Deadlands - Harrowed - Counting Coup
 

We have a Harrowed in our Deadlands campaign and in our last session we encountered a Chupakabara.

So he used the Harrowed Counting Coup ability to pick up the Trackless ability from the beast...

And for the life of me I cannot figure out how to add this to his character sheet in HL.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

What I did for Coup in the HoE data file was to add them as Hindrances in the Editor. What that allows you to do is to add it on the Advancement tab without the program complaining that you don't have the points for it. Otherwise I don't believe there is a way to add "Abilities" to a non-monstrous character type.

You should be able to use a Permanent Adjustment to add that. I think I'd set it up as an Edge, since non-creatures don't have access to Special Abilities.

Adding it as an Edge doesn't quite work right, though, Caped. The problem is that Hero Lab wasn't to charge you and Advance for an Edge whereas it won't charge you to add a Hindrance. That's the reasons I was suggesting in the suggestions thread that it might be helpful to have a separate category of things that are not Edges or Hindrances but maybe Abilities or Effects or something that would act like a Hindrance for requirements checking purposes but is otherwise neutral in language since they could provide the effects of Edges or Hindrances or any combination of those... essentially abilities or effects, as the result of things like Coup or Mutations and such since they seem to crop up in several settings for Savage Worlds.

I don't understand. You can add an Edge through a Permanent Adjustment without it costing you an Advance.

Step 1: Add a Permanent Adjustment for Edges
Step 2: Click on the arrow to increment the number of Edges to 1 in the Adjustment
Step 3: Go to the Advancement tab and unlock Character Creation
Step 4: Add the Edge on the Edges tab
Step 5: Go back to the Advancement tab and re-lock Character Creation
Done!

True, but that's more of a cludge and a lot more steps than going straight to the Advancement tab and adding something there in the same way you would a Hindrance. Plus it's a bit confusing seeing things that are not Edges or Hindrances on the lists for those things is all I'm saying.

But it's not an Advancement, either...

But neither is gaining a Hindrance, yet it's the standard mechanic for adding a post-creation Hindrance so it's already part and parcel of how the Advancement mechanic is actually used. Arguably the better method would be to add it to the Permanent Adjustments mechanic (such that you can select the Hindrance or one of these other Effects directly from there without having to add points for it first) or on the In-Play tab in much the same way. For now, though, Advancement is where Hero Lab has it set to work for Hindrances which is why I suggested following suit there for consistency sake.

The Cludge worked... the major problem being the 'Trackless' does not appear in the edge list but I added it as a custom edge so now at least it's on the character sheet.

That's part of the other reason I added them as deliberate Hindrances since not all of them are Edges, but often Monstrous Abilities instead. So it seemed easier to create them as just their own thing. CC would have to say how he's going to handle it in his update, but I think there may be something to handle it when he gets a chance to fully update the DLR file.

To be honest I didn't strictly use Hindrances as the place to put such types of things either. For example in Weird War II I put the new Legacy effects as Edges that I set a cost of 0 on, since even though some of the effects of those are not Edges at all they are really only added at Character Creation and the majority of them are like Edges in some way, so it seemed the better place to put them and for the player to find them during character creation (rather than using the Advancement mechanic like I did for HoER.

Obviously whatever work for you, works, so whichever method you choose to use I'm just glad you could find out how to do it here. :)