultaneously.

Perhaps it might be wise to separate Factions for PFS use from a more general implementation of Factions from the Faction Guide? When using the Faction Guide, a tab for Factions with the Current and Total Prestige Awards for each would be appropriate.

Alternatively, could this be a tie-in from Hero Lab to the Realm Manager product in development?