Make races for Savage Worlds?

[texaspoet]

Original message deleted.

[texaspoet]

Alright I figured out how to change the value of things for Natural Armor, Size, etc.

How about getting a stat bonus bigger than +1? I want a race that gets +2 to Strength, and I can't work out how to do that inside the Editor.

Thanks!

[rob]

First of all, races are actually a combination of two different types of things. There is the race itself and the various racial abilities that it confers. By separating them out, it makes it easy to mix and match the various abilities with new races. So assigning a stat bonus of +2 would be conferred via a racial ability, and that's where we'll focus.

When using the Editor, you'll find it easiest to start with something similar to what you want and make minor adjustments. With that in mind, the "Strong" racial ability already confers a +1 to Strength. So let's start with that.

Within the Editor, click on the Racial Ability tab at the top. Then click on the "New (Copy)" button in the lower left. This brings up a list of the existing racial abilities so you can pick one to copy. Scroll down and select the "Strength" ability. This will populate the Editor with a new racial ability that is identical to "Strength", except that you need to assign it a new unique id and modify the name.

You can pick a new id like "abStrong2" to indicate it's a "+2" adjustment. Then change the name appropriately. Now all you need to do is confer the +2 Strength adjustment. This is done via the Eval script that is already defined for the thing. The "Eval Scripts" button in the upper right should be highlighted in red to show that there are scripts present. Click on it to bring up the script.

You'll see a script that consists of a single line of code. It increase a trait at creation by the given value. If you wanted to adjust Smarts, you could simply change the unique id of the trait being modified. However, all you want is to confer +2 instead of +1. So all that's needed is to change the "1" to "2". Then click OK to save the change to the script.

At this point, your new racial ability is all set. Go ahead and save it, then click the button to test it. It won't be used by any races yet, but it's now in place and ready for use.

The next step is to go to your race and associate the new racial ability with it. This is accomplished through "bootstraps", which automatically add the associated things whenever they are added themselves.

I'm going to assume you haven't worked out creating new races yet, although it's possible you have, in which case you'll have everything you need already. If not, then here's how to add the race and hook things up.

Switch to the Race tab. We're now going to create a new race. We'll use the same copy approach as above and start with one that is similar to what we want. So let's pick Half-Orc. Click on the "New (Copy)" button and select "Half-Orc". You now have a new race that behaves just like the original. Change the name and pick a suitable unique id.

All the "smarts" for races is managed through the various racial abilities they confer. As I mentioned above, these are hooked up via "bootstraps". You'll note that the "Bootstraps" button on the upper right is highlighted in red to show that the race already has bootstraps. Click on the button.

The form that appears shows a list of different bootstraps. These are the various things that are automatically added to any character of this race. Each is identified by its unique id and can be customized via the buttons shown with each one. We can delete the first two bootstraps that don't apply to our race by clicking on the delete buttons at the right. Then we can change the unique id of the remaining bootstrap to "abStrong2" (or whatever you chose for the racial ability) and save our changes.

We now have a new race that confers a +2 bonus to Strength and nothing else. You can verify this by saving the race and then clicking the "Test Now" button. Go into HL and select the race. It should confer the proper bonus to the character.

This ought to walk you through the basics of how to use this stuff. It's really pretty easy once you've done it a couple of times. You'll get the hang of it quickly.

Let me know if you have further questions and I'll do my best to answer them.

[texaspoet]

Awesome, thanks for the help, Rob.