Adding Undead Traits?

[Lonewolf147]

I'm recreating a powerful NPC from a module. It's a Death Knight (not Dragonlance). I can easily create the character with all his class levels, but how do I turn him undead? I have the community pack installed, but I don't see anything that let's me give undead traits.

Do I have to create a custom race? If so, how do I adjust the level adjustment for that? When I select custom race, it creates a level 1 'custom race'.

[bodrin]

I'm not near HL at the moment but have a look at any template that turns the base creature into undead. The Vampire or Lich would be good have a look at the tags added, you should see typUndead or something similarly named, then just bootstrap the typUndead tag onto your new death knight class.

This should give you the benefits and penalties of the Undead type.

[Sendric]

You can create a simple race that is undead. If you don't need to add any special abilities, then just bootstrap the "Type - Undead" special. There are other races that do this (such as mummy or vampire), so you could look to those as examples if you need to. If you get stuck with anything, I'll get on a computer with HL and give you a more exact set of instructions.

[Lonewolf147]

LOL, I really need to sit down and try to learn how to do editing in HL. I've seen the word bootstrap and Thing so many times but have no understanding what they actually mean. I'll play around and see what I can figure out. Can you point me to any good resources for using the HL editor?

[Sendric]

Originally Posted by Lonewolf147

Can you point me to any good resources for using the HL editor?

If you take a look at Bodrin's signature above you will see links to Video Tutorials and a Pathfinder FAQ. Pathfinder is similar (though more advanced) to d20 and a lot of what you can learn in the videos can be applied here. I also recommend downloading the community set if you haven't already. The way I learned to code is by copying what other people did, and the community set is chock-full of all kinds of great stuff. For something like this, I would probably start by doing New (copy) in the editor on the race tab and selecting human. Then I would remove all the excess stuff, and add in the undead type and you should be all set. Let me know if you need help.

[Lonewolf147]

Sounds like a plan for me

I'm familiar with Pathfinder and do like it a lot. But I've got a lot of 3.5 material and friends who like that too. I've purchased many of the PF datasets and plan to get even more as I get the extra cash.

Thanks

[Kendall-DM]

I highly recommend bootstrapping Monster Type specials, otherwise you end up doing a lot more work than you need to. Better to bootstrap one item than 15 or so (undead have a ton of specials across the board).

[Lonewolf147]

Thanks, now that I have an understanding how bootstrapping works, I'll be going through the list of pre-made Things and stuff. Thanks again