Data Files Authoring questions

I'm making the Wizards of High Sorcery prestige class and I have a few questions.

First of all, there are 3 alignment based variations on this class, one good, one evil, and one nuetral. The main ability of the class is called Order Secrets, and which secrets can be selecter depend on what alignment you are. How do I specify that a certain custom ability can only be selected by characters of the correct alignment? This seems to me easier than ther other possible way to tackle the problem, making 3 different classes, one for each alignment (White robes, black robes, and red robes specifically).

My second question is about the ability called Arcane focus. Basicall, upon taking the first level of this prestige class wizards who are not specialists may choose to specialize, and those who were already specialized give up an additional school for added benefits. How would I do this? Also, the schools specialized in and given up are restricted by alignment as well, how would I specify only certain schools?

Lawful_g wrote:
>
>
> I'm making the Wizards of High Sorcery prestige class and I have a few
> questions.
>
> First of all, there are 3 alignment based variations on this class, one
> good, one evil, and one nuetral. The main ability of the class is called
> Order Secrets, and which secrets can be selecter depend on what
> alignment you are. How do I specify that a certain custom ability can
> only be selected by characters of the correct alignment? This seems to
> me easier than ther other possible way to tackle the problem, making 3
> different classes, one for each alignment (White robes, black robes, and
> red robes specifically).


You can give the special ability a prereq that checks for the right
alignment. For example, let's say you have an ability that should only
be allowed for Good heroes. Give it a prereq like this:

@valid = 0
if (hero.tagis[Alignment.Good] <> 0) then
@valid = 1
endif

With an appropriate error message.


> My second question is about the ability called Arcane focus. Basicall,
> upon taking the first level of this prestige class wizards who are not
> specialists may choose to specialize, and those who were already
> specialized give up an additional school for added benefits. How would I
> do this? Also, the schools specialized in and given up are restricted by
> alignment as well, how would I specify only certain schools?


For allowing wizards that don't specialize to specialize, I don't know
if there's a way to enforce that - you could simply say that if someone
wants to specialize, they go to the Wizard tab and specialize there.


For wizards that are already specialized, you could add a custom ability
for each school (named, for example "Forbid School: Evocation") that
they could take. The custom ability would add an appropriate "WizForbid"
tag to the hero; for example, Forbid School: Evocation would add the
"WizForbid.Evocation" tag.


Hope this helps,

--
Colen McAlister, colen@wolflair.com
Chief Engineer, Lone Wolf Development

Alright. I think I figured out how to add a tag to a hero thanks to some code in the Centaur race, but there is one spell school I can't get it to work for, Transmutation. I've tried all the forms and shortenings of Transmutation that I can think of but all ot them give me an error.

I had a similar problem with Abjuration, but after searching around in the "Find Thing" Screen I discovered the abbreviations for spell schools, specialized schools, and forbidden schools that gave me the correct abbreviation of "Abjur". According to these lists the shortening of Transmutation should be "Trans" but that isn't working either. Here is the code I am using

Phase=First Priority=100
var result as number
result = hero.assign[WizForbid.Trans]

Anything wrong with that?

Also, I set up each custom ability of my class to be only available to certain alignments by setting a pre-requisite... However in the window to select the abilities all are available, not just the ones that the character's prerequisites qualify him for. If you select an ability that you don't qualify for there is a validation error, but is there a way to gray out the abilities you don't qualify for or otherwise make some sort of warning? I notice the Loremaster secrets have req warning messages... can't figure that out for my own ability though.

Entering a Race now, Baaz Draconian from Dragons of Krynn, and I'm having trouble with the implementing of natural weapons. Baaz have 2 claws (thier primary) and a Bite (secondary, takes a -5 penalty) I can't seem to figure out how to designate the claws as primary so they don't take the -5 penalty.

Looking through the already entered races, they all have the "wClaw" or "wBite" thing bootstrapped to the race with a Autotag group of wMain and then a Tag that varies from weapon to weapon. I think the Tag must determine the damage of the weapon, which I have correctly at base d4, but incorrectly getting only 1/2 str bonus... My best guess is that the Tag also somehow determines primary and secondary attack characteristics, and wMain must refer to main/off hand.

Interestingly, it looks like the Troll and the Gargoyle and possibly others with natural attacks (I have not checked others) are also registering all thier natural attacks as secondary. I think this might be a bug

So, just to sum up, my problems are.
1: Can't specify the wClaw thing as a primary weapon so it doesn't suffer -5 to attack and get 1/2 str bonus to damage
2: Possible bug in current implementation of natural attacks for races already added.

By the way, thanks for helping me out. I really like how customer friendly your company is, and I'll just continue to post questions in this thread as I run up against problems.

Next race of Draconians is Bozak, who have natural ability as sorcerors. They automatically cast spells as 4th level sorcerors, and if they add the sorceror class thier sorceror levels stack with thier natural ability in all ways (so a 1st level bozak sorceror would have a Caster level of 5, know as many spells and cast as many times per day as a 5th level sorceror). Is there any way to do this in hero lab? I know prestige classes can add spellcasting levels, but can a race? Also just adding to existing sorceror levels doesn't exactly suffice, because what if the bozak doesn't take any further levels in sorceror, becomes a fighter perhaps? He'd still have the spellcasting ability of his race.

An additional thing, some of the other draconian races get different abilities depending on sex, for example male Kapak have venomous saliva, but female Kapak have healing saliva. Is there a way to tie racial abilities to the gender selection of the character?

Similar problem to the spellcasting above, Kapaks get 1d6 of sneak attack damage from thier race as well, so how to make that stack with sneak attack from rogue levels?... I guess the general question is how to make abilities normally granted by classes be granted by races and make them easily stackable?

Also, I noticed a small error. Both Bugbears and Hobgoblins are correctly getting a +4 bonus to Move Silently, but in the specials tab Hobgoblins have the same entry for racial skill bonuses as Bugbears and the summary incorrectly states +2, as well as citing the source as the Bugbear race rather than the hobgoblin one. Darkvision for Hobgoblin race also states it's source as bugbear.

Actually I did figure several of these out after a couple of hours. For the different abilities based on gender I made two seperate races, one for male and the other for female, but just out of curiousity is there a way to make gender selection automatic or a prerequisite? I know there are some prestige classes that can only be taken by women (Beloved of Valorian from Exalted Deeds I think it was called? Unicorn riding virginal female rangers was the idea...).

For natural spellcasting I found the entry for Rakshasa and the way that was solved was by bootstrapping the cHelpSor panel and adding an Eval script that gave however many levels of the class. The problem with this is that in addition to the spellcasting you also get the base saves and attack bonus of the sorceror of that level. I just lowered the base save/attack of the draconian race by an equal amount, so it works at first... the problem lies when you add levels of sorceror the base save and attack bonuses are thrown off by the levels the race already has. It doesn't, for example, give +2 to will saves at first level.

Theoretically I could also use this principle to add sneak attack via rogue levels, but that would be even more messy because rogues have special abilities that are thrown off by 1 level...

Rashasa also provided me with tags to designate natural weapons as primary or secondary, so that is fine now, it turned out to be as simple as assigning the tag.

Also one of the natural abilities of an Aurak is a ray attack that deals 4d6 damage. I made a weapon entry for it, but it can't go up to 4d6 damage. I'd like to know what the tag to assign 4d6 as the damage is, since 1d4_4 is apparently d6 if I remember right. Would it be 4d4_4 maybe? I'd try it but I am not at home right now. Is there a table with this information somewhere in the Authoring kit docs?

So my current questions in order of appearance are.

1: What is the tag for the Transmutation school that will let me forbid it?
2: Is there a way to gray our or flash a warning that you do not meet the requirements for certain custom abilities?
3: Is there a way just to add sorceror spellcasting and not the levels so that BA/Save progression is not altered?
4: Can gender be a pre-requisite or automatically picked by race?
5: How can I make racial Sneak attack dice stack with sneak attack dice from other sources (classes etc) without adding said classes?
6: What is the tag to assign 4d6 dam to a weapon? Is there a reference table somewhere?

Possible errors I noticed
1: All natural weapons of Trolls and Gargoyles (possible others) are all registering as secondary
2: Hobgoblin racial abilities are citing Bugbear as thier source, the summary of racial skill bonus is wrong for both.

Lawful_g wrote:
>
>
> Alright. I think I figured out how to add a tag to a hero thanks to some
> code in the Centaur race, but there is one spell school I can't get it
> to work for, Transmutation. I've tried all the forms and shortenings of
> Transmutation that I can think of but all ot them give me an error.
>
> I had a similar problem with Abjuration, but after searching around in
> the "Find Thing" Screen I discovered the abbreviations for spell
> schools, specialized schools, and forbidden schools that gave me the
> correct abbreviation of "Abjur". According to these lists the shortening
> of Transmutation should be "Trans" but that isn't working either. Here
> is the code I am using
>
> Phase=First Priority=100
> var result as number
> result = hero.assign[WizForbid.Trans]
>
> Anything wrong with that?


Sorry for the confusion - it should be WizForbid.Transmutat. I'll make a
note that this should be explained better / more intuitive in future.


--
Colen McAlister, colen@wolflair.com
Chief Engineer, Lone Wolf Development

Lawful_g wrote:
>
>
> Also, I set up each custom ability of my class to be only available to
> certain alignments by setting a pre-requisite... However in the window
> to select the abilities all are available, not just the ones that the
> character's prerequisites qualify him for. If you select an ability that
> you don't qualify for there is a validation error, but is there a way to
> gray out the abilities you don't qualify for or otherwise make some sort
> of warning? I notice the Loremaster secrets have req warning messages...
> can't figure that out for my own ability though.


Oops - that's a bug. I'll get that fixed for the next update.


Thanks,

--
Colen McAlister, colen@wolflair.com
Chief Engineer, Lone Wolf Development

Lawful_g wrote:
>
>
> Entering a Race now, Baaz Draconian from Dragons of Krynn, and I'm
> having trouble with the implementing of natural weapons. Baaz have 2
> claws (thier primary) and a Bite (secondary, takes a -5 penalty) I can't
> seem to figure out how to designate the claws as primary so they don't
> take the -5 penalty.


Assign your primary weapon the tag "Helper.NatPrimary" and secondary
weapons the tag "Helper.NatSecond". That should make penalties calculate
properly.


> Looking through the already entered races, they all have the "wClaw" or
> "wBite" thing bootstrapped to the race with a Autotag group of wMain and
> then a Tag that varies from weapon to weapon. I think the Tag must
> determine the damage of the weapon, which I have correctly at base d4,
> but incorrectly getting only 1/2 str bonus... My best guess is that the
> Tag also somehow determines primary and secondary attack
> characteristics, and wMain must refer to main/off hand.


Secondary natural attacks should all get half your strength bonus, so
this should work as soon as you designate it as "Primary" properly.


> Interestingly, it looks like the Troll and the Gargoyle and possibly
> others with natural attacks (I have not checked others) are also
> registering all thier natural attacks as secondary. I think this might
> be a bug


Hmm, you're right. I'll check the existing races for this.


> So, just to sum up, my problems are.
> 1: Can't specify the wClaw thing as a primary weapon so it doesn't
> suffer -5 to attack and get 1/2 str bonus to damage
> 2: Possible bug in current implementation of natural attacks for races
> already added.
>
> By the way, thanks for helping me out. I really like how customer
> friendly your company is, and I'll just continue to post questions in
> this thread as I run up against problems.


Awesome! That's what we're here for.


Hope this helps,

--
Colen McAlister, colen@wolflair.com
Chief Engineer, Lone Wolf Development

Lawful_g wrote:
>
>
> Next race of Draconians is Bozak, who have natural ability as sorcerors.
> They automatically cast spells as 4th level sorcerors, and if they add
> the sorceror class thier sorceror levels stack with thier natural
> ability in all ways (so a 1st level bozak sorceror would have a Caster
> level of 5, know as many spells and cast as many times per day as a 5th
> level sorceror). Is there any way to do this in hero lab? I know
> prestige classes can add spellcasting levels, but can a race? Also just
> adding to existing sorceror levels doesn't exactly suffice, because what
> if the bozak doesn't take any further levels in sorceror, becomes a
> fighter perhaps? He'd still have the spellcasting ability of his race.


You can do this just like the Rashasa does. In a script that runs at
First/0, do this:

hero.child[cHelpSor].field[cBonusLev].value += 4

And make sure to bootstrap the cHelpSor thing (the Sorcerer class). You
should get a bonus 4 levels of sorcerer, which should stack properly
with all other class levels you take.


> An additional thing, some of the other draconian races get different
> abilities depending on sex, for example male Kapak have venomous saliva,
> but female Kapak have healing saliva. Is there a way to tie racial
> abilities to the gender selection of the character?


There's currently no good way to do this. I'll make sure to add tags to
indicate whether you're male or female in a future release. Once those
are in, you can use them to hide certain abilities based on whether you
do or don't have the correct tag.


Hope this helps,

--
Colen McAlister, colen@wolflair.com
Chief Engineer, Lone Wolf Development

Lawful_g wrote:
>
>
> Similar problem to the spellcasting above, Kapaks get 1d6 of sneak
> attack damage from thier race as well, so how to make that stack with
> sneak attack from rogue levels?... I guess the general question is how
> to make abilities normally granted by classes be granted by races and
> make them easily stackable?


You can add 4 dice of sneak attack damage by bootstrapping the
"xSneakAtt" thing and then doing the following:

hero.child[xSneakAtt].field[Value].value += 4

That should add 4 dice to your sneak attack ability, regardless of which
class it comes from.


--
Colen McAlister, colen@wolflair.com
Chief Engineer, Lone Wolf Development

Lawful_g wrote:

> Also, I noticed a small error. Both Bugbears and Hobgoblins are
> correctly getting a +4 bonus to Move Silently, but in the specials tab
> Hobgoblins have the same entry for racial skill bonuses as Bugbears and
> the summary incorrectly states +2, as well as citing the source as the
> Bugbear race rather than the hobgoblin one. Darkvision for Hobgoblin
> race also states it's source as bugbear.


Oh, forgot to mention - thanks for this bug, I'll get it fixed!


--
Colen McAlister, colen@wolflair.com
Chief Engineer, Lone Wolf Development

Lawful_g wrote:
>
>
> Actually I did figure several of these out after a couple of hours. For
> the different abilities based on gender I made two seperate races, one
> for male and the other for female, but just out of curiousity is there a
> way to make gender selection automatic or a prerequisite? I know there
> are some prestige classes that can only be taken by women (Beloved of
> Valorian from Exalted Deeds I think it was called? Unicorn riding
> virginal female rangers was the idea...).


I think I covered this in my other response.


> For natural spellcasting I found the entry for Rakshasa and the way that
> was solved was by bootstrapping the cHelpSor panel and adding an Eval
> script that gave however many levels of the class. The problem with this
> is that in addition to the spellcasting you also get the base saves and
> attack bonus of the sorceror of that level. I just lowered the base
> save/attack of the draconian race by an equal amount, so it works at
> first... the problem lies when you add levels of sorceror the base save
> and attack bonuses are thrown off by the levels the race already has. It
> doesn't, for example, give +2 to will saves at first level.


Hmm, good point. I guess I need to distinguish between "Casts Spells as
a level 7 sorcerer" and "Gets a free 7 levels of Sorcerer". I'll see if
I can fix that...


> Theoretically I could also use this principle to add sneak attack via
> rogue levels, but that would be even more messy because rogues have
> special abilities that are thrown off by 1 level...


This should also have been covered in another post.


> Also one of the natural abilities of an Aurak is a ray attack that deals
> 4d6 damage. I made a weapon entry for it, but it can't go up to 4d6
> damage. I'd like to know what the tag to assign 4d6 as the damage is,
> since 1d4_4 is apparently d6 if I remember right. Would it be 4d4_4
> maybe? I'd try it but I am not at home right now. Is there a table with
> this information somewhere in the Authoring kit docs?


Unfortunately that's currently not supported, but you're the second
person to ask for it. I'll bump up its priority on the to-do list.


Thanks,

--
Colen McAlister, colen@wolflair.com
Chief Engineer, Lone Wolf Development

Colen said:

Assign your primary weapon the tag "Helper.NatPrimary" and secondary
weapons the tag "Helper.NatSecond". That should make penalties calculate
properly.

Click to expand...

fyi, this worked for me when entering the Thri-kreen. It shows the correct bonuses for secondary & primary attacks, and when I add the Multiattack feat it correctly modifies the secondary attack bonus.

Thanks Colen, you too hunter.

I have another question. I'm entering the Mystic class, which is a spontaneous divine spellcaster that uses the same spell list as the cleric but only gets one domain. Similarly to the sorceror they can only know a limited number of spells of each level. I'm having trouble dealing with the domain.

I don't know how to make it show up on the panel. I copied the Cleric class, but I didn't see any bootstrapped abilities that were for the domains. Looking through the Eval Rules and scripts I couldn't find anything referencing domains either. I even recopied the cleric class without any changes other than the name and on the panel for this new class the section for domain and deity were absent...

So, how do I add a single domain selection for the Mystic cass?

A second issue, for after that one is solved. The Mystic gains the domain spells of his domain as bonus spells known, so for example, at 1st level he knows 5 0th level spells, 2 1st level spells, and the 1st level spell for the domain he has chosen. How do I make the domain the mystic selects add a certain spell as a bonus spell to his spells known? I understand that I will have to use the "Replaces ID" box and re enter values for all the domains in the PHB, which is going to be a chore. I'm asking about the coding aspect here.

I'll definitely have more questions over the long weekend, when I can have hero lab open and be visiting this forum simultaneously. I haven't had Internet at home for the last week or so, but it's supposed to be turned on tomorrow. I never realize how much I rely on the net for everything from study to entertainment to business until it is stripped from me.

Anyway. I hope everyone else can relax and doze on Thanksgiving. I know I'm going to be busy.

If you edit the dat file by hand you can make this work. It's a little complicated if you copy/paste the base cleric panel stuff from srd_class_cleric.dat, because you'll have to rename a lot of the things to prevent duplicates... but open that file and find this code:

Notice the 4 "portalref" statements below that? The last two of those are for the two Domains... if the 2nd one were removed, and any references to that second portal, it will only show 1 domain on the class panel.

Hope this makes sense!

WARNING!!!!! WARNING!!!!!

Making this manual change works - for now. However, the below technique is *NOT* guaranteed to continue working into the future. So be advised that future changes to HL could break your data files if you use this technique.

We're in the process of revamping lots of internal mechanisms. Our goal is to make everything as easy as possible for users, and we regularly tweak and tune things internally towards that goal. Things are also changing as we work towards getting the Authoring Kit ready for letting users create their own data files from scratch for new games.

The net result is that changing data file code that relies on undocumented internal mechanisms could break in future releases. So please be mindful of this liability when making such changes.

-Rob


At 08:43 AM 11/24/2007, you wrote:

If you edit the dat file by hand you can make this work. It's a little complicated if you copy/paste the base cleric panel stuff from srd_class_cleric.dat, because you'll have to rename a lot of the things to prevent duplicates... but open that file and find this code:
Code:
 
  <layout
    id="cleric">
    <portalref portal="cClrDomSpl" taborder="60"/>
    <portalref portal="cClrSpells" taborder="70"/>
    <portalref portal="cClrDom1" taborder="40"/>
    <portalref portal="cClrDom2" taborder="50"/>


Notice the 4 "portalref" statements below that? The last two of those are for the two Domains... if the 2nd one were removed, and any references to that second portal, it will only show 1 domain on the class panel.

Hope this makes sense!

Click to expand...

All we need to add now is a sound clip... "Danger Will Robinson!"

Thanks for pointing this out. I made a slightly modified version of the Cleric by duplicating the SRD version and making the changes necessary, but the default class panel that was generated didn't have a domain entry. I managed to "hack" one together by copying the panel & layout stuff from the srd cleric file, then modifying a few key things. Hopefully it will stay functional for awhile longer? Oh well, if it changes then it changes