Help with FREE Hinderances and Edges

[SeeleyOne]

If you do ever use a Replace Thing ID, never ever put a source ID on it. It causes complaints when opening other characters that have the thing/item/whatever but not the source checked. It also becomes invisible to things do not have the source checked.

As stated above, it becomes a universal "house rule". As long as the user file is in the folder, it is applied to everything that uses that thing.

[SeeleyOne]

As for the rewards and hindrances, I figured that out by looking over the source code. I came up with a house rule where I give characters some extra reward points and they can either use it to buy whatever those points do or buy a race. That way it was possible to have races that are worth variable amounts of points instead of the standard +2.

[SeeleyOne]

Originally Posted by zarlor

One thing you might add here is a Literacy Edge, since it presumably costs an Advance, but it should have a Pick Req of Illiterate.

Good call, but if you do this, I would suggest that you add the following to the new Illiterate hindrance, assuming that you give the Literacy edge the unique id of edgLiteracy

if (hero.tagis[Edge.edgLiteracy] = 1) then
      perform this.assign[Print.NoPrint]
endif

This way the character can "buy" it off and the hindrance will no longer show up on the printout.

[Myridden]

I'm going through and converting my Replace Thing IDs to Precludes now that I know better. Thanks for that, I never would have expected!

I did use zarlor's suggestion for an Edge called "Become Literate" that requires Illiterate as a pick-req, and I found your discussion of print.noprint in the Edge Upgrades and Visibility thread and applied it as well, so it's good to know I'm thinking along the right lines!

Thanks again guys. I'm sure I'll come up with more questions as I go, but it's starting to fall more in place thanks to your help.

Regards,

~M

[zarlor]

Originally Posted by Myridden

I'm going through and converting my Replace Thing IDs to Precludes now that I know better. Thanks for that, I never would have expected!

I did the exact same thing when I started using the HL editor as well, so it's a very common mistake to make. They should put a mouse-over warning by that in the Editor or something.

[SeeleyOne]

I still use them sometimes. There are situations where it is better to use them. In Mutants and Masterminds I wanted to change the cost of many of the power effects, the only way to do that and still have the downloadable characters apply them is by having the powers replace the originals. It is better than going to each character and changing them to my new version manually.

I have yet to want to use Savage Worlds characters to download that were entered into a book, however.

[jbearwillis]

It's a great way to do things if you are only going to share with your players that have hero lab, but if your going to share any files with the community, then it's a definite no, no! LOL

[Myridden]

I discovered the downside of not using the replace functionality.

I made a setting specific duplicate of the modified skills for the Beasts & Barbarians setting in the editor when I first started creating the datafile a couple of weeks ago - then the other night I noticed the "Thief" Edge from the base setting wasn't applying the +2 stealth after I converted all the replaces to hidden.

Now it looks like I'll be going through all of the edges from the default setting to identify which ones reference the modified skills and making duplicates of them to reference the replacement skills.

Seems like limiting the replace field to only function when a source is selected would make a lot of sense instead of being global (that's actually how I thought it worked originally). Currently a change that could be made with 1 field entry is going to require many more hidden and duplicate edge entries.

[Mathias]

Can mechanics and description overwriting cover the changes you need to make, so that you don't need to hide or replace anything?

[zarlor]

Personally I avoid both Replaces and Hidden like the plague. Precludes (which are source specific) are the way to go. Replacing skills wholesale, though, that's something I'd generally avoid (except for power skills, like faith or spellcasting, which generally don't cause a problem to make new versions of since the main things that reference it are an AB that you're creating for a setting anyway).

Description overwriting, though? I've never done something like that but I also wonder if there is a wholesale replacement of skills happening why would you do that and is it, indeed, just something that a description overwrite could handle.