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
). 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.