Tome of Battle: Book of Nine Swords

[Lawful_g]

And my comment was a reference to a skit on Space Ghost: Coast to Coast, no offense was taken.

The thing Mathias is talking about is similar to what I did to make the Warlock class.

When you have a thing in HL, it is made up of fields (which usually store numbers, but sometimes text), and tags (which mark attributes of a thing), it is the interaction of these that defines the characteristics of the thing. Let me try and explain Mathias' suggestion a little more simply for you.

In the editor there is a tab called Specials, go there and create a special, give it a name like "Initiator Levels" and a unique ID "xInitiate". Now this special has many fields automatically in it, one of the fields is named "Value" and stores a number. This is what our other things (manuevers etc) will look at.

There are also tags on it which determine if it will be shown in the actual HL program when it is added. Since adding to the things Value field and checking the number can happen in the background without the user missing anything, we should leave the tag that reveals it to the user off. You can control that tag by checking or unchecking the "Show in Specials List?" button in the editor when you are making the special.

Now we have our special but nothing is adding to the value field or checking the value field, and the program doesn't know when to add it. So the next step is to attach it to all the classes that need it. Go to each of those classes and hit the Bootstrap button and enter the unique ID for your new special. Now when you add a level of the class the special will come with it, but the user still won't see it because it lacks the tag to show itself.

Here is an important note, if you add levels of 3 different classes that all need the thing, it will be added 3 times by default. This isn't good, slows the program down and is confusing. How do we fix it? In the editor go back to the special you made, look toward the top, there is a section that says "Uniqueness" with a drop down box above it. The box defaults to "No", which is why each class will add another copy. Change it from "No" to "Unique". That way no matter how many classes try to add the thing, only 1 copy will exist on the hero.

Now you have your special, and no matter what there will always only be one copy of it on the hero. Let's handle the adding to it's value. Go back to each of those classes' Class Helpers (that is the name of the tab) and make Eval Scripts to add to the value, based on their level.

For example if 1 level of the class adds 1 to the initiator level, you script might look like this:

Phase: Post Levels Priority: 10000
~ Add our levels in this class to the value of the Initiator level thing's Value field
hero.childfound[xInitiate].field[Value].value += field[cTotalLev].value

The above script spells out "hero.childfound[xInitiate]" because it is looking for something else on the hero, but since the "cTotalLev" field is on the same thing, it doesn't need to specify the class helpers Unique ID. Also, you may have to modify the above if a class adds, for example, half levels or something.

Ok, so now we have our special and all the classes you add to the hero add to it's value, which it faithfully stores. Now to make maneuvers check it to confirm they are valid.

Create whatever Maneuvers or Powers you want, it sounds like you have already done many of them. Each needs a minimum initiator level, so click on the Expr Reqs button for the thing. The first line is the error message to be displayed, something like "Minimum Xth level Initiator required." and the second is the script to check the thing is valid. Give line 2 this code:

hero.childfound[xInitiate].field[Value].value >= X

Where "X" is the minimum initiator level required by that thing. Now each of those should be able to be enforced in HL.

Is the above explanation clear?