Pick from list?

[Paragon]

This may be too general to be useful, but given its a question about something I'm trying to fix in the 4e user file that seems to have defeated its native fan base, and that the sub-forum for it is fairly somnolent, I figure I'm not any worse off asking here:

Is there a general way within the editor capacity of HL to do a bootstrap that gives a set of options? Specifically, I'm trying to fix something that will bootstrap one of three things at the purchaser's choice. I know a way to do it with the SW files, but the functionality I'd use there doesn't seem to be present in the 4e user file, so I'm seeing if I can drop back and do it with an eval script or some such.

 

[Hollis]

The easy way to handle this is with a menu for the items to choose from, and conditional bootstraps for the individual items. If you look in the Pathfinder data files, the Power Over Undead ability granted by the necromancy wizard school is an example of how to make something like this work.

 

[Paragon]

That does indeed sound like what I'm looking for; there's some built in functionality for that with SW, and I know how to enable it, but it didn't seem obvious looking through the 4e files how to go about it. Downloading the Pathfinder system now to see your example.

 

[Paragon]

Hmmm. Though I'm not 100% sure of what part of this actually sets up the table, it occurs to me that the normal pick-req exclusion may not work well here, as its allowing someone to pick one of three languages (that they could acquire through other means). On the other hand, I may not need to exclude them since you can only have one instance of the parent ability anyway...

 

[Paragon]

Anybody think they can walk me through this a bit more? I'm looking at the example in Pathfinder, parts of it are obvious (the conditional bootstraps for example), but its not clear to me what part of the rest of it actually creates the pull-down option; it doesn't seem to be the Eval Script, at least by itself, and if its the "Array based menu" that doesn't do me much good since the 4e implementation doesn't actually have something like that.

 

[Mathias]

components.core line 186 - that defines an array-based menu (usrArray) - it's the same array-based menu that's used in Savage Worlds (since both savage worlds and 4e were derived from the same skeleton files).

 

[Mathias]

Could you please describe the problem that you're trying to solve? So far, you've been very cagey about what you're trying to use conditional bootstraps to accomplish.

 

[Paragon]

Oh, sorry. I just felt vaguely uncomfortable sticking a very specific problem out here in the general, but as I said, the 4e forum is very somnolent, so I expected no responses there.

There is a 4e Theme called Scholar. Like a fair number of 4e character elements, this never got entirely done, partly because Cryptoknight had trouble with it, partly, I suspect, because too much of the HL 4e community slowly evaporated with the shelving of the system.

Scholar is supposed to do three different sets of things for you at various levels: one of the things it does twice is give you a choice from one of three languages, and later one of five skills (and has a caveat that in the case of the latter, if you have them all instead you get a bonus).

I have some idea how to do a lot of these things with eval scripts or bootstraps, but setting up to choose from a limited subset (i.e. a pull down menu) is not one of them, at least outside of things like the SW functionality that has menuing built in, so all I needed to do was learn how to use it.

Also, keep in mind I'm working with the Editor here, not the Authoring Kit, though obviously have access to the latter (but not the skills to use it effectively).

 

[Paragon]

Well, I solved part of this by finding out how the Dragonborn were picking their two character options in this; both it and Theme Features have a section called "Selection List" that presumably allows you to pick one of the listed items. I followed the pattern at hand (which was to separate the various options as ids separated by a "|". Test does not report any problems, nor does debug when I turn it on, and the ability creates a drop down list, but the dropdown just indicates "nothing to select!" when you click on it.

Anyone have any idea what I might be doing wrong here? A comparison of what I've done to the dragonborn power selection seems essentially identical (barring one thing I turned on and off but it made no difference).

Edit: Further testing shows that its only pulling up languages already on the character as options, which seems doubly odd.

 

[ShadowChemosh]

Edit: Further testing shows that its only pulling up languages already on the character as options, which seems doubly odd.

A selection/drop down is often told to choose from "Picks" or "Things" on a character. A "Pick" is something that is Live on the character like after you choose a Feat or a Trait. A "Thing" is something that exists in the data base but has not become live.

I know nothing about 4e but the logic of how HL works is the same for all game systems. Do you have a way of telling your expression to choose Things instead of Picks? That sounds to be your issue.

 

[Paragon]

Sure enough, that was the problem; there's a pulldown in the editor that gave you the option of None, All Picks on the Container, All Picks on the Character, and all Things, and when I set it to the last it worked right.

Thanks a lot, ShadowChemosh.

Now the next thing I need to figure out is how to construct the Eval Script that will tell a later step to give a bonus to a skill rather than select one if the character already has all its options; though its for another game system I'll have to look at some of the useful code chunks thread in SW, or delve into Matthias' tutorials in the Pathfinder forum...