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Conversion Advice - Ancient Dead

C

candidgamera

Well-known member
Alright, gang! Sorry to keep bugging you all, but this is a 'best practices' sort of question. I am working on the classic monsters of Ravenloft, starting with Ancient Dead. (AKA Mummies) Unlike in core PF, Ravenloft presents them as a template - and what's more, the Ancient Dead have an age rank from 1 (least powerful) to 5 (most powerful).

There are a couple of ways to tackle this, but there are some complicating factors : Rank 1 Mummies get one vulnerability and one immunity to energy of their choice, and the higher ranks can get more. Also, Rank 2+ Mummies get to choose from a list of bonus powers, some of which get more powerful with rank.

So, my thought is this - to simplify coding, I would create five templates - one for each rank of Ancient Dead. That keeps me from having to program an extra variable to track the creature's rank and a bunch of conditionals that key off of it. That also lets me determine the number of immunities/resistances with certainty, and the number of salient ability picks.

Now, for the abilities, I was thinking I could use the Racial Custom Specials, and just allow them to pick the appropriate number. I don't see any problems with that approach, but I thought I might ask the more experienced folks if they see an issue.

The resistances and immunities are a bit stickier - I haven't been able to think of a monster that allows that number of choices to use as a coding example. The closest thing I could think of was the half-dragon, which picks a parent color and gets resistances or immunities based on that, but at Rank 5, the Ancient Dead have two immunities, a resistance, and a vulnerability - that's a lot of tricky coding! I have thought of a possible workaround - just give the ancient dead an ability called "Mysterious Versatility" (for instance) that basically reminds the GM that all those items can vary, and let the templates have fixed defaults. It's hokey, but it serves the purpose.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Am I just in over my head? :) Or am I missing something obvious?
 
This seems like the sort of thing a Configurable would be perfect for. You could make each type of ability be added to a different table.

I don't favor making multiple templates if it can be helped, but if you decide on that method they can all bootstrap the same configurable with different values in the field allowing X number of things for each of the tables.

For an example of a template which bootstraps a configurable (including granting variable numbers of abilities), look at the Ghost.
 
Follow-up - it looks like that creatures can only have one configurable, is that correct? So that would handle the salient abilities, but not the resistances, immunities, and weaknesses..
 
Configurables have the option to have more than one table on the same tab. The ghost only needs one of those tables.
 
I am getting close! Thanks for the advice so far. Question, though - I am trying to get the save DCs for some abilities to come out correctly - the Fear ability, for instance. The DC should be 10 + half HD + Cha; and I have the ability set up to use Charisma under the Racial Specials. The problem is that my 5HD Barbarian Ancient Dead with a Charisma of 14 should have a DC 14 Fear save, and it's showing as 12.

Now, a Bard Ghost I built has a proper save DC for its corrupting touch ability; but that ability is a Racial Cust Special, so maybe they work differently?

What I need to know is if there's some trick to getting a template-granted racial ability to consider the Hit Dice of the base creature for the save DCs.
 
candidgamera said:
I am getting close! Thanks for the advice so far. Question, though - I am trying to get the save DCs for some abilities to come out correctly - the Fear ability, for instance. The DC should be 10 + half HD + Cha; and I have the ability set up to use Charisma under the Racial Specials. The problem is that my 5HD Barbarian Ancient Dead with a Charisma of 14 should have a DC 14 Fear save, and it's showing as 12.

Now, a Bard Ghost I built has a proper save DC for its corrupting touch ability; but that ability is a Racial Cust Special, so maybe they work differently?

What I need to know is if there's some trick to getting a template-granted racial ability to consider the Hit Dice of the base creature for the save DCs.
Click to expand...

You may have uncovered a bug. Use the bug report thread to report it...
 
When it comes to bugs, better safe than sorry. Sometimes the Wolf Pack has to dig under the hood to fix bugs that we can't get to.
 
candidgamera said:
What I need to know is if there's some trick to getting a template-granted racial ability to consider the Hit Dice of the base creature for the save DCs.
Click to expand...
Racial Abilities only consider the Racial Hit Dice not Class Hit Dice. So your Barbarian Levels won't add to increase the DC.

So if you look up the Universal Monster Rule (Fear) you see it says "DC 10 + 1/2 fearsome creature’s racial HD + creature’s Cha modifier"

One only uses Racial Hit Dice. So no bug its how Pathfinder works. :)

To change this you can go to the "Adjust" tab "Other Adjustments" and add the "Ability: DC" adjustment to increase the value if you wish.
 
ShadowChemosh said:
Racial Abilities only consider the Racial Hit Dice not Class Hit Dice. So your Barbarian Levels won't add to increase the DC.

So if you look up the Universal Monster Rule (Fear) you see it says "DC 10 + 1/2 fearsome creature’s racial HD + creature’s Cha modifier"

One only uses Racial Hit Dice. So no bug its how Pathfinder works. :)

To change this you can go to the "Adjust" tab "Other Adjustments" and add the "Ability: DC" adjustment to increase the value if you wish.
Click to expand...

Then why does the Ghost's Corrupting Touch include the DC based on the Hit Dice of the Bard levels?
 
candidgamera said:
Then why does the Ghost's Corrupting Touch include the DC based on the Hit Dice of the Bard levels?
Click to expand...

I just want my Fear ability to calculate its DC the same way Corrupting Touch does. They're both granted by a template, but one's a Racial Special and the other is a Racial Cust Special..
 
candidgamera said:
Then why does the Ghost's Corrupting Touch include the DC based on the Hit Dice of the Bard levels?
Click to expand...
Yea templates get even more interesting. See Ghost Template.

Ghost Template said:
Special Attacks: A ghost retains all the special attacks of the base creature, but any relying on physical contact do not function. In addition, a ghost gains one ghost special attack from the list below for every 3 points of CR (minimum 1—the first ability chosen must always be corrupting touch). The save DC against a ghost's special attack is equal to 10 + 1/2 ghost's HD + ghost's Charisma modifier unless otherwise noted. Additional ghost abilities beyond these can be designed at the GM's discretion.
Click to expand...
If I follow everything correctly when a template says "Ghost HD" that includes both Racial and Non-Racial Hit Dice. So in that case it should include both.

Yep here is a fix note from HL release notes that says "Ghost abilities from Classic Horrors Revisited were calculating their DCs from racial Hit Dice not total Hit Dice."

So a standard Racial Special should NOT calc from non-racial Hit Dice. But Ghost template abilities should.

If you want a Racial Special to calculate its DC based on ALL Hit Dice (Racial and non-Racial) the fix is to add a "Tag" using the Blue Button "Tags". Left mouse press "Click to add another tag".

Then enter the following:
Group ID: Helper
Tag ID: DCUseTotHD

Save and Test Now!.

P.S. - My bad mentioning the adjustment at first as I didn't catch you where making a new Undead creature in the editor.
 
Last edited:
Corrupting Touch has a special tag which says use the total HD for calculating the ability DC

That tag is "Helper.DCUseTotHD", so you can add that to your template's racial special to do the same.

Argh, Ninja'd!
 
Ah-ha! Bingo. That's what I was looking for. Aaron, please disregard the bug report then! That helper tag is just what I need.

Next up : I will be updating this thread to ask people's opinions on converting abilities that really don't make as much sense in PF as they did in 3.5...

Tomorrow or Sunday, though. time for a break.
 
Okay, gang! I am in the home stretch on my Ancient Dead conversion - all I have left to do are the choosable powers. A couple of them are a little odd, going from 3rd to PF. So I would like some "best practices" advice.

From the book :

Animal Command (Su) : The ancient is able to exert control over one specific species of animal. (...) The ancient can rebuke or command animals of this species just as an evil cleric can rebuke or command undead. The ability takes effect as if used by a cleric of level equal to the ancient's hit dice.

And :

Command Undead (Su) : The ancient gains the ability to rebuke or command undead as if it were a cleric of level equal to its hit dice. If the ancient already has this ability as a former cleric, it may add 4 to its effective level when rebuking.

Because of the PF changes to turning and commanding undead, I'm unsure how best to model these. Thoughts?

And the bonus question - the Elemental Affinity ability gives an Ancient Dead who is already a cleric a bonus (third) cleric domain, chosen from one of the four elemental domains. Is there anything in the game that gives a cleric a third domain already that I can clone?
 
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