Knowledge skills

[CapedCrusader]

And what I meant by Setting is just that. Pathfinder is Swords and Sorcery, period. It's rather easy to come up with a dozen or so Knowledge Skills and have that be your list. You could never get away with that in Savage Worlds. Each Setting would have it's own list. Also, since Savage Worlds is designed around the idea of a limited Skill list, Knowledge is meant to be a catch-all for anything a player wants that's not on the list. It's a completely different design philosophy in the game system itself, not Hero Lab. Savage Worlds is not meant to have a set list of Knowledge Skills. It's supposed to be open ended. Hero Lab was/is coded to match this design.

[SeeleyOne]

It seems that you are misunderstanding my intent.

As you say, Savage Worlds is all about free-form Knowledge. That is ok, you can keep the Fill-in-the-Blank Knowledge. I never said to take it away, and the example that I showed for a revised Scholar edge allows it.

However, It is clear to me by reading the Savage World rulebook that there are, in fact, predefined Knowledge skills. Two relatively common examples are Arcana and Battle. I admit that a specific knowledge is only shown in the core book for three edges: Soul Drain, Tactician, and Wizard. Three or four archetypes in the SWD use Battle, Arcana, and Science (although in this case I think it is a generic slot for a science).

Mr. Fix It and Gadgeteer are not actually validated in Hero Lab as there is no way of knowing if there is a science skill or not. But it IS possible to make up some as predefined knowledges, and check for those. In fact, my suggestion for this is to extend the wildcard to "skKnS?" and require all predefined science skills to have that.

Do you want Computers in your fantasy game? Probably not. Preclude it, just like everything else that is not wanted is precluded. It is easy to do, probably the easiest "mod" to make. However there is a very high likelihood that the same Knowledge definitions will come up over and over again (Battle and Arcana are two examples). I see those same two popping up in setting books as well. Most settings have some Knowledge skill overlap, and I see no reason to punish people -- there is absolutely no need to have ONLY the fill-in-the-blank version.

I guess we can just agree to disagree here. I don't understand what the big deal is. It seems to me that your real concern is that some things will have to be revised. That is true, but they are easy fixes and I have already started to tackle them all in my house rules.

I am curious what these other problem areas are that you mention. My guess is magic items and creatures, but that is really easy to fix. I will probably just search the source files with Visual Studio to find them. I thank you for the caution but I have to admit that in this case it seems to me to be rather minor concern.

[jbearwillis]

CapedCrusader what you is say is correct to a point, In the main book, it does give the optional rule to allow a more narrower skill set. To say you worked no power point option into the program yet just didn't think about the other option is a loss to me. My gaming group liked the idea of a narrower skill set, which the deluxe rules allow as an optional rule. not a house rule. To me the knowledge skill is the same can work the same way. To say Savage Worlds is design that way to me is plain wrong. Yes most is set up that way, but the optional rule is there for people to use if they like, Which means that the game designs knew there would be people that would want to use it. So that's makes it a viable rule and what it sounds like to me is your saying the way we run our game is wrong to the rules.
It says on page 95

Skill Specialization
Savage Worlds skills are intended to be broad, allowing
characters to focus primarily on Edges for customization rather
than multiple iterations of something like Fighting for edged
weapons, Fighting for blunt weapons, etc.
If it’s important to your setting to have more detail, a
character uses his normal skill for one device of choice. When
using any other variation he suffers a –2 penalty.
Gaining an additional specialization counts as raising a skill
below its linked Attribute. So a character can gain two new
specializations with an Advance, or gain a specialization and
increase a skill below its linked Attribute.
Below are skills appropriate for this extra detail and some
example specializations:
• Boating: Powered, Sailed, Steam
• Driving: Hover, Tracked, Wheeled
• Fighting: Axe, Blunt Weapon, Exotic (such as nunchaku;
each is separate), Long blade, Pole arm, Short blade.
• Piloting: Fixed Wing, Rotary, Space
• Riding: Camel, Horse, etc.
• Shooting: Bow, Crossbow, Pistol, Rifle, Shotgun, etc.
• Survival: Arctic, Desert, Temperate

I'm not trying to start any thing, I'm just saying the rules do allow it, if it works for your setting is all. and to not thought about it when you were building the program is a real bummer. Considering that you thought to do the No power point option.

[CapedCrusader]

Ah, but unfortunately, Skill Specialization is not supported by Hero Lab. It would take a rewrite of the entire Savage Worlds module to accomplish, and it was decided that there wasn't enough demand to allow a rewrite at that level.

That being said, I never said don't do it. I just said be aware that there can be side effects. There aren't a lot of them, but they can jump up and slap you. If you are warned, you have a better chance of identifying the issue faster. Seeley, you seem quick enough that I'm fairly sure you'd roll right through it, but I just want everyone to be aware of the possible pitfalls.

I just keep remembering all the times I had to write code specifically to allow for the open-ended nature of Knowledge Skills. Most of the places had to do with adding additional code to deal with Knowledge Skills rather than making allowances for them in existing code. Most of those shouldn't get in your way.

[CapedCrusader]

Also, look at it this way - Skill Specialization makes EVERYTHING as open-ended as Knowledge Skills.

[SeeleyOne]

Skill specializations would require some sort of rewrite. I have a couple of ideas, but the best idea that I have is to make it like an edge that has two menus. Those menus would then search its own list of whatever it has. For sanity purposes, I would have the edge be skill specific. So a Fighting Proficiency edge would cover two Fighting weapons, but it could not be one Fighting and one Shooting.

[SeeleyOne]

Regarding Skill Specialization, a solution dawned on me.

I remembered that you can put a fractional value in for an Edge cost. So make each Specialization be a half of an edge (0.5). This works at creation and during Advancements.

Then you can put an eval script inside a mechanic that checks for them if its source is checked. If the edge is there, the penalty is removed. Otherwise the penalty is applied by the mechanic to eachpick of the weapon. Skill specializations that do not affect weapons are even easier to implement (no mechanic is needed).

It is an easy mod to do, actually.

[SeeleyOne]

Originally Posted by CapedCrusader

Also, look at it this way - Skill Specialization makes EVERYTHING as open-ended as Knowledge Skills.

Maybe. Or "kind of".

It really depends on how you want to implement them. Weapons are an easy division -- but that can be divided by specific weapon, or more broad groups. One-handed weapons and Two-Handed weapons might be an idea, the eval would check for if the weapon requires two hands. But you might just want to use the book's ideas.

For other skills I would be more inclined to have sub-versions. Like for Lockpicking have a traps specialization. For stealth have Pick Pockets and Sneaking.

As I said, the only specializations that the sheet is likely to really care about are where they involve weapons.

[SeeleyOne]

There are a couple of options on how to make Hero Lab recognize different weapons. Obviously it would depend on how you want to group them.

1. Specific weapon (where the script has to know about each weapon specifically). I do not recommend this.

2. As I mentioned, whether or not the weapon is two-handed. This is how the Divinty Original Sin game does it.

3. Weapon Type. This is the best way, redefine this on the weapon and have it search for that. Since you can make new tags you can define them and then coordinate it with the appropriate Specialization. You might be able to make a mechanic that can redefine this (again, for specified weapons), but if that works like the defined fields in a new Power, it will not work. I tried to make the cost field for the Zombie spell change when the character has the Necromancer edge but it does not allow you to do that with an eval script (and it even told me that on what was going to be a "smart" version of the Zombie power). So you would probably have to use a new version of all of the weapons that use the desired Weapon Type. On the bright side, a Weapon Type can make it easier to look for a weapon that you know how to use.

[PhilAdams]

I'm trying to brute force in a specializations system for Interface Zero. What I was thinking of doing was just typing multiple specializations in one skill Domain. That works fine, except that it breaks compare in Edges like Hacker. I was stunned to discover when reading the documentation that there's no "contains" and wild card capability?!?!? So something like this:

foreach pick in hero where "thingid.skIZKnow"
if (compare(lowercase(eachpick.field[domDomain].text),"programming") = 0)


could become

foreach pick in hero where "thingid.skIZKnow"
if (contains(lowercase(eachpick.field[domDomain].text),"program") = 0)


or at least have the ability to do wildcard searches like so

foreach pick in hero where "thingid.skIZKnow"
if (compare(lowercase(eachpick.field[domDomain].text),"?program?") = 0)


Is there a way to convert the text field search into a tag evaluation so I can use wildcards? That would give me the ability to handle the hardest part of specializations. Without that, I would need to count how many instances of each skill shows up and deduct the cost of everything beyond the first one, and then add a flat +1 for the specialization. The most brute force method I've come up with is to simply note the specializations in the character description text and somehow kluge the cost of skills.

I'm wide open to ideas. What I've done up to this point is to make skills non-unique.