Smite Law

[kazlady]

I am creating user files for the Dragonlance Spectre of Sorrows adventure campaign. Currently I am working on chapter 4 of book 2 (Spectre of Sorrows) and am having trouble with the animated object called the celestinfernal engine. The idea behind the object is that a gnome made the clocktower engine keep itself in balance by giving it celestial and fiendish traits. It is a colossal construct with a template similar to the celestial template. The "balance" it was supposed to create has gone haywire (as any gnomish invention does) and it is now more of a chaotic template. I've included the statblock on the creature. Currently I am having trouble adding the "Smite Law" ability to the creature. Any suggestions?

CELESTinFERnAL EnGinE CR 12; Colossal construct (chaotic); HD 32d10+80; hp 256; Init -3; Spd 0 ft.; AC 15, touch 3, flat-footed 14; BAB +24; Grp +49; Atk +25 melee (4d6+13, tentacle); Full Atk +25 melee (4d6+13, 4 tentacles); Space/Reach 30 ft/30 ft.; SA constrict, smite law 1/day, spell-like abilities; SQ construct traits, damage reduction 10/lawful or magic, darkvision 60 ft, low-light vision, resistance to acid, cold, electricity, fire and sonic 5,spell-like abilities; AL CN; SV Fort + 10, Ref +7, Will +5; Str28, Dex 13, Con-, lnt 10, Wis 10, Cha 10.
Constrict (Ex): The Celestinfernal Engine deals 4d6+ 13 points of damage with
a grapple attack.
Smite Law (Ex): Once per day, the celestinfernal Engine may make a normal melee attack to deal +20 damage to lawful-aligned foes.
Spell-Like Abilities: 1/day-animate objects, chaos hammer (DC 14), cloak of
chaos, dispel law (DC 15), magic cirde against law, protection from law, shatter, word of chaos (DC 17). Caster level 16th.

[Sendric]

Originally Posted by kazlady

Currently I am having trouble adding the "Smite Law" ability to the creature.

What problem are you having specifically?

[kazlady]

It should operate exactly as smite evil but against law so I am copying Smite Evil in the General/Special tab and editing accordingly. I can copy it fine and when I test it is says its fine but when I go to add it to the creatures special abilities it doesn't show up in the list of options. I checked to make sure there were not prereqs set for it already. Not sure what else to check.

[Sendric]

Originally Posted by kazlady

It should operate exactly as smite evil but against law so I am copying Smite Evil in the General/Special tab and editing accordingly. I can copy it fine and when I test it is says its fine but when I go to add it to the creatures special abilities it doesn't show up in the list of options. I checked to make sure there were not prereqs set for it already. Not sure what else to check.

Smite Evil is a class special that bootstraps a special of the same name. What you need to do is copy the class special, modify that, then bootstrap the special you created. So, the chain would look like this:

Class Level bootstraps Class special which bootstraps special.

[kazlady]

Will I be able to boot strap a class level to a race? This is an NPC race I'm doing. It has no class levels.

[Sendric]

Originally Posted by kazlady

Will I be able to boot strap a class level to a race? This is an NPC race I'm doing. It has no class levels.

My apologies. In that case, you were doing it correctly. I just took a quick look, and it appears that if the Value field is empty, then the Helper.ShowSpec tag doesn't apply to it, which means it's on the character but won't appear in the Specials tab. I'm not clear why this is the case yet.

Update: it seems to have something to do with the call CalcValue command in the second script.. I don't really know what this does but in all likelihood you don't need it. Try removing it and see if that helps.

[ShadowChemosh]

Originally Posted by Sendric

Update: it seems to have something to do with the call CalcValue command in the second script.. I don't really know what this does but in all likelihood you don't need it. Try removing it and see if that helps.

CalcValue should be looking for a Value.? tag. I would think it would also look for a Value field but maybe not. You can see exactly what this is doing now in the editor. If you go to "General->*Procedure" you can do a 'New (Copy)' and look up "CalcValue" to see what the script is doing. This is really nice feature Colen added a few versions back.

[kazlady]

Figured it out. The Smite Law doesn't have an attack bonus so I removed the eval scripts. Working perfectly now.