Weapon Finesse Timing

[Kendall-DM]

I'm having a real issue with Weapon Finesse. I have a monster that has Hit Dice I can add to it, and when it has 4 or more Hit Dice, it loses Weapon Finesse in favor of a different feat (an advance in HD also makes its STR better than its DEX). The monster in question is the Monstrous Spider from the MM. Everything is working fine, except the Weapon Finesse, which I want to condition to go away when the monster has 4 or more HD. But I add to the Hit Dice at First 101 timing, and so I test there for the condition. It removes Weapon Finesse as a feat, but the internal code for weapon finesse is still firing in HL! So the question is, when is HL really doing its Weapon Finesse internal tricks, because I've been beating my head against the wall trying to figure it out. The debugger is no help here at all. Hard-coded weapon finesse is such a PITA.

 

[Kendall-DM]

Seriously, is this really happening at First/0 or earlier? Are you kidding me. As it stands, there is NO way to remove Weapon Finesse as a condition, period. Oh, it will remove it from the Feat list, sure, but the internals of HL have already done the processing, so you're stuck with the feat whether is shows on the list or not. I tried it out, and a monster with the feat NOT in its feat list because I conditioned it out (at First/0 no less) STILL thinks Weapon Finesse is being applied. I tested it, and I decided to change the Dexterity to being greater than the Strength, and surprise, the melee attack value also increased, even though I supposedly conditioned the feat out. I can only shake my head in frustration.

 

[Sendric]

Hey Kendall,

I checked it as well, but used a human. I also see the feat being applied even after being disabled. Is there a way to delete the feat altogether? I couldn't figure it out. ftDisable clearly isn't getting the job done.

 

[ShadowChemosh]

In Pathfinder you can't remove a feat but all feats are setup so that they check for the ftDisable tag first. If found it simply just does a done and gets out the script.

Can you re-code the Weapon Finesse feat to do the same thing?

 

[Kendall-DM]

In Pathfinder you can't remove a feat but all feats are setup so that they check for the ftDisable tag first. If found it simply just does a done and gets out the script.

Can you re-code the Weapon Finesse feat to do the same thing?

Weapon Finesse has no script. It is an internal mechanism of HL, and thus, can't have the the helper disable it because there is no access to a script that Weapon Finesse uses.

 

[Kendall-DM]

Hey Kendall,

I checked it as well, but used a human. I also see the feat being applied even after being disabled. Is there a way to delete the feat altogether? I couldn't figure it out. ftDisable clearly isn't getting the job done.

Something inside HL as First/0 or earlier is looking for the HasFeat.fWepFin on the character, and if it is there, modifying the attack bonuses on all finesse legal weapons. Now, I know I can exclude the feat, but then Weapon Finesse stops working. You bring up a good point, and one I've thought about, but hate to have to do it. I could make my own version of Weapon Finesse, with a disable helper in the script, and do it myself, then exclude the original Weapon Finesse feat. That would remove the problem, but it seems like a brute force approach, since it applies to very few things (monstrous spider and viper snake thus far). I coded both of those creatures to be one thing that encompasses all interations of that thing (size varieties). Did that with a lot of creatures, including arrowhawks and elementals (why make multiple versions of the same creature when a script will get he job done more efficiently). I may have to do it though, I can't seem to find a better solution as of yet.

 

[ShadowChemosh]

Weapon Finesse has no script. It is an internal mechanism of HL, and thus, can't have the the helper disable it because there is no access to a script that Weapon Finesse uses.

I thought it still added a Tag to the HERO so that structure files could take over. I assumed it was the same in d20 as Pathfinder.

In that case is HL looking for the Feat Tag that gets put on the Hero? Can you delete that tag so that the background scripts don't run as it no longer will know that the feat is on the hero.

Never mind I see you already answered the question:

Something inside HL as First/0 or earlier is looking for the HasFeat.fWepFin on the character, and if it is there, modifying the attack bonuses on all finesse legal weapons.

I would assume this is the exact reason why they put a eval script on this feat for Pathfinder with a Tag that gets applied instead.

Maybe there is a good guy like *cough* Aaron *cough* around that could add that simple logic change to d20?

Damn sorry I can't think of any good way around this. Even if you did the Brute force you will have the problem of all the monsters and .por files that are going to look for fWepFin Thing. And doing a Replace ID put the tag HasFeat.fWepFin right back on to the hero.

 

[Kendall-DM]

Damn sorry I can't think of any good way around this. Even if you did the Brute force you will have the problem of all the monsters and .por files that are going to look for fWepFin Thing. And doing a Replace ID put the tag HasFeat.fWepFin right back on to the hero.

Luckily I had already did a Weapon Finesse replace (for some additional code I wanted to add to it, not as a change), but the problem is what HL itself is doing that I can't change. So, if I do brute force it, it won't be that bad, I'd just code properly in my feat and not replace the original, but exclude it instead. Again, the sample size where it matters is too small to feel this is an adequate solution, so I'm just setting it on the side for now with a note about the frustration-inducing problem.

 

[Aaron]

Actually, the way Weapon Finesse works in Pathfinder was recently modified to not check directly for the feat in the wAttack field calculations (I think within the last 2-3 months). It must have been a legacy thing from d20.

I wish I could get enough done on the system to justify a d20 release, but I've not enough hours in the day, largely due to my own inexperience.

 

[Sendric]

Kendall, what about trying it from a different approach? Instead of disabling Weapon Finesse, what about changing the natural weapon to not apply it? I found a script that would do this:

if (#hasfeat[fWepFin] = 1) then
  var result as number
  result = hero.child[wRapier].delete[Helper.Finesse]
  result = hero.child[wBite].delete[wClass.Light]
endif

I'm sure you could use a foreach statement or something like that for multiple natural weapons. I was just trying to find something that worked. I left the Rapier part of the script in there just because. I found that one first, but natural and light weapons do not have this helper.

Note: I have no idea what else deleting the wClass.Light would affect. I do know that once its gone, Weapon Finesse no longer applies to the bite.