Ability Focus Target?

[TCArknight]

OK, I have an Ability added to my race: Unnatural Aura, and it has the DC as Charisma based.

I can select it for the Ability Focus feat on the Feats tab, but trying to add Target.raUnnatAur on the race creation tab where the feat is bootstrapped doesn't seem to work as HL declares it an invalid Tag.

Thoughts?

 

[Mathias]

What's the exact error message declaring it invalid? You can right-click and copy error messages, then paste them here.

You've double-checked spelling and capitalization?

Can you go into the XML and copy exactly what the bootstrap of Ability Focus looks like?

 

[TCArknight]

I get:
Thing 'rCallDark' - Undefined tag 'Target.raUnnatAur' referenced in Bootstrap.

<bootstrap thing="fAbilFoc">
<autotag group="Target" tag="raUnnatAur"/>
</bootstrap>

This is the Unnatural Aura ability:

<thing id="raUnnatAur" name="Unnatural Aura" description="Animals can sense the unnatural presence of a caller in darkness. Any animal within 30 feet must make a DC 18 Will save or become panicked until it is no longer within 30 feet of the caller in darkness. A panicked creature that is cornered begins cowering. The save DC is Charisma-based. The listed DC includes the caller in darkness&#146; Ability Focus feat." compset="RaceSpec">
<usesource source="pPURace"/>
<tag group="AbilType" tag="Super"/>
<tag group="SpecType" tag="Aura"/>
<tag group="Helper" tag="ShowSpec"/>
<tag group="StandardDC" tag="aCHA"/>
</thing>

 

[Mathias]

Try commenting out rCallDark (or just that bootstrap on rCallDark), and make sure that the file compiles with only raUnnatAur in place. Then, uncomment rCallDark and try compiling again.

 

[TCArknight]

Everything compiles and loads fine if the autotag isn't present. Ability Focus is left with a chooser on the Feat tab, and correctly only lists the Unnatural Aura which can be selected.

 

[Mathias]

I've studied this, and it's a limitation in the way the Target mechanism works - tags from the Target group can't be generated for basic abilities, racial abilities, and feats, because they're what use Target tags to find other things. So if they all generated an identity tag from the Target group, it'd confuse the script as to what to target - themselves or the thing the data file author said to target. (And you can't get at the file you need in order to use the workaround we use - manually defining that tag).

I think the solution here is to create a specific "Ability Focus (Unnatural Darkness)" feat that applies the right effects to the right ability, and doesn't need a selector in order to find that ability.

You can give that feat the Helper.Helper tag so that it doesn't show up for selection on normal characters.

 

[TCArknight]

Thanks Mathias, I appreciate the explanation and will take your suggestion.