Adding new race, couple of questions

[JolarEQ]

My GM loves to create new races, and since everybody in my group uses Hero Lab, I've been trying to create them in the editor. I'm pretty good at finding what I need to, either by looking at other races, feats, traits, etc., or looking through some websites I've bookmarked that have Hero Lab references. But every once in a while, he throws something at me that I can't for the life of me figure out.

I'm currently working on an undead race, that has a few things that I can't get, so I thought I'd ask here!

First thing is, the race has no constitution. This is what he sent to me:

"Gebbites have no Constitution. Use your Charisma score in place of your Constitution score when calculating hp, Fortitude saves, and any special ability that relies on Constitution. These racial adjustments supersede and replace any previous racial adjustments. (When generating a gebbite character using a pointbuy system, you must still spend sufficient points for a Constitution score of 10.)"

How do I set things to use charisma instead of constitution? And I'm questioning him on that last part, about point-buy, so I'm not going to worry about that at the moment.

Second, he has an ability that makes it tough to deal with animals:

"Gebbites unnerve normal animals. Gebbites take a -4 penalty on all Charisma-based skill checks to affect creatures of the animal type. Animals’ starting attitude toward Gebbites is one step worse than normal."

I know how to add situational bonuses and penalties to specific things, but would there be a way to add it to all charisma-based skill checks? Or would I have to add it to each one?

Thanks in advance for any help!

 

[Mathias]

The no con/use cha rule is a standard function of the Undead type, so you just need to make this race undead, and HL will handle all that for you.

For the second, take a look at the Circlet of Persuasion for a way to find all the charisma-based skills without naming each one specifically.

 

[JolarEQ]

Ahh, great! Thanks Mathias! I hadn't even thought about looking at an item to find out how to do it.

 

[JolarEQ]

Is there a way to pass the result of a pick to hero.child? I grabbed the code from the Circlet of Persuasion, and I understand what it's doing, but it doesn't want to send the result of the foreach to the #situational line. The code is as follows:

      ~ Iterate through all our skills
      var ChaSkill as number

      ~ Give bonus only to CHA skills
      foreach pick in hero from BaseSkill
        ChaSkill = 0

        ~ Check Skill Override
        if (eachpick.tagis[SkillOver.aCHA] <> 0) then
          ChaSkill = 1
          endif

        ~ If it has a normal linkage to Charisma it also qualifies.
        if (eachpick.islinkage[skillattr] <> 0) then
          if (eachpick.linkage[skillattr].tagis[thingid.aCHA] <> 0) then
            ChaSkill = 1
            endif
          endif

        if (ChaSkill = 1) then
          #situational[hero.child[each]," -4 to affect creatures of the animal type",field[thingname].text]
          endif
        nexteach

Trying to test this code, however, gives me a syntax error saying that there is a non-existent thing 'each' used by script. I'm assuming that means that the result of the foreach can't be passed to either the #situational or to hero.child itself. I know that it's coming up with the right ids for the skills, as I added a debug line to it, and that if I just drop the name of the skill into the line, instead of saying each (for example, hero.child[skBluff]) it works fine.

I even tried combing the result of the foreach into a string combined with "hero.child[" and "]" and passing it into #situational, and also instead of using hero.child[each] making it hero.child[eachpick.idstring] but again, to no avail. I have the programming knowledge, just not the knowledge of this programming language.

Any ideas?

 

[Aaron]

When you are inside a foreach, the default context for the script is the currently iterated pick. Your situational there is transitioning out of that context to the hero, and then looking for a pick called "each", which doesn't exist. Instead of that, just use the current context, like so:

          #situational[eachpick," -4 to affect creatures of the animal type",field[thingname].text]

 

[Aaron]

For an example, you can look at the "Unnatural" custom race trait, which is almost exactly what your DM is granting you (except Unnatural also grants a situational dodge bonus to AC vs. animals too).

 

[JolarEQ]

Thanks Aaron. I was using "each" as that was what was used in the Circlet code. Of course, what you posted was one of the options I DIDN'T try!

Wish I had known about Unnatural, as you're right, that's exactly what I was looking for, minus the dodge.

Thanks again to both you and Mathias for your help!