Help With Racial Abilities
 

Greetings!

I've come up with a race that doesn't quite following the normal rules for ability increases.

First, you start with a choice of one of three abilities to get a +2 in. No problems here. I've followed the template for how the Changelings were handled.

Where the difficulty comes in is for the ability increases at 4th and 8th levels (in each tier, obviously). I want the character to get a +1 in either Strength or Constitution at each of these ability levels in addition to their normal +1 to any two. But I want to restrict the choice of the normal two bonuses to excluding the one chosen for the bonus Str/Con choice.

Said another way, I want the character to have +1 to three different abilities at 4th, 8th, etc., one of which is either Strength or Constitution.

Is there a way for me to do this using the editor within Hero Lab?

Thanks in advance,

-Thomas

If I'm reading this correctly, at every 4th level, you want the character to pick either +1 to strength, or +1 to constitution. However, if they picked +1 Strength for their standard ability increase, they can't pick strength for their third; similarly, if the picked +1 Con, they can't pick Con for their third.

Firstly, what happens if the character picks +1 Str and +1 Con for their 2 standard ability increases?

Secondly, the best way is probably to do the following:

1) Firstly, create a "+1 to Str or Con" race feature, that works a lot like the standard +2 pick.

2) In the editor, use the "Bootstraps" button to add it to the race, 7 times.

3) Set up a condition (using the "Condition" button) on each bootstrap like:

That one will, for example, only show the ability when your level is 4 or more. Use a priority of around "Setup/100".

Now, a new copy of the ability should appear every 4th level that you add to the hero.


Does that work?

1) selected my +2 to Choice of two attributes from another race
2) hit Duplicate, changed the Name and Unique Id.
3) Enter "component.Attribute & (thingid.attrStr | thingid.attrCon)" for my tag expression.
4) Hit Eval Scripts and changed the script to:
perform field[usrChosen1].chosen.field[trtRacial].modify[+,1,"Giant"]
5) Hit Ok
6) Hit Bootstraps
7) Hit New Bootstrap, and selected my new Unique Id
8) Hit Condition
9) Chose Setup/100
10) entered "val:Level.? >=4" for the expression
11) Hit okay
12) Save
13) Test
14) You can now use it
15) level my character to 4th level

and no choice for raising Str/Con comes up. I also tried to specify a level requirement of 4, but still got nothing.

Did I miss something?

-Thomas

Did you add the bootstrap to the race? The race has to bootstrap the "+1 to an ability" pick, not the other way around.

If you did add the bootstrap to the race, it seems like you did everything correctly - please email me the data file at colen@wolflair.com and I'll take a look, and hopefully figure out what the problem is.

Yes, I did bootstrap the race.

The file is in the mail...

Thanks for the help.

-Thomas

Ah, I see what went wrong. You added the bootstrap to the *race feature*, not the race itself. That means that when the race feature is added, it tries to add itself again, and then the new version tries to add itself again, and again and again - over and over until something breaks.

Delete the bootstrap from the race feature, and put it on the race instead. Then everything should work fine, and you can add different versions (all on the race) with different level requirements that appear as appropriate.

Hope this helps!

As soon as I read that, it made sense to me. I think that I've seen that in the last few days of tinkering with other stuff. Hopefully I'll stop making the mistake...:o

Thanks for the help :D