Bug - Traits Missing / Language Oddness

[Duggan]

It could be I'm doing something wrong in how I'm going about this, but I was creating an alternate form and I was trying to add some skill bonuses, specifically Knowledge (Pop Culture) and Profession (Athlete). Neither appear on the list of traits. I can kind of understand Profession being missing since it requires an additional field, but Knowledge (Pop Culture) being missing was a bit more odd.

Secondly, each of the Alternate Forms offer a different second language (I'm statting up an alternate Ma-Ti from Captain Planet who has absorbed the personalities and powers of his teammates). When I have one of the forms up that has Enhanced Trait: Language 1, I must have three languages listed (one for native, one extra for the base character, and one for the alternate form). If I switch to, say, Wheeler, who never learned a second language, I'm suddenly one over. *wry grin* Since you have the language values keyed to the primary form, with the trait on alternate forms just giving the base form the opportunity for another language. Ultimately, I could probably solve this by using Metamorph, but that has it's own issues in having to re-specify the base form's skills and attributes for each form.

^_^ Oh, and the "Melt" AP for Fire Control is unavailable, but that's an easy one to miss. The Pocket UP clarified it to be a Ranged Objects-Only Drain Toughness effect at the rank of Fire Control. I only noted it because you did add the Wind power as seen in Air Control, albeit under Environmental Control. A similar power is Current Control (found under Water Control). There may be others I've missed.

 

[Duggan]

Ran into another bug while building a character for a PbP game. The character has a +3/-3 tradeoff on Damage/Attack Bonus, which I've bought entirely out of strength bonus. I took power feats of Groundstrike and Thunderclap, both of which are showing with his full strength bonus for the DC. As area effects, they are capped at PL despite any tradeoff. ^_^ Figured you would want to know.

 

[Colen]

It could be I'm doing something wrong in how I'm going about this, but I was creating an alternate form and I was trying to add some skill bonuses, specifically Knowledge (Pop Culture) and Profession (Athlete). Neither appear on the list of traits. I can kind of understand Profession being missing since it requires an additional field, but Knowledge (Pop Culture) being missing was a bit more odd.

Before you can add to the skill in an Alternate Form, you need to add it to the hero. So go to the Skills tab and add Profession (Athlete), and you should be able to choose it to modify on your Alternate Form. The skill doesn't need to have any points in it, it just has to be on the hero.

Secondly, each of the Alternate Forms offer a different second language (I'm statting up an alternate Ma-Ti from Captain Planet who has absorbed the personalities and powers of his teammates). When I have one of the forms up that has Enhanced Trait: Language 1, I must have three languages listed (one for native, one extra for the base character, and one for the alternate form). If I switch to, say, Wheeler, who never learned a second language, I'm suddenly one over. *wry grin* Since you have the language values keyed to the primary form, with the trait on alternate forms just giving the base form the opportunity for another language. Ultimately, I could probably solve this by using Metamorph, but that has it's own issues in having to re-specify the base form's skills and attributes for each form.

Hmm, I'm not sure how to handle this in a good way. The best way I can think of is to simply not add the third language, and make a note that in your alternate form you know language X.

^_^ Oh, and the "Melt" AP for Fire Control is unavailable, but that's an easy one to miss. The Pocket UP clarified it to be a Ranged Objects-Only Drain Toughness effect at the rank of Fire Control. I only noted it because you did add the Wind power as seen in Air Control, albeit under Environmental Control. A similar power is Current Control (found under Water Control). There may be others I've missed.

I think I added Wind because it was terribly complex in some way, or was really hard to represent under the normal rules. Generally, I don't add those pre-built powers as alternate powers because of how Hero Lab works; I'd have to define a new "real power" for each, and it's not necessary when you can simply build them yourself with a few clicks.

 

[Colen]

Ran into another bug while building a character for a PbP game. The character has a +3/-3 tradeoff on Damage/Attack Bonus, which I've bought entirely out of strength bonus. I took power feats of Groundstrike and Thunderclap, both of which are showing with his full strength bonus for the DC. As area effects, they are capped at PL despite any tradeoff. ^_^ Figured you would want to know.

So when you say you bought the tradeoff "entirely out of strength bonus", you mean your strength bonus is 3 points higher than it normally should be, but your attack bonus is 3 points lower? And thus the Groundstrike / Thunderclap should be capped at the normal limit instead... yikes

 

[Duggan]

Just as an additional thing, I was statting out Rant from The Heist, the introductory adventure, and I realized a bit into the adventure that technically speaking, his Sonic Control 12 is illegal and Hero Lab let me get away with it. Specifically, the default power gained by Sonic Control is an Area Auditory Dazzle at rank. As an area attack, that should be capped at PL, but it was not.

*wry grin* I suspect you're going to have a number of these little corner cases involving tradeoffs and attacks that don't do tradeoffs.

 

[Duggan]

Also, there's an oddity regarding Disintegration which I'm unsure as to whether it ought to apply. Extras are being applied twice (since it's Linked Blast and Ranged Drain), but so are feats. I'm pretty sure that Reversible, at the least, was intended as a 1-pp (no longer have reduced the person to dust) effect. I'm currently getting around the Accuracy issue because the Disintegrate is in a Device, which can take the Attack Focus feat, but this did seem a bit of an oddity. Unfortunately, I've only run into one stat block from Green Ronin involving feats on a Disintegration effect. On that one, Disintegrate 9 with 3 ranks of Accurate and 1 of reversible came out to 40 pp (presumably, using pre-UP Disintegration without Affects Objects).

As a side note, the Non-Lethal or Lethal drawbacks should only apply to the Damage part and therefore should not count twice. Similarly, things like Total Fade and Slow Face should only apply to the Drain portion. Och... but I'm sure this gets to be a complicated case.

 

[fillerbunny_x1]

Hi, Colen-

FYI- the Mighty feat for Ranged Attack powers (Blast, etc.) is saying it gives +1 to hit per point in the feat, instead of +1 to Save DC.

 

[Duggan]

Ah, and another one, Compression with Shrinking, gives you the full number of ranks in Density no matter how low you set Compression as a partial. So, for example, my character with Shrinking 16 picks up Compression, costing me 112 pp. I notice that this puts me over the PL limits, so I try setting compression to 12. Now, it costs me 100 pp, but the chained power of Density is still at 16. I've tried looking through the code, but it looks like it should only be adding Density up to the rank of the extra. Unless, of course, that code is instead looking at the value of Shrinking?

 

[Duggan]

Since this fell off the front page and hasn't been addressed, BUMP

 

[Colen]

Also, there's an oddity regarding Disintegration which I'm unsure as to whether it ought to apply. Extras are being applied twice (since it's Linked Blast and Ranged Drain), but so are feats. I'm pretty sure that Reversible, at the least, was intended as a 1-pp (no longer have reduced the person to dust) effect. I'm currently getting around the Accuracy issue because the Disintegrate is in a Device, which can take the Attack Focus feat, but this did seem a bit of an oddity. Unfortunately, I've only run into one stat block from Green Ronin involving feats on a Disintegration effect. On that one, Disintegrate 9 with 3 ranks of Accurate and 1 of reversible came out to 40 pp (presumably, using pre-UP Disintegration without Affects Objects).

I'll ask GR about this.

As a side note, the Non-Lethal or Lethal drawbacks should only apply to the Damage part and therefore should not count twice. Similarly, things like Total Fade and Slow Face should only apply to the Drain portion. Och... but I'm sure this gets to be a complicated case.

Exactly, it gets complicated. I initially resisted making drain cost double PP for extras for exactly this reason - it sounds simple, but then there are some extra that apply to only one half, or some to only the other half, etc. The rule we use is that all of them cost double - otherwise it turns into a nightmare, trying to keep track of them all.

If you don't like the way we keep track of them and want to do it "correctly", you can always add custom extras & flaws to balance out the points costs. They always only cost 1 per rank.

 

[Colen]

Hi, Colen-

FYI- the Mighty feat for Ranged Attack powers (Blast, etc.) is saying it gives +1 to hit per point in the feat, instead of +1 to Save DC.

The description I'm looking at for the Mighty feat for Blast says that it stacks with normal strength damage, not either of the above. Can you tell me exactly where you're seeing the incorrect text?

 

[Colen]

Ah, and another one, Compression with Shrinking, gives you the full number of ranks in Density no matter how low you set Compression as a partial. So, for example, my character with Shrinking 16 picks up Compression, costing me 112 pp. I notice that this puts me over the PL limits, so I try setting compression to 12. Now, it costs me 100 pp, but the chained power of Density is still at 16. I've tried looking through the code, but it looks like it should only be adding Density up to the rank of the extra. Unless, of course, that code is instead looking at the value of Shrinking?

Good catch. I'll try and fix this, thanks.

Thanks for the note about sonic control, I'll try and fix that too.