Why is a copy not really a copy?

[Dastir]

Just got Hero Lab and I must say that over all I am quite impressed. Except with the documentation... I am running into a problem trying to add a "new" prestige class. Let me explain the quotes:

My gaming group has a house rule whereby the requirements for the Archmage prestige class are eased somewhat. Specifically, we do not require the Skill Focus or Spell Focus feats. I am trying to make a version of the archmage class that implements this and am quite stuck.

I started by doing a New (Copy) based upon the existing Archmage prestige class. I was quite surprised when the pre-reqs didn't copy over, but had no problem implementing them. Everything was going great until I added the existing Archmage class and my new "Archmage 2" class to the same character and compared them side by side.

Besides significant layout differences in the class panels, their is a bit of rather significant functionality tyhat did not get copied as well. The base class has a pick list for the High Arcana abilities that does not exist on my new class. After much digging and comparing with the base class that I (very happily) found in the source directory, I think I have narrowed this down to requiring some combination of portals, templates and/or layouts. I don't know which ones just yet.

As far as I can tell there is no utility available for adding, or editing these things. I only narrowed it down to these three by opening the source file and my custom file in Win Merge and comparing the two (yes, I did try to perform a merge to see what would happen, the number of duplicate id errors was truly staggering...)

Is there a utility for creating these things (portals/termplates/layouts), or am I doomed to hand editing the XML files? Has anyone done this yet that can send me a .dat file? Am I even barking up the right tree, or is my problem something else entirely? Can anyone explain to me why when I "copy" something, it doesn't actually produce a true *copy*?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

It's 12:17 AM... time for bed...

Thanks!

[Mathias]

I can't help you with the class' custom abilities not changing over, and from testing it myself, it looks like pre-requisites simply don't copy over from the class level tab to a "New (Copy)"-ed class, but if all you're doing is changing a class' pre-requisites, here's a set of instructions I just gave someone for changing a class' Hit Dice:

http://support.wolflair.com/index.ph...ewtopic&t=8152

HD and pre-reqs are both on the class level tab, rather than the class tab, and the class level tab is much simpler to replace than the class tab, since it holds less information.

[Dastir]

Sweet... that worked!

I actually wanted to create another class entirely so that the original Archmage class could stay as is, but until I can figure out how to do so, this will be a great workaround.

Thanks for the help!

[Mathias]

I just thought to check - you don't have to fill in the "Replaces Thing ID" field - that way you will get two different versions.