Animal Companions Special Abilities

[Kathorus]

I would like to enter a custom Animal Companion ability, with different HD, BAB, Saves, special abilities, etc...

Is there a way to do this in the editor, if it is even possible at all?

Any guidance would be appreciated.

 

[Mathias]

What game system is this for? You've asked in the authoring kit forum, which suggests you're building your own game system from scratch, so I don't know if that's what you intended, or if you're working in d20 or Pathfinder, or another system.

 

[Kathorus]

It is in Pathfinder, guess I asked here because it seems very generic.

 

[Mathias]

How different is this from normal animal companions?


Is it a smooth thing, like +2 Fort at every level?

Is the only change you're making a change in the type (like the Imp minion for the Diabolist class from Book of the Damned 1), which therefore changes the die size for the HD, and the BAB and save progressions (the Imp minion is functionally an animal companion, but it has the Outsider type instead of the Animal type).

 

[Kathorus]

Looking over it better, it is statistically identical to animal companions as described for the druid, it just has different abilities gained at the various levels.

What I need to do is create these abilities and then have them take effect as the character levels up.

Been poking around, but just can't seem to figure out how the regular animal companion works for this.

 

[Mathias]

The first step is to create those abilities - add them as racial abilities of this race.

Once you've got that, tell me, and we'll work on how to turn the regular ones off and how to turn the new ones on at specific levels.

 

[Kathorus]

Thanks for all the help. Just to clarify what needs to happen so I don't botch this up, I have a couple of questions.

1. Create abilities - do these get created in "Custom Ability" tab in the editor?

2. Add them as racial abilities - so if there is a list of possible creatures, I need to make each one in the "Race, Anim Comp" tab of the editor?

 

[Mathias]

In the Help menu within the editor, choose "Help On Using the Editor". I'd recommend scanning through the tutorials that are available there. They include tutorials on how to create various abilities for races, and how to add them to the races.

Yes, you will need a race on the Race, Anim Comp tab for each of the races you want to create - I'd hold off on creating more than one until you've gotten the abilities added, and added the mechanisms to turn them on only at certain levels, and disable the regular abilities. Once that's all in place, create the rest by making copies of the first one.

 

[Kathorus]

I read through the tutorials again, along with checking out your 104 and 202 posts, as well as other forum posts and the authoring wiki. Man there is a lot of information.

Okay, hear is where I am at.

I added a Custom Ability based off of Animal Companion.

I set this up as the Secondary Ability Count in the Class (I already setup another ability as primary that works like rogue talents).

I added a Animal Companion Race based off of the Badger and set it up to be available to only this Class.

I want to keep the general Animal Companion abilities of Link and Share Spells at 1st level, so the current behavior is good.

I can add a level of my Class, go into its tab, pick the Animal Companion ability which gives me the Animal Companion button. I go into the companion and when I pick the race, only the new one that I created is able to be selected. This is Good!

Now, What I want to do is give Evasion at 2nd Level and Gaseous Form at 5th. All other abilities I want to remove.

Thanks for the help.

 

[Mathias]

Sorry for not getting back to you sooner.

First, let's disable the Devotion ability. Create a test character who's a normal druid with a normal animal companion - make him 20th level. You'll use that to look up information about the abilities that you want to replace.

The first step is to open the Develop menu, and make sure that "Enable Data File Debugging" is checked.

Now, switch to the Special tab on the animal companion, and right-click the Devotion ability. The bottom option is "Copy Unique Id (cAnimDevo) to clipboard - select that option.

Now for the editor. Switch to the race you're creating. At the top right, press the "Eval Scripts" button, and add a new Eval Script.

Leave the Phase at "First", but change the priority to "10000".

Now, in the "Script:" portion, add the following lines:

perform hero.childfound[cAnimComp].assign[Helper.SpcDisable] 
perform hero.childfound[cAnimComp].assign[Helper.SpcReplace] 
perform hero.childfound[cAnimComp].assign[Hide.Special]

Note that for the cAnimComp portion of those lines, I used the Id that I had copied. I do apologize that you'll just have to accept that those lines are the way to disable something - I can't think of a good example I can point you to where you could have learned that for yourself.

Now, to get Evasion to start at 2nd level, instead of 3rd. Unfortunately, we're going to need to create an odd fake for this.

In the editor, go to the "Ability" tab, and press the "New (Copy)" button. Find "Evasion (cAnimEvas)" in that list and select it. Now, at the top, enter a new Id for this copy. I'd use "cMGAnimEva" - my initials are MG, so by using that in all the custom content I create, I greatly reduce the chances that I and someone else will both pick the same Ids for two different things we create in the editor.

Back to the race. Press the Bootstraps button at the top right, and add a new bootstrap. Type in the Id you chose (or copy and paste the Id). Press the "Condition" button that's to the right of where you enter the Id. Leave the Phase as "First", and change the priority to 502. Now, enter the following code in the box labeled "tag expression":

fieldval:anCompLev = 2

What we've done is to set it up so that at level 2, this fake version is shown. Then, at level 3+, the normal version is shown. The idea is that to the user, it won't look as if anything changed about the Evasion ability between levels 2 and 3 - their companion got the ability at level 2, and kept it all the way to level 20.

Setting your own abilities to not kick in until some level or another is done the same way that we made the fake Evasion only kick in at level 2, with a bootstrap condition. Here's an example of level 5+, for your gaseous form ability:

fieldval:anCompLev >= 5

Like the bootstrap condition for Evasion, you'll use First/502 as the phase and priority for this bootstrap condition.

I think that covers everything - how to disable the abilities you don't want, how to extend the range of levels over which you get one of the existing abilities, and how to keep the new abilities from showing up until a certain level.

Please ask if you don't understand any of that, or if you need more help.

 

[Kathorus]

Thanks a bunch, works without a hitch.

I appreciate the time you took to show this to me.