"Dread" undead templates from Advanced Bestiary

[Mathias]

The only difference between Augmenting and Replacing is whether the original Type appears in the Type listing, like a Human Vampire (Bestiary, pg 271):

Medium undead (augmented humanoid)

Or not, like a Half-Dragon Basilisk (Bestiary, pg 170):

Medium dragon

(that one leaves out the fact that the basilisk race itself is a magical beast)

No template should be choosing more than one of the ways to replace the type. The order in the editor is the order the code will check them in - so if it finds an "Override Type", it will ignore "Augmenting Type" and "Replacement Type"

[djc664]

Here's the file set I mentioned - I slimmed it down to the USER file with my code (unfinished overall, but hopefully it will be helpful) and the Portfolio with the creature I was trying to convert with to.

Let me know if you have any questions. I apologize in advance for my mess.

[Paris.Crenshaw]

Thanks! I'll let you know.

As an aside, I finally got the Dread Zombie to work. I don't know why, but starting with the Skeleton Champion template and making all the necessary changes worked fine. For some reason, starting with the zombie template and converting it to a Dread Zombie was forcing the system to give a "Template precludes class levels" validation error.

The only thing now is that I need to figure out how to have the template assign a bite natural attack, but only if the creature doesn't already posses one. As it is, the template gives a kobold "bite x2".

In the meantime, I'm moving on to using some of Chava's files and my lessons learned from the Dread Zombie to build the Dread Wight.

[Mathias]

Oops. I haven't set a checkbox for that. I've added that to my to-do list.

On the Zombie template, press the "Tags" button at the top right. You'll see that one of the tags that's there is TemplHelp.NoClasses. I need to get the setting of that tag moved into a checkbox.

[Paris.Crenshaw]

Originally Posted by Mathias

Oops. I haven't set a checkbox for that. I've added that to my to-do list.

On the Zombie template, press the "Tags" button at the top right. You'll see that one of the tags that's there is TemplHelp.NoClasses. I need to get the setting of that tag moved into a checkbox.

Ahah! That makes sense. I guess I missed seeing that in the tags area. I tried to do a "side-by-side" comparison on the templates, but I obviously wasn't thorough enough.

Thanks for pointing it out!

Is there a place where I might find the code that would tell a template to only add a certain kind of natural attack if the base creature doesn't already possess that attack?

[Mathias]

Originally Posted by Paris.Crenshaw

Is there a place where I might find the code that would tell a template to only add a certain kind of natural attack if the base creature doesn't already possess that attack?

I haven't figured out a way to do that yet. I tend to just assign the attack, and trust the user to figure out which version is correct (you get the same problem if a Half-Orc with the Toothy trait takes the Animal Fury barbarian rage power, takes enough levels in dragon disciple, or takes the Razortusk feat - the decision of which bite to use, from which source, is up to the user, since Hero Lab can't figure out which is better.

[Paris.Crenshaw]

Okay, thanks. I'll have to look at it again. In my goofing around with it last night, I discovered that removing the bite natural attack from the template completely removed the attack from the character. I need to go back and look at why the stat block is showing "bite x2" for that attack. I'm sure there's something obvious that I just haven't seen.

[ShadowChemosh]

Originally Posted by Paris.Crenshaw

stat block is showing "bite x2" for that attack.

The number of attacks is setup by the Value.? tag where ? is the number of attacks. So my assumption here is what you copied from something that had Claw attacks, which should be Claw x2, and you didn't change the Value.2 tag to 1. So you get two.

That would be on the Bootstrap of the wBite thing where you would find the tag Value.2.

[Paris.Crenshaw]

Originally Posted by ShadowChemosh

The number of attacks is setup by the Value.? tag where ? is the number of attacks. So my assumption here is what you copied from something that had Claw attacks, which should be Claw x2, and you didn't change the Value.2 tag to 1. So you get two.

That would be on the Bootstrap of the wBite thing where you would find the tag Value.2.

You're a very clever person, ShadowChemosh. I do believe I just changed the wClaw tag from the Skeleton Champion template into a wBite. I don't even remember looking at the Value entry.

Shame on me. And thanks very much for setting me on the right course.