Validation for Starting Languages

[Gladiator66]

I am working to enter the races from the Midgard Heroes Handbook into Hero Lab. One problem that I have come across is giving a new bearfolk character the ability to select either Northern or Umbral as a starting language, but not both, as listed in the Heroes Handbook. I selected these 2 languages in the "Languages Allowed" section in the editor and entered "1" for the number of "Bonus Languages". However, when creating a new bearfolk character and selecting languages, all other languages are still available for selection. I switched to HL - Pathfinder and this capability worked. All of the languages that were not selected under "Languages Allowed" were grayed out, and and the following message displays if I select a non-valid language - "Your background doesn't allow you to learn this language as a starting language." It appears that this capability is not working in HL - D&D 5e SRD. Does anyone know if that is the case, and if so, do you know of a possible fix? Thanks.

[Fenris447]

I can confirm this bug. I encountered it when I was programming language choices for the Ravnica book; HL did not properly limit the choices to the ones I selected.

Have you confirmed it happens without any of the 5e Community Pack content installed? If so, it sounds like it's a bug that needs to be reported to LW.

[dungeonguru]

There need to be AllowLang tags or something but the number of "bonus" languages is a misnomer on the race dialog. The "bonus" number is being added to rLanguages, which is a base language field and not a skill or tool option like dialogue.

A workaround I have made in the past is to create a Racial Special that I call "Starting Languages".

In that special I show a selection option with an array based menu listing off the 2 or 3 languages allowed.

I then attach each of those languages as a bootstrap and put a conditional on them like:

fieldval:usrIndex=1

where the usrIndex matches the array index.

Here's the code from the user file for one that has you choose between Abyssal and Dwarvish.

  <thing id="ra5HBStartLang" name="Start Languages" compset="RaceSpec">
    <arrayval field="usrArray" index="0" value="Abyssal"/>
    <arrayval field="usrArray" index="1" value="Dwarvish"/>
    <tag group="Language" tag="lAbyssal"/>
    <tag group="Helper" tag="ActivMenu"/>
    <tag group="ChooseSrc1" tag="Thing"/>
    <tag group="Helper" tag="ShowSpec"/>
    <tag group="Language" tag="lA2ZBoth"/>
    <bootstrap thing="lAbyssal">
      <containerreq phase="First" priority="500">fieldval:usrIndex=0</containerreq>
      </bootstrap>
    <bootstrap thing="lDwarvish">
      <containerreq phase="First" priority="500">fieldval:usrIndex=1</containerreq>
      </bootstrap>
    </thing>

[Fenris447]

Thanks, dungeonguru. I'll grab this code for Ravnica.

The only portion I don't understand is "<tag group="Language" tag="lA2ZBoth"/>" Can you enlighten me on what that represents? I'm trying to learn what each piece of code I add into my stuff does as I go.

[dungeonguru]

Originally Posted by Fenris447

Thanks, dungeonguru. I'll grab this code for Ravnica.

The only portion I don't understand is "<tag group="Language" tag="lA2ZBoth"/>" Can you enlighten me on what that represents? I'm trying to learn what each piece of code I add into my stuff does as I go.

Oops, I forgot to clean those up, the tag groups for language are left overs from where I was trying some scripting.

Each language has a Language.thingid tag created for it, where thingid is what you made. lA2ZBoth was representing the "Bothil" language in my files in this case.

You can remove those two tags.

[Fenris447]

Ah perfect. So the code for OP and I should be:

  <thing id="AAAAA" name="Starting Languages" compset="RaceSpec">
    <arrayval field="usrArray" index="0" value="BBBBB"/>
    <arrayval field="usrArray" index="1" value="XXXXX"/>
    <tag group="Helper" tag="ActivMenu"/>
    <tag group="ChooseSrc1" tag="Thing"/>
    <tag group="Helper" tag="ShowSpec"/>
    <bootstrap thing="CCCCC">
      <containerreq phase="First" priority="500">fieldval:usrIndex=0</containerreq>
      </bootstrap>
    <bootstrap thing="YYYYY">
      <containerreq phase="First" priority="500">fieldval:usrIndex=1</containerreq>
      </bootstrap>
    </thing>

1. AAAAA - The thing ID of whatever new racial special we make.
2. BBBBB - The name of language 1
3. CCCCC - The thing ID of language 1
4. XXXXX - The name of language 2
5. YYYYY - The thing ID of language 2.

Hopefully that helps, OP!

[Gladiator66]

Thanks, Fenris447 and dungeonguru for the feedback. I did confirm yesterday that the error still happens without the 5e Community Pack installed.

I will try the code that you guys supplied. It looks like it ought to work. Thanks again!

[Gladiator66]

It worked perfectly. Thanks, again.