How you can help with MTOF

[dungeonguru]

Originally Posted by FreakFire74

Stab & Spike are natural attacks and will most likely follow the steps youve described above. Right? What about multiattack?

On the race editor after natural attacks you should see a dropdown for multiattack. If you choose multiattack you have to type the multiattack text in the field below that in order for it to show up.

For the stab and strike, what you do is choose "Other Melee Natural Attack" under Natural Attacks and put in the information. To the right of each attack are 4 buttons, one is a button that says "Fields". If you click that button you must add 2 fields:

#1:
Field ID: livename Value: Stab
#2
Field ID: sbName Value: Stab

You repeat this for each Natural Attack that isn't already defined.
If the attack bonus looks to be Dex based instead of Str, the easiest way to change this is to probably use the tag "Property.wFinesse" to it.

Many of the Racial Abilities that are missing the creature name are looking for you to add a Field to the ability after you bootstrap it (like the Natural attacks above) - you have to add:
Field ID: abText
Value: CreatureName
Where CreatureName is the simple name like kruthic

[FreakFire74]

Thanks! I will get to it. I will report if I run into any more problems.

[FreakFire74]

Originally Posted by dungeonguru

For the stab and strike, what you do is choose "Other Melee Natural Attack" under Natural Attacks and put in the information. To the right of each attack are 4 buttons, one is a button that says "Fields". If you click that button you must add 2 fields:

#1:
Field ID: livename Value: Stab
#2
Field ID: sbName Value: Stab

You repeat this for each Natural Attack that isn't already defined.
If the attack bonus looks to be Dex based instead of Str, the easiest way to change this is to probably use the tag "Property.wFinesse" to it.

Many of the Racial Abilities that are missing the creature name are looking for you to add a Field to the ability after you bootstrap it (like the Natural attacks above) - you have to add:
Field ID: abText
Value: CreatureName
Where CreatureName is the simple name like kruthic

Okay, I have some difficulty in adding a natural attack.

1) When you say 'under natural attacks', do I click the natural attacks button? When I do I get a window which gives me "edit bootstraps on thing" and "click to add another bootstrap". Selecting the latter I get a huge list, but stab and spike are not there.

Joshuas guide said I should then select a similar ability and rename it but I'm not sure how..

I have zero experience with these things if you can't tell.

[FreakFire74]

Okay, got Stab & Spike to work but one more question. How do I configure variable range attacks? Spike's got a 20-60 range. I put "20-60" in but I can't find it in the HL profile.

Slowly getting there

[daplunk]

Originally Posted by FreakFire74

How do I configure variable range attacks? Spike's got a 20-60 range. I put "20-60" in but I can't find it in the HL profile.

You will be a pro in no time!

This is how to add the range stuff

[dungeonguru]

Over at github there's a wiki you can browse through where we have code examples and such...

The natural attacks article has some good info:

You're looking at two fields - wRangeNorm and wRangeLong for ranged attacks.

When Joshua says to look at special abilities and make copies, he's often referring to the other non-attack things like Pounce, False Appearance or any of the "traits" that can appear either in the Traits area or in the Actions/Reactions/Legendary Actions areas of a statblock that aren't necessarily melee or ranged attacks. If you do a New (Copy) of one of these it becomes a stand-alone copy that you can change whatever you want about it. A lot of things like False Appearance are sometimes hard to give a "generic" version of, so it's just easy and quick to make a copy that has the right wording and attach it.

[FreakFire74]

From Jushua's Tutorials:

How do I add a Natural Attack?
The Natural Attacks also need to be added. These are things like 'Bite' that are added to the monsters abilities and not as a weapon. They are easy to add and can be added via the Race thing.
1. Click Race > Race and select your monster from the list.
2. Click the Natural Attack's Edit button.
3. Click the button to add a Bootstrap (Bootstrap is basically a fancy term for saying I want to connect this thing to another thing).
4. Search the list for the Natural Attack you need to add.
4.a If there is no match you can use something similar and change the name.
5. A screen opens allowing you to configure the attack. It has a default that works on the standard mathematical calculations but you can adjust it. For this example i'm going to enter this Natural Attack:
Quote:
Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +17 to hit, reach 20 ft., one target. Hit: 28 (4d8+10) piercing damage.
6. Set # Dice to the number of dice that needs to be rolled.
7. Set the Dice # Sides to the type of dice that needs to be rolled.
8. Set the Reach to 20 to reflect the 20ft. range.
9. Adjust anything else you need to change. Note that for the ability above this is all I needed. Hero Lab managed the rest of the calculation. You can click Test Now and lookup the monster in Hero Lab to see the impact of your changes. I usually have the monster up in an open portfolio so that I can review the changes as I make them to a monster.

https://i.imgur.com/Kc67C6m.png - Too many images.

You mentioned I could Change the Name?
Getting a bit more technical now but yes yes you can. Take note that this does not only apply to Natural Attacks. The scripting in Hero Lab is bloody powerful.
1. The screen you were configuring above has some buttons on the right. One of which is called Fields. Click that.
2. Click to add another field x2.
3. Set the first Field Id: to sbName and the Value to <your custom Natural Attacks name>. The drop down should remain as Assign.
4. Set the second Field Id: to wShortName and the Value to <your custom Natural Attacks name>. The drop down should remain as Assign.
5. Why did you do that twice? Hero Lab has different copies of names to allow it to use them in different views. The wShortName is the name that appears in the Armory Column and the Weapons tab within HLC while the sbName is the one that is used in the StatBlock (Ctrl K > Show statblock summary window).

I get this all, however, how do I add bonus damage. For instance I have a pseudopod attack:

Pseudopod. Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 7 (1d6+4) bludgeoning damage plus 5 (2d4) psychic damage.

[FreakFire74]

Originally Posted by dungeonguru

Over at github there's a wiki you can browse through where we have code examples and such...

The natural attacks article has some good info:

You're looking at two fields - wRangeNorm and wRangeLong for ranged attacks.

When Joshua says to look at special abilities and make copies, he's often referring to the other non-attack things like Pounce, False Appearance or any of the "traits" that can appear either in the Traits area or in the Actions/Reactions/Legendary Actions areas of a statblock that aren't necessarily melee or ranged attacks. If you do a New (Copy) of one of these it becomes a stand-alone copy that you can change whatever you want about it. A lot of things like False Appearance are sometimes hard to give a "generic" version of, so it's just easy and quick to make a copy that has the right wording and attach it.

Thanks, although the wiki seems a bit too technical for me I think from a first glance. I have zero experience with stuff like this so I'm learning as I go. But I got most of the basics down I believe. Thanks for the help so far!

[daplunk]

The wiki is really just a note pad where i keep things i know have worked before and copy them

A REALLY powerful thing you can do (and this is getting more advanced) is search the Github for the name of a thing that you are trying to modify. Almost everything we do in Hero Lab has been done before so you can usually find some code that does what you are trying to do and copy it.

I kid you not. I do not know what I am doing. I cannot write a single line of code in Hero Lab. I copy everything.

[daplunk]

Originally Posted by FreakFire74

how do I add bonus damage. For instance I have a pseudopod attack:

Pseudopod. Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 7 (1d6+4) bludgeoning damage plus 5 (2d4) psychic damage.

You can add additional damage from the Natural Damage config screen. Anything entered here is appended to the same sentence.

Anything added to the On-Hit effects occurs after a full stop as a new sentence.