Special Abilities Tab Question

[subfunk]

Is the "Special" tab accessible to a Feat? What I mean is, I'm working on a Feat (Vow of Poverty - Book of Exaulted Deeds) which is quite unlike any other feat in that it grants different benefits at each character level (like class abilities). As a user goes up in levels, I'd like to have these abilities listed in the "Special" tab. However, it looks like you can only dump stuff in there from within a "thing" and I haven't discovered a way creating a "thing" within an eval script of another thing (like a Feat).

An alternative would be to set the compset=clSpecial within an eval script and use field[CustDesc].text to dump each ability to the tab. However, I haven't been able to get that to work either so I thought I'd check here.

Thanks,

Subfunk

PS: Most feats are a cakewalk compared to this one....

[subfunk]

Bump

[rob]

First, you will be able to list some Feats within the Specials tab. Everything is tag-based, so assigning the proper tags to a feat will cause it to appear in the Specials tab. That stuff is being re-worked a bit at the moment to simplify it for user-added material. The plan is to have that capability in the next release. <fingers crossed>

That being said, I get the sense that what you need is something completely different. I'm not familiar with the Vow of Poverty feat, so all I have to go on is your brief description below. What it sounds like you need to do is define each of the level-specific special abilities separately for the feat. For each of those special abilities, you would need to do two additional things. First, you would need to define a Condition test that verifies character has reached the minimum level necessary for the ability. Second, you would need to bootstrap all of these abilities to the feat, causing the selection of the feat to automatically add all of the abilities to the hero. The net result would be that all of the abilities would be added with the feat, but only the ones for which the minimum level had been reached would actually be shown (due to the condition test).

At the moment, the released documentation doesn't cover how to check field values via tag expressions (e.g. the level requirement). I've been adding that stuff to the docs over the past few days and will be adding more this week for inclusion in the next release. At that point, you'll be able to hook in the proper condtiion test. In the meantime, you can use the bootstrapping to add the abilities and have everything in place except for the condition tests.

Hope this helps,
Rob


At 02:39 AM 1/7/2007, you wrote:

Is the "Special" tab accessible to a Feat? What I mean is, I'm working on a Feat (Vow of Poverty - Book of Exaulted Deeds) which is quite unlike any other feat in that it grants different benefits at each character level (like class abilities). As a user goes up in levels, I'd like to have these abilities listed in the "Special" tab. However, it looks like you can only dump stuff in there from within a "thing" and I haven't discovered a way creating a "thing" within an eval script of another thing (like a Feat).

An alternative would be to set the compset within an eval script and use field[CustDesc].text within each script. However, I haven't been able to get that to work either so I thought I'd check here.

Thanks,

Subfunk

PS: Most feats are a cakewalk compared to this one....

[subfunk]

Thanks for the info Rob.

I've got about 80% of the feats in BoED completed and ready for uploading. However, what I'd like to do is make sure that those feats that are not directly affecting an ability score, attribute, etc. are listed in the Special Abilities tab so the player doesn't have to go searching through the feat tab to find all the cool things he/she has.

For the VoP feat, I've currently setup a bunch of evaluation statements (six now and counting) that handle the level checking and apply bonuses to things like AC, deflection, natural armor, etc. That's all good. What I need at this point is to, instead of modifying an attribute or existing tag, Ilist it in the abilites tab.

As an example, at CL3, the character receives endure elements and at CL5, they receive Sustenance. Neither of these affect an existing thing or change a tag value. However, they do affect game play and it would be great to list them in the special abilities tab.

Does this make sense?

The bootstrap route may be best in the long run, but I'm still threading my way through one to see if I can understand how it's put together. I may try a test feat to see if I can get the logic down then remake the VoP.


Thanks,

Subfunk

[rob]

It sounds like you're doing things exactly as we had intended. We just don't have everything in place yet that you need. :-)

Please don't plan on releasing anything until we've got everything nailed down on our end. We're making some changes to things (minor but important ones), so you'll likely need to tweak a few details in your files. These changes will make things simpler overall for authoring, as well as addressing issues like putting feats in the Special Abilities tab.

-Rob


At 05:37 PM 1/9/2007, you wrote:

Thanks for the info Rob.

I've got about 80% of the feats in BoED completed and ready for uploading. However, what I'd like to do is make sure that those feats that are not directly affecting an ability score, attribute, etc. are listed in the Special Abilities tab so the player doesn't have to go searching through the feat tab to find all the cool things he/she has.

For the VoP feat, I've currently setup a bunch of evaluation statements (six now and counting) that handle the level checking and apply bonuses to things like AC, deflection, natural armor, etc. That's all good. What I need at this point is to, instead of modifying an attribute or existing tag, Ilist it in the abilites tab.

As an example, at CL3, the character receives endure elements and at CL5, they receive Sustenance. Neither of these affect an existing thing or change a tag value. However, they do affect game play and it would be great to list them in the special abilities tab.

Does this make sense?

Thanks,

Subfunk

[subfunk]

Thanks Rob.

For some reason, I never noticed the "Abilities" tab in the editor. After looking it over, it makes sense that I can specify the abilities associated with the feat under this tab, and then bootstrap them in the actual feat. This seems to fit in with the way the class abilties are constructed, however you've indicated something is still missing which means, I need to cool my jets and wait a bit before I can do much more. Everything is compiling using this paradigm, but still nothing in the Special Abilities tab, so I'll hang tight.

Thanks again!

Subfunk

[rob]

We need to get things setup so that both Feats AND Special Abilities (and anything else, for that matter) can automatically appear in the Special tab. That's one of the things that is being re-worked from its original implementation. Definitely hang tight on this. The changes will amount to tweaks like adding a tag (or something similar), so it will be quick and easy to do.

-Rob


At 08:19 PM 1/12/2007, you wrote:

Thanks Rob.

For some reason, I never noticed the "Abilities" tab in the editor. After looking it over, it makes sense that I can specify the abilities associated with the feat under this tab, and then bootstrap them in the actual feat. This seems to fit in with the way the class abilties are constructed, however you've indicated something is still missing [img]./modules/mdforum/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img] which means, I need to cool my jets and wait a bit before I can do much more. Everything is compiling using this paradigm, but still nothing in the Special Abilities tab, so I'll hang tight.

Thanks again!

Subfunk