What changes/enhancements would you like to see?

[Mathias]

Originally Posted by TCArknight

Regarding the amendthing?

It is a brand new property, so nothing to preclude. I was wanting to use it to append the calculated range of an ability (range of Spirit*4) so was going to have a script calculate it and append that value to the summary.

Amendthing only has two options - name and description - it sounds like you want to use this to change the summary, which is not an option for that tool.

In order to have script-configurable summaries, in other Hero Lab games, we've added a new text field, which can be edited like any other text field, and if there's no text added by a script, will look up the summary field and use that as its text. Then, anywhere we want to display a summary, we're really displaying that field, not the basic summary.

[Cid]

Originally Posted by TCArknight

I would guess that's probably because different settings may have different core skills. If that's the case, bootstrapping the appropriate skills to the setting mechanic will work best...

I usually make Guts a core skill for Deadlands.

[Maidhc O Casain]

Originally Posted by TCArknight

I would guess that's probably because different settings may have different core skills. If that's the case, bootstrapping the appropriate skills to the setting mechanic will work best...

Ah! That makes sense, thanks.

[CapedCrusader]

The difficulty is adding an automatic pick to a hero is problematic. The Core Skills are all tagged, and those tags can be dropped/added to change them for the Setting. So if you could leverage that tag and automatically include any Skills that had that tag it would work. But I don't know a way to do that currently.

Another issue is - when do you add them? And if you then change the Setting to a different one with different Core Skills, you'd have to figure out a way to remove the ones added by the old Setting and add the ones for the new Setting. Then there's multiple Settings. It gets into the weeds in a big hurry.

By far the simplest way is to let the user choose the Skills, and just subtract the initial point cost for any Core Skills that are taken.

The same method is used for the Language allowance. Since Languages are Skills now, we have to manage the cost on the back end because the free Languages are all at d6 with the native language being d8. We run into the same issues when folks change their Smarts, or activate Multiple Languages or Linguist. We can't add and subtract Skills on the fly, and the number the hero is allowed can change radically, up or down, as the hero is being developed. So we have to look on the back end when the costs are figured. This is not as simple as the Core Skills issue because of the Skill Die requirements.

[Maidhc O Casain]

Got it, CC, thanks. Like I said, it's not a huge thing and I got it figured out. Sounds like this makes it work the best for the most people, with the least hassle.

I'm just glad it's out now!

[TCArknight]

I'm taking a look at a couple of SWADE settings (Deadlands Lost Colony in particular) and gear in Lost Colony has an Availability Rating.

Originally Posted by Lost Colony Equipment

All goods are rated for availability:
Common, Uncommon, Scarce, Rare, and Very Rare. This represents how difficult it is for a hero to locate the item.

It would be nice to have something like grAvail field on gear that would hold at least a 2 character availability for an item. If there was something in it, it would display on mouseover, etc. otherwise could reamain empty...

Just a thought.
TC

[CapedCrusader]

Hmmmm. That's an interesting idea. I certainly don't see why not...

[TCArknight]

It might be useful to have the #appenddesc macro available in SW:

<scriptmacro
name="appenddesc"
param1="thing"
param2="append"
result="perform state.thing[#thing].amendthing[description,state.thing[#thing].field[descript].text] &amp; &quot;{br}{br}&quot; &amp; #append ]"/>

[TCArknight]

Had another thought about a useful field -

A text field on Powers (powModText perhaps?) to specifically hold the Modifiers for the power. That way could display the modifiers available to a power on an output sheet without the rest of the description.

[CapedCrusader]

Hmmmmm... That could be assembled with a foreach loop from the name fields of the attached Modifiers...