Questions about how to make campaign-specific ruleset changes
 

Hey all. I'm trying to have a go at the data editor again (it's been a couple years since I last gave it a shot) and I've got some questions.

1. What's the best way to make a bunch of changes that are specific to a particular campaign.

I'd like to be able to choose a particular Source (World of Te'lar, in my case) and have the changes automatically happen. It's probably some kind of bootstrap operation that involves scripting, and I get lost in that portion of it.

But I'd be fine if I could select a trait under the Campaign category and have it turn on a bunch of things. Examples of the kinds of things I want to change are below, as I have other, more specific, questions about those. :)

2. I want to give every spellcaster an automatic Magical Knack trait.

I've copied the existing trait to a new name and I've modified the script to give the bonus I want to give, but how to make it an automatic thing?

While it would only apply to spellcasters, instead of adding it only for spellcasters, I could just add it to every character in the campaign and it would be ignored for any character without spellcasting ability. If I do that, how do I hide it from printouts?

3. We're playing this game using the E10 rules.

I've modified the Mechanics so that the XP progression matches the campaign. But we will still be tracking XP accumulation because while PCs will no longer advance in their classes, they will continue to receive a feat every level.

What's a good way to track that? It's almost like a need a second XP chart once the PC reaches character level 10...

I thought about a prestige class that doesn't have any class features except a free feat; that way the single XP chart could be used and no progression would happen in the base class. Is this a good approach?

4. I've added a deity, a domain, and a spell.

The first was definitely the hardest (but see the bug note, below)! I had a difficult time getting domains assigned to the deity. A lot of the popups show a list of things, but no description of what to choose when there are duplicates (I think this was the problem; there were multiple "Cleric" entries and I started just turning off one and turning on another and eventually it worked :confused:). For example, edit a class and click the Class Role edit button; there are two entries for cleric...

How do I know which element in a popup list to choose when there are duplicates in the name? The lack of tooltips in this regard is crippling! It would be nice if I could hover over the entry and see the Summary text from that thing or even the full description. At least I'd know it was real and not some arbitrary name added for internally supporting a feature somewhere else. (I'm happy to file a "feature request" on this, but I'll wait until the discussion is complete before doing so.)

5. I'd like the Replace Common checkbox to be automatically turned on (this campaign doesn't have a Common language at all).

I added all 35 languages spoken in this campaign, so the only thing remaining is to turn that checkbox on automatically. What's the best way to do this?

6. When fighting with a main gauche in the off-hand, a PC with a Dex of 15+ receives a +1 deflection bonus to AC and an additional AoO each round with that weapon.

How much of this can HL automate? I presume the deflection bonus can be done (I'll need to find a similar magical ability and see how its done there), and adding an additional AoO should be doable (I'll look at Combat Reflexes). But since HL doesn't track action-by-action for players, there's no way to restrict an AoO to the off-hand weapon, right?

7. When creating a new spell, there's no "Casting time" for "standard action".

It looks like all existing spells use just the text "action" instead. Isn't that wrong? Wouldn't that apply that any type of action — including move or move equivalent — would also qualify?

HL doesn't track actions within a round so it probably doesn't matter, except that the tooltip that comes up isn't going to match the original source...

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Bug: When adding a spell and using "Select All" for the classes allowed to use the spell, HL becomes extremely unresponsive. It's probably updating the entire list of classes so that the spell is included every time the GUI is updated! I'm reporting this as a bug.

1. Simply set the "source" of all the things you create in the editor to a new source called whatever you like.

6. How does Sex help you be more agile? :-)

If you don't know the answer to that ... I really don't know what to tell ya. ;-)

1. A source would work. Alternately, you could clone the game system and choose which setting you want to load on starting the program.

2. You can add a mechanic and have that bootstrap the trait you made. Have a script on the mechanic check if there is a spellcasting class, and if not then assign the Hide.All tag to the trait.

3. Shrug, use an adjustment to add feat slots after you hit that point I guess.

4. In the editor, where there are lists of things, there is "(?)" to the right. Clicking on that tells you the unique ID of that thing, which can help distinguish between things with the same name. For example, you can tell which "cleric" is the class level, vs. the class helper, vs the category header for cleric archetypes.

5. I believe there is a source you can turn on for this in the configure hero. Make that default for new characters and you should be good to go.

6. You can set the deflection bonus up most simply by adding an activation on your weapon (or the parent when it is in a custom weapon). Alternately, you could make it automatically apply, but the script for that would be a bit more complex.

You're correct about AoO not being tracked per weapon in HL, I don't think that is even something we would want to.

7. It's shorthand.

Hm. So I add a custom mechanic to my .user file and scripts on that mechanic will automatically run when a character is loaded with my .user source activated?

That's a good start. I'll need to study some of the bootstrap stuff from the Community Pack to see how all that works...

Lol, that's a simple way to do it! And since I'm a player and not the GM, it's not like I need to create a bunch of characters for the campaign.

Yeah, I found those. Clicking on the "(?)" puts out two strings of text with a period in between them. No idea what they represent, though. How do I know that one of them is "class level" and another is the "class helper" and another is the "category header for cleric archetypes"? And is there ever a situation where I'd be creating a new class and choosing the class helper would be the right thing to do? If so, how would I know that?

Cool, I'll look for that.

"... adding an activation on your weapon." Alright, I'll look around for that. You're talking about a checkbox that says "I'm currently using such-and-such" and then the script runs and tweaks the number of AOOs?

The second part sounds cool, though. You mean having a script on the weapon that when it's in the off-hand and when the main hand is holding a light weapon (one of the criteria), then modify the AOOs quantity... Hm, challenge accepted! :D

Seriously, thanks for the pointer.

Okay, got it.

Thanks for all the help! I'll check into these when I get back in front of my laptop.

If you see XXX.YYY then you are looking at tags. The string before the "." is the tag group, and the string after is the tag ID. Other "(?)" may show just the unique ID, if you're considering picks.

As for knowing which is which, it's largely a question of experience and pattern recognition. For the example I gave, if I see "cHelpClr" I know that's a class helper, vs. "cCleric" is the class level and "cHdrCleric" is the header.

I couldn't speculate on the last bit.

I was actually talking about the deflection bonus. I think an example to look at would be the two-weapon defense feat, which gives shield bonus when certain combinations of weapons are equipped. I wouldn't bother doing anything special with AoOs, but YMMV.

Thanks!

I looked into the TWD feat and copied most of the code over to my new "main gauche" weapon. I commented out a bunch of it, added the abValue tag with the appropriate bonus, and then saved it and tested. Worked perfect! (And yes, I ignored the increased AOO, for now.)

I'm working on other areas now, things not quite so complicated. I hope. :rolleyes:

Another question, this time back to my list of 35 languages...

Every time I try to select one of my custom languages for a character, I get a red error message that says, "Your background doesn't allow you to learn this language as a starting language." But all languages in this campaign are valid as starting languages, so how do I change this?

I looked at the definition of the Draconic and Vudrani languages (as I don't get the red text for them) and compared the details to the ones I created. I don't see a tag that seems related to the character's background as implied by the error message. I also used Develop -> Floating Windows -> Selection Tags and chose two languages, Draconic and the one I created. I then compare the floating panels side-by-side and the only difference is the Helper that says Draconic is for core campaign characters (that can't be it though, right? My languages are not going to be valid for PFS!).

Where should I be looking for this? Thanks!

To have languages available as "staring languages" they need to be listed as such on the RACE, not the language. So, you want to use something like Extend Thing to add the languages to races in your campaign as "Allowed Languages".

Great, thanks for the hint. :)