Questions about entering a new custom monster

[JustinThomason]

I have a CR 2 beastie I'm trying to add to HL. It's relatively simple but with a couple of special abilities, so it seems like a very good first foray into this part of the Editor. I've already created magic items and added some feats and house rules - even built a whole Barbarian/Rogue gestalt class in the d20 editor - so I do have some experience with the Editor.

I've mostly been able to put the creature together, and so far so good. Added DR, Scent, Starting HP - all that good stuff.

However, I am running into a couple of issues.

First, this creature has a new Special Ability called "Gaunt Curse." It is a curse that gets applied when its bite attack lands. I need to create this new Special Ability and apply it to the monster so the bite attack damage reads "1d6+3 plus curse." I'm pretty sure I could figure out how to create the new Special Ability, but I can't figure out which tab I should go to or how to add the special conditional to the bite attack.

Side question - what's the difference in the Editor between "Racial Special Abilities" and "Special Abilities" under the "Important Race Details" section?

Second, though I can create one of these creatures by making a new hero and choosing the race I've created, how do I get this guy into the Encounter Builder as a typical specimen with skills pre-selected and all that? I'm sure that's probably pretty straightforward, but I don't have a clue where to even start.

Thanks in advance for the help.

[Aaron]

Racial special abilities are made on the Race group, Racial Special tab. You can copy the "Grab" racial special to see an example of something appending extra text to a particular natural attack.

The difference is in what things they have available to bootstrap. Racial Specials are usually bootstrapped by races, and they show in a table on the background tab. Special abilities can be bootstrapped by just about anything for a variety of reasons, and they don't show up on any tables by default (though you can have them show on the Specials tab). This is for things like "Immunity to Fire" or a helper ability you want to be hidden in the background but nonetheless doing something.

If you make a copy of an existing intelligent monster, you'll see that they have an eval script which uses the #skillinnate macro to add ranks to their default skills. That plus bootstrapping the feats it selects by default should get you most of what you need as far as pre-setup. If your monster also has equipment it comes with, then you'll probably want to create a portfolio, add the equipment, save it as a .stock file, and then move that stock file into the game system folder. It should then be available to select through the encounter builder.

[JustinThomason]

Sweet - that got me the rest of the way there. Thanks!