Natural Weapons and Special Damage
 

I'm curious about two things.

Is it feasible (or possible, haven't tried it) to delete the Unarmed Strike from a creature with natural attacks? Just curious if it can be removed (a snake with unarmed strike seems silly).

Is there a way to livename the actual damage of a weapon, say if a bite has acid damage, can that be livenamed to the actual damage in the weapons list? Such as a bite that does 1d6+4 plus 1d6 acid? Or is that all internal code on the damages?

Thanks.

Well you can modify the livename of the weapon to show it there, or you can fill in the wFixDamage field to specify a certain damage (but then it won't reflect changes in strength or weapon size). It is a tricky problem, and one that I have been thinking of as well while doing the Monster Manual (which has a few such powers). Thus far I have been leaving them as specials and hoping the user will remember to add that damage.

Don't know of a way to remove Unarmed Strike.

I've actually just used a livename on the attack, and put the bonus there. So, for example, on my Ankheg, it says "Bite (+1d4 acid) (Ankheg)" with damage of 2d6+7. However, ankheg's acid damage goes away if it uses the Spit Acid, so I made a conditional statement for if the ability was used or not to add or not add the livename. It works pretty well.

As for the Unarmed Strike, I haven't looked into trying to remove it, so I may do some experimenting to try and remove it. I really am not fond of a Warhorse having an Unarmed Strike, ditto a Snake or a Shadow. It's not a big deal, but it cleans up things if I could get rid of it. If I can't, I'm not going to worry about it.

One thing I really would like to see a change to, is with the Tactical Console. The tactical console only displays melee attacks, so all the javelin attacks on, say, my goblins are listed as melee attack values, which is annoying. The paladin in my game has a +2 scimitar on his Warhorse, which is listed as the Warhorse's primary attack, even though I have it in saddlebag and not equipped. Another thing that is bugging me, but again, I haven't tried seeing if I can fix it.

Same with my paladin's lance. Kept on his steed, not ticked off as "equipped" and yet HL insists on listing it as one of the horse's methods of attacks.

Mathias is aware of this but like my "issue" with the horse's base speed not being improved by the wearing of 'Horseshoes of Speed', it's apparently not an easy thing to fix.

Nigel Fogg, aka the Wayfarer
:)