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Adding Classes, Races, Monssters, Traits, Feats, and more!

W

wolfang237

Active member
Alright, so my brother found a d20 system for Avatar the Last Airbender at https://sites.google.com/site/avatard20/home. It's based off the 3.5 D&D systems but he wants to run it in Pathfinder since they're very easy to transfer things between and, plus, I have every module for the Pathfinder character creator from Lone Wolf (except maybe some really recent new content).

First and foremost: are these bender classes, feats, and weapons balanced in 3.5? Pathfinder? If not, how would I make changes to transfer them to Pathfinder and be balanced. This is prob more for the Paizo forums but I'll ask here, too.

Second, I need to be able to add all these classes, their features, the feats, and everything so I can use them to create my friends' characters via the builder. I have only been making hybrid classes or features/traits/classes using systems already in the coding: I'm not a programmer and I don't pretend to know how the hell I can change these powers/features to make up my own classes, much less add third party content possibly not based on any current system already in the coding.

So, I want to check what will and will not be balanced for Pathfinder and then, hopefully, balance it and then I'de really appreciate some help getting all this stuff into the Pathfinder character creator - as I said, I'm not a programmer so anyone who decides to take on this hefty job probably will need to be patient - I'm very sorry :<
 
I can't comment on balance, that's beyond my scope. But, if you get stuck on entering something specific post your issue here on the forums and people will help (either other fans or me/Mathias/Hollis if we've a moment).

If you are asking for help, please be clear and specific about what you're trying to do and how it's not working. For example, if you get errors, you can right click, copy, and paste them for your helpers to see. If you want to do something, don't just say "How do I make X feat?", take it a step at a time (like, "I'm having trouble with pre-requisites, how do I check for Dex of 13 or higher?"). This will help us help you.
 
Kk - thanks! Once I get word on balance and conversion, I'll be sure to post it step by step about exactly how I'm going to add all this stuff. I'll start with classes, though, and I have some experience in that which means I'll get a good amount of it one and be asking about dem specifics. I have NEVER created a class feature, though, so when the time comes, I'll probably be asking for a complete tutorial on that. But that's when the time comes. I'll cross that bridge when I get there.
 
It sounds like you may not have come across the tutorials in Hero Lab. Within the editor, select the Help menu, then "Help on Using the Editor". Several of those tutorials deal with classes.
 
I have, actually, looked at the tutorials but they do the BASE functions and a lot of their stuff was just borrowing mechanics/features from existing classes (which I can do fine btw). I'm working on it now but I'll ask questions as I come up with issues: the only fear I have is if I have to make features and code from scratch.
 
Wolfang, if you're looking for specific help, you'd want to use this forum. If you're looking for help in adding the classes and feats and such, you might want to see if the people over on the User Projects forums would throw their hat in.
 
Alright: I'm adding the classes and I'm not having any issues until I hit the Seeds. The idea most likely to work is to treat it as an options menu like Domains or Bonus feats and log the Seeds as the options. I had problems getting this to work even BEFORE I decided I was going to make the options from scratch so I'd like to know how I can go about creating these seeds and then getting them into a table. I hope it's specific enough? If it's not, then by all means direct to to a place I can get help on this subject.

Sorry for taking so long to have something specific.
 
From my cursory examination, the bending seeds look like they would be primary Custom Abilities. When you create whichever bending class, give them a number of custom abilities equal to the number of seeds they get at that level, then when you make the Custom Abilities, mark them as available to the appropriate classes ("Available to Classes" button)
 
Brolthemighty, the User Projects forum is for corrdinating teams working on projects and for announcing progress on those projects.

The how-to questions from those projects should be asked in the forum related to the game system you're working on, because otherwise, people post "how do I implement feat X', and then we have to ask them whether they're working in d20, Pathfinder, M&M2, M&M3, or 4ed, because all of those games use the term "feat", but the answer of how they should implement that feat will differ in each of those cases.
 
Okay. I did as you said, Aaron, and made all the, in this case, Earthbending Seeds into custom abilities available to the Earthbender class. Then I gave the appropriate number of primary custom abilities to the earthbender and went to my already created earthbender after clicking the option to test the class (and re-adding it). I was able to pick the correct number of seeds (5) for the level of earthbending the character had -so that's 1 success - BUT after making all the seeds, the only one available at all was Rift (ie the last one I made). I'm taking it as all of these seeds count as primary custom abilities but only one is technically available and the last created primary custom ability takes precedence.

So my next question is, how can I make all of them available in the primary custom ability list for Earthbender?
 
Nvm I'm just an idiot. Since whenever I made multiple functions in the tools and then clicked test it took a while to save the data but then instant when I clicked to test the other function, I figured it was testing all the new functions I had made. So I was being an idiot - I'm testing the seeds one-by-one now so they're all showing up. Thanks for your help!
 
Don't have to hit the "Test Now!" button for each thing you create, you can hit Ctrl-R to do a quick reload for all of the stuff saved in your .user file (but you have to "Enable Data File Debugging" in the Develop menu in HL.
 
That's useful to know. Okay: so I reated a special weapon called Earth Blast that can be added to a character BUT I need to be able to scale it's base 1d6 damage similar to how Unarmed Strike scales with Monk levels. I took the Eval Script from Unarmed Strike (the monk class ability) and pasted it into Earth Blast and began rewording the things to use my Earth Blast Weapon as the key thing. The script apparently is correct on all the lines except when I'm changing the damage die of the actual weapon.

In the monk scripts, it has this line:
elseif (field[xAllLev].value < 12) then
perform hero.child[wUnarmed].assign[wMain.1d10_304]
dice = "1d10"
I changed it to:
elseif (field[xAllLev].value < 11) then
perform hero.child[wEarthBlas].assign[wMain.2d6_104]
dice = "2d6"
The idea is that if the character is above the level specified in the last line but below level 11, his damage dice for Earth blast would change to 2d6 as per the class ability. This line is actually correct because Unarmed strike also has 2d6 as one of the die that it gets to at some point. The problem is when I need to change the die to 3d6, 4d6, and then 5d6. Each damage die seems to have a validation code after the damage (1d6_5, 1d8_6, 1d10_304, 2d6_104, etc.) If I don't have the validation code, I can't seem to change the damage dice. The monk class has 1d6 and 2d6 alrdy, but I don't know the validation code for 3d6, 4d6, or 5d6.

Any idea where I could find that or, if you know it, could you let me know? I have no idea how this code is created, how it works, or where to find the value.
 
On the weapons tag, you can create a weapon and pick a damage tag. Then hit the "Tags" button on the upper right. That will show you all the tags on a particular thing, the Group ID will be "wMain" and the Tag ID should tell you what comes after that (including the "validation code", as you called it). Just FYI, the number after the underscore is the branch and sequence of the different damage tracks, which can be helpful to know what a bump up or down will give you (so 1_1 is the 1st in the sequence, 1d2_2 is 2nd, 1d3_3 is 3rd, 1d4_4 is 4th, 1d6_5 is 5th, 1d8_6 is 6th, and after that it splits into branches which have seperate advancements).

Also, you may want to check out the tags.1st file. It's in the same folder you put your .user files in, and contains the various defined tag groups, their specific tags, and notes on the purpose/usage of the various tags. You can open it with any text editor (I use Editpad Lite, myself).
 
On a personal note, I'm glad to hear someone's doing this. I'm a big fan of Avatar: The Last Airbender myself. I haven't gotten around to checking out the Legend of Korra yet though, no TV at home, only internet.
 
No problem! Just a reminder though: Some things are subject to change when you go between 3.5 and Pathfinder and, seeing as the original project was 3.5, the changes to Pathfinder (as well as races and their properties and traits) are subject to personal opinions on the transfer... so a marginal portion of the things I"m putting into this aren't 'legal' according to the original system. I could prob contact the original authors and give them the module when I'm done and they can tell me what they like and don't like - they can even mess with it themselves or get me to mess with it so they can have pathfinder rules and even a module.

Also, I'm grateful for you directing me to where I could find the branch code on current damage! This'll make it easy since all I gotta do is temp make it 3d6, 4d6, and 5d6 to get the codes!
 
Okay. So the code I'm using now should work to change the damage dice of Earth Blast - if I could get the weapon on. I was considering making it so you could add it through equipment like a greatsword but, although I'm making it as if I were, say, making a greatbow, it won't show up in the list. Probably because I'm leaving some fields empty because it just doesn't fit those fields.

So in this case I was considering making it a natural weapon instead and having the Earth Blast Class Special add it like Savage Bite adds a bite attack for barbarians. The issue I'm having at this point is I can see all the coding that Savage Bite has but there's essentially two parts of it: 1 part of the coding should be about applying a bite natural attack to the Player whereas the other one is upgrading the damage based on a)level and b) if the player has Thick Head, Strong Bite as a goblin. And I'm having trouble telling the two apart and applying it.

I went ahead and wrote this code line:
if (field[xAllLev].value >=1) then
perform hero.child[wEarthBlas].assign[wMain.1d6_5]
endif
The idea here is that if the player's level is at least level 1 in the class, it will assign the Earth Blast weapon, as if assigning wBite like the Savage Bite special does. I THINK the script is working but I keep getting the error message, :Attempt to access non-existent child pick 'wEarthBlas' from script. I have the wEarthBlas id set up for the Earth Blast weapon and it's categorized as natural and I took a look at claw: it has the same fields claw has filled out with some extra that apply. So I'm not sure why it's saying it's nonexistent... is it not among things that can be used as a 'child pick' yet and I have to code it so it can be used as one?

EDIT: I was mistaken: I had been considering comparing it to a natural attack but, I remember now, I couldn't find any in the weapons tab. I'm not sure where to find the files for, say, claw and, thus, I'm not sure if I'm applying Earth Blast correctly as a natural weapon.

EDIT the 2nd: Also, I'm not sure where to begin for the Class Special Head-on Defense. How in the world would I replace the stat used for a save?!
 
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Natural attacks can't be made through the editor by users. I'd say make it a normal weapon and give it the Helper.Helper tag (that tag makes it not addable as a "Normal" weapon on the weapons tab), and have whichever seed grants the ability bootstrap that weapon. Are you planning to have each and every attack seed show a corresponding weapon? That could crowd the weapons tab a bit.

Can you think of any types that replace what attribute is used for... Fort saves for example? What tag do those types apply to the svFort thing to switch it over?
 
Hmm, on further examination, it looks like the tag isn't applied to the save thing like I first thought, instead it is adding a tag to the attribute which switches everything reliant on that attribute to another. Let me look into it some more.
 
Ah, found an example quicker than I thought. Look at the Sidestep Secret oracle revelation (it's a custom ability), which has you use Charisma instead of Dex for reflex saves. You should be able to adapt that script easily enough.
 
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