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The most common race found in Lankhmar is human, though they hail from a variety of locales. Humans begin play with one free Edge as long as they meet all the requirements(see Edges in the Savage Worlds core rules) and a d6 in the skill of their choice, or they can take the cultural package for the various backgrounds listed below
2) This is another source book with some extra stuff and choices for "humans" which at least in my mind would make a race tab and either racial ability/racial property(I can never remember which is the "use this from now own") with one or more selectable things which can then bootstrap stuff. Here is the example from the book(I have to write it manually, so hopefully I don't mistype:
Now, my initial reading of the above(last night) was:
free Edge AND ( (d6 any skill) OR (cultural package) )
but after further reading, I THINK it's supposed to be:
( (free edge) AND (d6 any skill) ) OR (cultural package)
[snip] One possible issue with that is that any existing scripts anywhere which try to add to weapons typically seem to check the name field for comparison and would not find this "instance" because it may not have "Sword" or whatever else in the name anymore.
4) no PP for magic, but has Casting Modifier instead that would be nice to be able to add to the power(but we can't). In theory, IF PP could take a negative number and I assume it can, one could make copies of each power in the setting and put in the casting modifier in place of the PP cost. Basically, this is a modifier to the skill roll, BUT you can buy down during the actual casting by taking longer to cast the spell. For example, the spell Astral Walk has a -10 Casting Modifier, so no one with one or more raises and/or a very high skill dice can cast in 1-2 rounds, but if you spend 10 rounds, it the skill roll has no modifiers. Thoughts? Is there a better way to model this with what we currently have or would it make more sense to extend what currently exists. I have not thought to much about the details, but would the way Super Powers work in the current Hero Lab handle this since they don't have PP's but have some kind of negative casting modifier based upon the original PP cost? I have not played with it, so I don't know.
5) Spell Duration: this is not hard in any way, but it's extra work. Basically base spells have a much higher duration so every one would need to be re-written.
6) Arcane Backgrounds: three new ones, each with some different flavor stuff that would have to be dealt with and no existing core ones can be used:
[snip]
White Magic
This one is a bit weird and I have no idea how to make this seem natural. Basically, you get a free "new power edge" per rank. I really like the idea here and was thinking for my personal campaign of this EXACT feature just a few hours before reading this in the book. Does anyone have any ideas of how to implement this? It seems like it would be very clunky.
Definitely the latter. The comma is the giveway separator for the sentence that breaks the two sections apart from each other so it's Edge+Skill OR Cultural Package.
I think most of the weapon-based scripts actually look for tags instead (or they usually should, anyway) as the tags should be the defining grouping for weapons rather than just the name, but there probably are some scripts out there that do work on now maybe because it affects a specific weapon or type of weapon that always seems to have that word in the name? I can't think of one right now, mind you. The only other "gotcha" on that would be that, at least in some of my settings files, dual-purpose weapons end up as two entries, such as a spear, for example, can be purchased under either melee or thrown weapons and doing so bootstraps an otherwise hidden, no-cost, no-weight version of the other version of that weapon. So if the named weapon was one of those it might seem a bit odd, I guess.
I guess my thought process here is why should it be that much extra work to give a weapon a name? I know in fantasy novels and the games I ahve played in for 30+ years or so, people giving their weapons names has happened hundreds of times. Granted, in my more recent experience as a GM, I have taken the tack that found magical weapons ALREADY have a name, but that's something I have only recently started in my personal world. Anyway, this is not a big deal, but it's one of the tiny annoyances I have with HL and a nice to have the ability to assign a name to weapons.
I also noticed that when taking Trademark Weapon as my test case, it presented me with all weapons are listed(which is fine), but when taking Improved Trademark weapon, again, all weapons are listed. However, the latter should only show the list of weapons which have already been "assigned" trademark weapons status. Having the ability to set a name per item would allow that to be possible while it's not now.
Originally Posted by jfrazierjr
4) no PP for magic, but has Casting Modifier instead that would be nice to be able to add to the power(but we can't). In theory, IF PP could take a negative number and I assume it can, one could make copies of each power in the setting and put in the casting modifier in place of the PP cost. Basically, this is a modifier to the skill roll, BUT you can buy down during the actual casting by taking longer to cast the spell. For example, the spell Astral Walk has a -10 Casting Modifier, so no one with one or more raises and/or a very high skill dice can cast in 1-2 rounds, but if you spend 10 rounds, it the skill roll has no modifiers. Thoughts? Is there a better way to model this with what we currently have or would it make more sense to extend what currently exists. I have not thought to much about the details, but would the way Super Powers work in the current Hero Lab handle this since they don't have PP's but have some kind of negative casting modifier based upon the original PP cost? I have not played with it, so I don't know.
Honestly, that's the kind of thing I would have never bothered trying to code into a data file in the first place. There are just too many variables there, just like a normal No PP setting (Bolt has various casting modifiers depending on how you cast it, for example.) That's almost like trying to code in situational modifiers, like lighting conditions, cover or aimed shots. Not something you really code into Hero Lab at all. If it's coded anywhere it seems to me the place to do that would be in a VTT program.
See this is one thing that bugs me about that thought proccess. When I use a character builder, the goal is to both make it easier to build and maintain a character as well as help during gameplay in some way. For the later, that means to me that all the meta information, things such as PP, name, duration, range, etc be clearly and quickly available to me via a print out or pdf on a tablet at the table. I am a bit less pedantic about full rule details as that level of copy/paste can then potentially run afoul of copyright laws, but the high level stuff should be in the editor in some way so that it can get output to the character sheet and not have to be constantly looked up.
If you can find an example of this in the existing game files(or one you can send if it's not in the downloader), please let me know. As I mentioned this seemed like a hard one to handle and I was thinking vaguely of doing something like this in my personal game just a few hows before reading it in the Lankmar source book(though it's still a thought and not an absolute going to do). My end goal is to try to not add things to my personal game unless they can be modeled in HeroLab AND modeled in a way that does not seem clunky to my players.I'd have to check some of the other rank-based things, but I seem to recall some code for handling that being out there, and in this case being a relatively easy implementation of just bootstraping the Edge.
From technical level, I have the personal expertise to rebuild Savage Worlds
from the Authoring Kit exactly the way I want it to be(with some guidance on how to accomplish certain tasks of course). But the primary issue is with time. I am still waffling on the decision if the "get it my way" is worth the huge time investment. Heck, I know enough programming languages that I could build a character builder from scratch for any specific game system, but that's even MORE time vs me extending Hero Lab via the Authoring Kit. I know for a fact I won't do the latter not only because of the actual programming time commitment, but also the data entry time which is humongous and would be a one game system thing.
I guess my thought process here is why should it be that much extra work to give a weapon a name?[snip]
See this is one thing that bugs me about that thought proccess. When I use a character builder, the goal is to both make it easier to build and maintain a character as well as help during gameplay in some way. For the later, that means to me that all the meta information, things such as PP, name, duration, range, etc be clearly and quickly available to me via a print out or pdf on a tablet at the table. I am a bit less pedantic about full rule details as that level of copy/paste can then potentially run afoul of copyright laws, but the high level stuff should be in the editor in some way so that it can get output to the character sheet and not have to be constantly looked up.
If you can find an example of this in the existing game files(or one you can send if it's not in the downloader), please let me know. As I mentioned this seemed like a hard one to handle and I was thinking vaguely of doing something like this in my personal game just a few hows before reading it in the Lankmar source book(though it's still a thought and not an absolute going to do). My end goal is to try to not add things to my personal game unless they can be modeled in HeroLab AND modeled in a way that does not seem clunky to my players.
For adding a bonus to a trait based on Rank.
Eval Script: Pre-Traits/5000
Code:var bonus as number bonus = herofield[acRank].value + 1 perform #traitadjust[trCommand,+,bonus,"Valhalla Graduate"]
CapedCrusader has noted of this: "For NPC's though, since we don't know what Rank they are until everything is bought, and it can change every time something on the character changes, it has to be populated much later. So, be aware that using the acRank value can be somewhat unpredictable with NPC's."
Maybe it would be easier if HL just added a custom text field? Rather like a Trappings field for Powers?
I both agree and disagree here. I modified the base character sheet output to include full descriptions instead of summaries for that very reason, but I definitely do not expect a character builder to handle situational modifiers. A VTT program, sure, but not a character builder. However, maybe this is another situation where having an available text field, again like trappings for powers, might be useful if you wanted to jot down all the situational modifiers that could potentially apply. That's just my take, though, and may just reflect how much time I would bother with when making a data file personally.
What about this from the Common Code Examples thread?
Obviously that is for bumping up a bonus to a trait, but potentially could be used to add a free Edge then bootstrap that edge. Not sure if you'd have to then trap for each Rank to make sure you are only apply that one Edge at each Rank. I'd have to play with that, though.
As for technical expertise to do these things... well, plenty of folks here have more of that than I do. And time, and inclination, is always a bit of an issue for me was well. Still, if someone takes care of a lot of the copy and paste work (especially for Pinnacle produced stuff, since LWD has an agreement with them already in place, so a lot less worries acout copyright issues if we give the files to LWD to put into the official updater) then I'm more likely to put in the little bit of extra time to do some coding work to finish out a file than I am to just do the file on my own for a setting I'm not otherwise working with for you own gaming group.