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Custom Magic Items - Tracked Abilities

Ambush

Well-known member
I'm working on a custom magic item in my campaign that has a special ability. 1/day the weapon can cast the spell Tree Stride. As a workaround, I've added a tracked resource with one charge and added the spell to the custom item. However, if the item ends up with more than one power, this will fail. For example, the Instrument of the Bards (Canaith mandolin) allows each of the following spells 1/day (Fly, invisibility, levitate, protection from evil and good,Cure wounds (3rd level), dispel magic, protection from energy).

Currently, I can't find any items that implement something like this independently, but I believe it can be done. In the editor, under the General/Ability tabs there is an option to create an "Item Power Helper" which seems like it might do it. When I bootstrap one onto my weapon I get the errors below when I add it to my character. Clearly I'm missing something. Am I barking up the wrong tree with this ability? Is there some other way to get there? Is there an item that I've missed that would give me a template to do this?

I get the errors:
Attempt to access non-existent parent pick for a top-level container from script Location: 'eval' script for Component 'Ability' (Eval Script '#1') near line 5
---
Attempt to access non-existent parent pick for a top-level container from script Location: 'eval' script for Component 'SetName' (Eval Script 'Append livename Details') near line 30
 
If you looked at the mandolin you'll see it bootstraps each spell with a tracker field and a couple of tags on each bootstrapped spell.
Fields:
Field ID: trkMax, Value: 1

Tags
Group ID: Helper, Tag ID: ItemSpell
Group ID: Usage, Tag ID: Day

Since each spell has its own trkMax, they are independent of each other.

For item spells that use variable amounts of charges, like say a wand of fire and ice that has 10 charges and can cast burning hands using 1 charge and frostbolt with 2 charges. You can tell the main item to have 10 charges and then bootstrap the spells but instead of giving them each a tracker field and usage tag it will look like:

boostrapped spell (burning hands)
Tags
Group ID: Helper, Tag ID: ItemSpell
Group ID: Usage, Tag ID: Charges
Group ID: ChargeUse, Tag ID: 1

the frostbolt spell would look similar except the ChargeUse Tag ID would be a 2.

these tags tell HL that each time you use the spell burning hands it pulls 1 charge out of the pool given to the base item (the wand).

The main problem I see with the charge pool is that HL outputs the maximum number of usages you can use for a spell on the sheet; so in my example burning hands has 10 checkboxes and frostbolt has 5 which looks like you should get 15 total charges and not 10. This is a problem with even the LW SRD entered stuff like the Staff of Power, so if you use printed sheets you'll always have the wrong number of boxes by each spell.

An example of this might be the Spider Staff from lost mines of phandelver I believe if you wanted to look at the .user file from the community.
 
Interesting. On my mandolin, all the spells are marked as "At Will" which seems different than on yours. Do you have an unreleased version from source control?

That being said, once I updated my item, it showed Tree Stride as 1/day on the In-Play Summary. However, it does not show in the Tracked Resources list. It does have tags for Usage:Day and User:Tracker. Also, I don't see the Spider Staff in the community files, has it been released yet?

If I wanted to add an ability that is not a spell, what might be the best way to achieve that? (i.e. I have an item that will allow me to reroll a failed save 1/day) I was thinking about creating a new spell and bootstrapping that on, but it doesn't seem ideal.
 
Interesting. On my mandolin, all the spells are marked as "At Will" which seems different than on yours. Do you have an unreleased version from source control?

Actually I don't run the community files, I run 100% custom files. That explains the Spider Staff probably. I'm pretty sure you can make a copy of Staff of Power from the SRD, that's probably where I got the information to create my version of the Spider Staff.

If I wanted to add an ability that is not a spell, what might be the best way to achieve that? (i.e. I have an item that will allow me to reroll a failed save 1/day) I was thinking about creating a new spell and bootstrapping that on, but it doesn't seem ideal.

It depends on what you want from HLC or if you're picky with categories and/or printed outputs. I've used Racial Special do add abilities like that to items but it does put the trait in an area that looks weird on a printout. You can use the generic Ability although I would stay away from the Item Helper category and just leave that field blank.
 
The Spider Staff is in the community files, but it exists via some bootstraps to another staff.

Ambush, check out the Staff of Defense. It's a good demonstration of an item that can cast spells using different amounts of charges from the same pool. As guru said, you can change that stuff so that they just are individually 1/day.
 
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