Hide skills without making them non-live

[JadedDragoon]

This was originally part of a different thread that changed dramatically as I came to understand HL's mechanics. Since it's now a radically different question (and the previous thread is no longer generating responses) I'm making a new thread here.

To quote myself:

Basically, all classes (and monsters) lose Climb and Swim in favor of a single Athletics skill. If the class originally had swim as a class skill, it gets a feat called "Athletic Proficiency - Swim" that allows it to use its class skill bonus on swim checks (normally it loses it for swim checks). Same with Climb. Most classes will end up getting both feats or neither but a rare few get only one or the other. Jump remains part of acrobatics.

The point is just to not have to put ranks in both climb _and_ swim. They improve together. That's always bugged the hell out of me. Both are skills you can learn in a day (in other words... a feat). The rest is practicing your form or identifying stable hand/toe holds and building upper body strength. Balancing this is the fact that I give _every_ class Perception as a class skill (because I tend to be quite ham-fisted with perception checks... and it ends up a save-or-die every now and then).

I don't want to have to make each individual other Thing that references Climb and Swim to be aware of my new Athletics skill. Not one by one, at least. My thought process on accomplishing this was sparked by the help text from the consolidated skill portion of the Skill editor. Specifically how it talks about the base skills still actually being added to the hero... but hidden in such a way that they aren't visible on the character sheet/stat blocks/encounter ui.

The idea I'm working with is to have the athletics skill use eval scripts to add ranks to a hidden Climb and Swim skill (which i already have working). That way other Things that reference Climb and Swin can keep right on doing so transparently and, in the UI, it behaves as if they are working off of the Athletics skill.

Minous suggested adding the Hide.All tag to the Skill pick. But when I tried that, it didn't work.

So there are two questions here:

1. Is there a better way to implement custom combined skills?
2. If not, how do I hide skills in the UI but keep them active for scripts and Things to continue referencing?
   • As an extension of that, is there a way to look up all tag groups and tags available in the current game system? Or at the very least specific ones?

[ShadowChemosh]

LW added logic for Unchained to do stuff like this automatically. I made use of it for the Community Pack to make the Starfinder addition. When you activate the Starfinder source for GM's it combines climb and swim into Athletics.

You can see the XML HERE or if you already have the pack installed just open that file in the editor.

[Krothos]

Why don't use the Consolidated Skills from Pathfinder Unchained? It combines those skills into Acrobatics already.

[JadedDragoon]

Originally Posted by ShadowChemosh

LW added logic for Unchained to do stuff like this automatically. I made use of it for the Community Pack to make the Starfinder addition. When you activate the Starfinder source for GM's it combines climb and swim into Athletics.

You can see the XML HERE or if you already have the pack installed just open that file in the editor.

Ooo, nifty, thanks. I'll take a look. I would have looked at how consolidated skills do it but I don't have pathfinder unchained so i can load the consolidated skills in the editor.

Originally Posted by Krothos

Why don't use the Consolidated Skills from Pathfinder Unchained? It combines those skills into Acrobatics already.

Because I don't like the way it combines them. I only want to combine just those two skills and I don't want Jump to be a part of Athletics and I don't want to double skill rank costs. And I absolutely definitely don't want to pay $20 to be able to do something I don't want to do.

I didn't mention it here but I did on the other thread... I'm well aware of the consolidated skill rules that are part of pathfinder unchained. They aren't what I want.

[JadedDragoon]

Wait, what am I looking at? Doesn't this require pathfinder unchained to work?

Sigh. I can't afford it right now. :-/

[ShadowChemosh]

Originally Posted by JadedDragoon

Wait, what am I looking at? Doesn't this require pathfinder unchained to work?

Sigh. I can't afford it right now. :-/

The software logic is in HL itself now. Regardless if you have the Unchained Rules license or not. Just like how you can add an archetype using the editor without having to own the APG license.

My GM Starfinder rules (which includes skills) work for anyone with the community pack regardless if they own the Unchained license or not.

P.S. - Making use of the editor pretty never requires you pay more money. The only time it can is if you want to "view" stuff from a specific book. In this case if you wanted an example from Unchained you would have to own the license. But otherwise you can enter pretty much anything using the editor for the cost of time.

[JadedDragoon]

Well shit, I could have sworn I already tried that. Apparently not though. Thanks again.

EDIT: And for future reference, anyone wanting to do what I described in the title the answer is the "Hide.Skill" tag not "Hide.All". Just figured that out myself.

In fact, now that I know how to hide the skills without making them non-live, I think I'm going to keep right on not using the Helper.ConsSkill tag... since I, again, don't actually want the consolidated skills rules. I want _my_ rules that I've been using for a decade. Now just to solve the Feats problem.