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Alternate Form - Feasible?

K

Kendall-DM

Spy
I was coming up with an idea how to implement alternate form when I realized I thought I could code it to make the changes. I made a creature selector from a feat (essentially a helper feat that selects from all HL races) that is only available when the charge label ("Active") is checked. After selecting the alternate form (as defined by the specific creature's allowed selection), I can get to changing the physical ability scores, disabling breath weapon and gaze attacks if present, giving a +10 to disguise checks, and replacing the natural armor and movement modes while removing extraordinary special attacks on the base race.

However, what I'm not sure I can do is add the natural attacks and extraordinary special attacks of the alternate form race. That seems to require me to bootstrap them from the chosen race to the old race. Is this even feasible?

What I'm asking is, is there a way to bootstrap attacks, damage, and special attacks from a script? Is there a way that I can run a foreach loop on the attacks, damage, and special abilities of the chosen race (not the creature's actual race, but the alternate form race that is chosen with the selector feat)? I'm not sure I can do these two things, and before I code anything I'd like to know I'm not just wasting my time doing something that can't be done. Thanks.
 
Er, I think this is possible, but I don't think it is feasable. If I wanted to make the attempt I would try bootstrapping the various natural attacks and special powers to something that is always on the character (like a condition) but give them bootstrap conditions for an individual tag specific to that attack/power. For example, the Bite attack could rely on a FwdBite tag.

Then go through each of the races and apply to them the FwdWhatever tags specific to their abilities. You feat could then go to that race, forward the tags to the hero and voila the abilities whose conditions relied on those tags would be bootstrapped.

Unfortunately, any attacks that need tags assigned to them wouldn't necessarily come with the correct ones, so you'd have to figure out how to pull those tags from the selected race and apply them to the correct attacks.

Also, having every attack and ability in HL bootstrapped to a condition probably wouldn't be good. It might slow the program to a crawl, or do any other number of nasty things. At the very least it would be a pain to keep updated, as every time you added a new creature you'd have to add it's bootstraps and new tags for the abilities.
 
Well, I was looking at this a bit differently than you described. Anyhow, you gave me an idea that I want to try, at least to see if I can get something to work. One of my biggest pet peeves in D&D is the fact that alternate form, polymorph, shapechangers, etc. have base creature stats and abilities, but only subsume some of the changed to creatures stats and abilities. Computers, in general, are ideal for allowing this to applied with a single activation. Anyways, in the next week I may try to get this to work, if I do, I'll let you know. Or if not, I'll let you know either way. I had forgotten about the pulltags...
 
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