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Creating a creature - Learning the hard way

V

Vampyre

Well-known member
Hey all,

I recently started to seriously use RW and HL, which I had for years, but had never truly used them. Now that I'm getting a hand on RW, I got to a point where the players will meet their first fight.

And I told to myself, why not use HL for that. So... My first try got me trying to create a Creature inside of HL (not the editor, just the common program). But I met issues doing it that way. For the most part, I could create the creature. But so far for custom attack they do have (they have a claw attack, that does no damage, but on success, it means the bug does something special). I got an error, but I could deal with it (select type). Since it is a fully custom creature, and not based on anything present in the rules, I quickly figured out it was not the way to do it.

On my second try, I fired up the editor. Once more, I was able to create the creature, but once more, I failed to find out how I could link with the hand melee weapon I also created in the editor (the claws).
--> Do you know how I should do so that the creature I'm creating also have the claw weapon I created in the editor ?

I tried going further, but the creature never was complete as I've created it on paper. But I wanted to better understand HL. So, I created 3 of those, and put them in a portfolio, which I then linked within RW. But all it does is giving me the stat blocks on these 3 creatures.
I would like to be able to track down their stats while the players do fight them. I suppose I need to go with the encounter editor. I tried to do so, but since I've yet to create the characters for the players (we're not playing yet, and therefore they have yet to create their characters), I don't know how I should be saving the encounter in order to not only see the stats within RW, but also be able to track down the encounter in play.
--> Could you lead me to how to do this ?

Last question, I am a tabletop player, not playing online, but playing face to face with people.
--> Can I track the stats in the encounter, based on what they actually roll in dices in real (and not rolling inside HL)

Many thanks for your lights, it is much appreciated !

Best regards,
 
The Deadlands Noir data file should be the most complete that actually contains some examples of what you might be looking for. In general I haven't bothered with making monsters in HL because I don't think we have too many DMs using HL in that way, I think most of the Savage Worlds folks, at least, just use it for character creation and management so you may not find too much help for those using it at the tabletop to run encounters. (I think I tried once but pretty much didn't find it as useful as something like Fantasy Grounds... and yeah, I do use FG at the tabletop instead of as an online VTT.)

In any case, when creating creatures in the Editor I wouldn't create a weapon to bootstrap onto the creature unless it's actually a truly removable weapon like a sword or a gun. Instead I set them up as Racial Abilities and bootstrap the ability to the creature instead. abWeapon, for example, is already a base setup in HL to handle natural weapons. All you need to do is add a couple of things to then make that personalized for the creature when you do the Bootstrap.

For a natural weapon on your creature entry just hit that Bootstrap button on the right and either type in abWeapon or click the Choose button to find Natural Weapon. Then click on the "Fields..." button, For "Field Id" put in "livename", without the quotes, and for Value just set whatever you want to call the attack, so something like 'Bite" or "Claw/Bite" or whatever the attack is called and set the drip down box to read "Assign" if it doesn't already, then click "OK".

Next click the "Tags..." button, if you want to add a damage to this attack, and put in "WeaponDie" (again, no quotes) under GroupID and then the die, in HL format (so half the die type), in the "Tag ID" field.

Natural weapons become the "Unarmed" attack for a creature so you can use that any time you need to just use a standard fighting attack. For something that doesn't need damage, though, just create the ability on the Racial Abilities tab and boostrab that to your creature and you're done. It won't "do" anything in Hero Lab beyond show the description but largely you're just clicking Fighting (or the appropriate skill) to roll the dice anyway and reading the result.

On what to do with creatures in portfolios. The portfolio is more like a character sheet the way you might use it in play. Look at the menu item for Gamemaster -> Tactical Console for a form of combat tracker if that's what you're looking for. You can even import PC portfolios from there if you like. It will draw cards and all for you, but at the tabeltop most players prefer to roll their own dice and see all the cards and such so it may not be all that useful for that part, but you could still just ignore the card draws it does and manage other stuff from there. I've only tried to use that once myself but maybe if I put more time into it I would have found it more useful. I can't give you too many hints there, though, as I'm not too familiar with it.

As for tracking stats, you should be able to just click the buttons for those things you would track, like the little skull icon to apply wounds which pulls up a little box where you can track bennies woulds fatigue and shaken conditions and some other things. Play around with that and if you have some ideas for improvement you might mention it here or in the requests thread. Maybe we can get some improvements on that front to be a more useful tool?

Also, no guarantees on my actually setting things up right for encounters and such in Deadlands Noir. I never ended up using HL that way so I never really did test it. There are portfolios for the various encounters and such, however, so there should be some way to get them working if you mess with it.
 
Thank you very much !

Thank you very much for your much detail answer. I'm looking into this right now, and am learning a lot of things. Thank you very much for your answer. It is much appreciated !

And don't worry, I also own Fantasy Ground. It is what I used before, when I had a lot of issues with RW. When a campaign is linear, I will most probably use FG. The campaign I will be running shortly is more an investigation, and therefore needs to be sandboxy... Therefore, I tried to get a grasp at RW, to keep track of all the places the players might go, and know what they know, and who they visited...
 
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I used HL quite extensively as a GM when running my XCOM game, but I admittedly did all my creature creation through the Editor.
 
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