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Racial Ability that allows a choice of several abilities

T

tatteredking

Well-known member
Working on the Sundered Skies files, and am a little stuck as to how to code the Elves. They get Plant Heritage as a racial ability. Plant Heritage is actually 8 separate abilities, that the elf gets to select one of. I wandered over to the Pathfinder files to see how it was handled in there (for things like Shifters, who have a choice of several backgrounds). Taking a look at hour Shifting was coded, a Field was added

Code: 
Field ID: usrCandid1 Value:thingid.raSTbeasth|thingid.raSTcliffw| thingid.raSTdreams|thingid.raSTgorebu|thingid.raSTlongst|thingid.raSTlongto|thingid.raSTrazorc|thingid.raSTswiftw|thingid.raSTtruedi|thingid.raSTwildhu

Taking that idea, I applied it to my 8 Plant Heritage abilities. When I compiled, I got an error saying usrCandid1 wasn't defined.

1) am I on the right track for how to handle this in the Savage Worlds setting?
2) where and how should I define the usrCandid1 Field?

Thanks in advance
 
The Pathfinder and Savage Worlds data files are VASTLY different, so I'm afraid knowledge about the Pathfinder files will rarely translate directly over to Savage Worlds. This specific situation is one that was completely skipped for Savage Worlds in an effort to avoid a lot of complexity in writing the data files.

When we first added support for SW, there were a handful of settings and exactly one race that offered a choice. That was the Half Elves, and they had two choices. So the solution we implemented simply had two separate versions for Half Elf, with the user choosing the appropriate version.

Generalizing things to support the Elves in Sundered Skies will entail some fundamental rework of the SW data files to properly accommodate. My best guess is that it would be the better part of a day to implement a good solution and properly test it. Between now and GenCon, we're already in a huge crunch, so I don't see the necessary rework happening quickly. I'll talk to Colen to see if he has any ideas on how to solve this more efficiently than I'm envisioning.
 
Hey rob, thanks for the feedback. I understand that it isn't a priority with Gen Con coming up. Just want to get it on the list of nice things to have.

It's not just Elves in SS this is applicable to though. Wildlings are the same way. Many of the newer settings, the Miracles Edge restricts your Powers choices by what deity you worship. Some of the settings have Edges restricted by deities or homelands.

I don't understand the fundamental coding of the background files or I would take a stab at it myself.
 
I was wondering how to log a deity for a character myself. Hellfrost has a whole series of Edges that are deity-specific, one for each of about 25 different deities, with more in the expansions. I can't see any way to add this as a piece of information. It's by no means a top priority, but it would be a nice addition.

FYI - I've been a programmer for a long time (20 years working with Oracle, COBOL for 6 years before that) and I've done a lot of other programming on a non-professional basis. What's this actually written in? If you point me in the right direction, I might be able to figure it out if you folks are too busy with other things. I'm unemployed at the moment, so I have some free time on my hands...
 
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Hey Ron,

we could potentially use Factions to specify deities. The one question I have is, does the software allow you to take more than one Faction....say one dictating your spiritual beliefs and one dictating your professional affiliations?
 
I thought of that, but I don't know where you'd identify the faction on the character. I don't see a faction field anywhere, even after I've added a couple of test faction items.
 
Right at the top, there is a dropdown box for "Select Cabal". I just checked it out and it only allows one selection. So it doesn't support being a Priest of Festival AND a Boughbreaker, for example. Now perhaps if we had another box like that for Deity or Spiritual Belief. I think the wiki may tell how to create the Faction dropdown in Hero Lab, and the faction tab in the Editor.

Ah, but you may not have it turned on for your datafiles.

Check this out.

http://forums.wolflair.com/showthread.php?t=9946&highlight=faction
 
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No, I didn't have that enabled before. I'd forgotten about the fact that it required enabling. Good catch! I'll try it out and let you know.
 
CapedCrusader said:
I was wondering how to log a deity for a character myself. Hellfrost has a whole series of Edges that are deity-specific, one for each of about 25 different deities, with more in the expansions. I can't see any way to add this as a piece of information. It's by no means a top priority, but it would be a nice addition.
Click to expand...

The Factions mechanism already suggested was added specifically for situations like this.

CapedCrusader said:
What's this actually written in?
Click to expand...

It's a bastardization of Basic, Pascal, and something completely custom for accessing/manipulating HL's data objects. So there's no official language that this derives from. We needed something that supported logic and behaviors in a very non-standard framework, so we came up with something that we hoped would be effective in defining the desired operations while also being reasonably straightforward for users to get comfortable with. In hindsight, we were moderately successful, although there are definitely some aspects that could have been handled better.
 
:)

I'm not referring to the two factions issue. I know you have that under control.

I was referring to my original post here about how to set up a racial ability that has several options. Wildlings and Elves in Sundered Skies, both have Racial Abilities that allow them to select one of many different Racial Abilities. The way I have it set up now is to have one race for each individual Racial Ability. I see it as kind of clunky. I'd like to see it where I could have one Wildling race and one Elf race, each one with the same Racial Ability, but have the Racial Ability offer a choice of several racial abilities to select. I don't believe it can currently be done. It's not really a faction, especially since the Elves can take Edges to select additional heritages.
 
I don't know on this one. Generally, making selections to build a Race is the province of the GM and is handled in the editor. If we open up the selection of Racial Abilities at the user level, it opens up a whole can of worms. I ran into the same issue with Elves where there are two different heritages to choose from.
 
well those are two distinctly different races. What I am talking about is one race, with one racial ability that allows the choice of several different options.

For now I have them all as separate daces. It just seems cumbersome.
 
Have you considered instead of making a ton of elf races, make the handfull of edges (onef or each plant heritage) and giving elfs a selection of 1 of those dges?

Titanhoss
 
OK So I took this suggestion...created a feat for each Plant Heritage for the elf. Created a new elf, to try it out. Gave them the free bonus feat ability and an Expr-Req that they needed one of the Plant Heritage edges.

In short it worked.

But the issue I see is, 1) the race came up greyed out, as you don't meet the criteria....you don't have the edge yet. 2) When you go to select the bonus Edge, all the edges you are eligible to take come up.

I'm not sure if there is a way around this.
 
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