Homebrew: Switch-Axe from Monster Hunter World
 

Okay my DM gave out this item (well we quested and it was the reward)

It's an Axe (I think 2hd BattleAxe but I'm not sure) with Reach.
When you crit, it gets a charge. It can hold up to 5 charges.
As a bonus action, it turns into a Greatsword and can upon a hit, dismiss any amount of charges for 1d8 additional damage/charge.

I'm at a loss. I'm sure the easier thing to do is have two entries, one in Axe form and one in Greatsword mode, but how do I track charges? and it is not necessary for Hero Lab to necessarily roll the additional dmg when charges are used....but it would be cool.

But again, I am at a loss. Any pointers for me to look at would be appreciated.

(so many homebrew items recently)

Take a look at the Rod of Lordly Might. It's a magic item that can be swapped to be different weapons. That's a good starting point.

OK, I actually have a quarterstaff/bow in my personal files. I've modified my code to be a greataxe (with reach)/greatsword combo. On the In-Play tab there's an activation checkbox. When it is checked, the sword stats apply. When it is not, the axe stats apply. The only thing that is bad is that you start with all 5 charges - you'll have to manually change that or play with it in your scripts.

You can also add a second script in final timing that changes the livename and sbName fields of the item itself to show like "Switch-axe (axe form)" or "Switch-axe (sword form)" if that would help. It'll look weird because I've removed the normal gizmo that comes with magic weapons and hard-coded the fields for a heavy, two-handed martial melee weapon directly into the base stats.

Here it is in the .user format (you can copy/paste the entire thing into your .user file) to play with.

<thing id="mwXXSwitchAxe" name="Switch-Axe" description="Add a description here." compset="MagicWep">
<fieldval field="trkMax" value="5"/>
<fieldval field="actName" value="Sword Form"/>
<fieldval field="wDieCount" value="1"/>
<fieldval field="wDieSize" value="12"/>
<tag group="ItemRarity" tag="Legendary"/>
<tag group="User" tag="Activation"/>
<tag group="Helper" tag="NeedAttune"/>
<tag group="User" tag="Tracker"/>
<tag group="Usage" tag="Charges"/>
<tag group="wProfReq" tag="Martial"/>
<tag group="wCategory" tag="Melee"/>
<tag group="wProperty" tag="Heavy"/>
<tag group="wProperty" tag="TwoHanded"/>
<tag group="DamageType" tag="dtSlashing"/>
<eval phase="PostAttr" priority="10000"><![CDATA[~ Get out if we're not equipped
doneif (field[gIsEquip].value = 0)
~ Get out if we're not attuned
doneif (field[gIsAttuned].value = 0)

if (field[abilActive].value <> 0) then
~ If sword form is activated change the damage to 2d6
~ remove the reach property
field[wDieCount].value = 2
field[wDieSize].value = 6
field[wAttackEff].text = "As a bonus action you can expend as many charges available to increased the damage by 1d8."
perform delete[wProperty.Reach]

else
~ We are in axe form, add the reach tag.
field[wDieCount].value = 1
field[wDieSize].value = 12
field[wAttackEff].text = "On a critical hit, gain 1 charge to use in sword form."
perform assign[wProperty.Reach]

endif]]></eval>
</thing>

Thanks Fenris

DungeonGuru: A Quarterstaff-Bow sounds very close to this weird Scimitar-Bow thing he gave the Ranger (also with charges). It was going to be my next attempt. This looks very close to what I envisioned and reading it may help me learn more about how to edit more things in the future. I thank you.

There are a lot of fields and tags on weapons that are just fun to play with.

You can always check out examples over on the github wiki.

Natural attacks use the same fields and this article has items you can look at:
https://github.com/Sklore/HL_DD_5e_C...atural-Attacks

DungeonGuru:
On a side note: Some of the attributes of the XML tags are easy to understand such as wProfReq, but others are not like trkMax (which I realize is the number of maximum charges but I wouldn't know if I hadn't asked about it)

is there a list or did you just learn in time by looking at similar items and build a mental mapping?

A lot of it does come from poking around and just keeping my notes on a tab in notepad++ when I'm working on scripting. I think I've tried to copy pretty much everything in the SRD at some point too.

The biggest thing was just getting used to using the right-click to see tags/fields and then the Floating Info Windows in the development menu. The second thing was making sure to ask questions on the forums and hope someone could give me advice.

I also sometimes would hit up the guys over on the Pathfinder forums, that forum is a lot more active.