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Dragon Shaman special abilities

J

JeffSandmeier

Active member
I'm trying to learn how to use the editor and input the class Dragon Shaman. One of the first things the DS needs to do is choose a Dragon type as a totem. This choice determines the type of breath weapon the Shaman eventually gets, as well as adding some class skills. My question is, how do you add a list of the Dragon types to be chosen from, like the pulldown list for choosing a Ranger's favored enemy? Looking in the Ranger class, i saw the eval script that referred to a 'cFavEnemy' , but no such data file appears in the d20 subdirectory. Please help.
 
JeffSandmeier wrote:
>
>
> I'm trying to learn how to use the editor and input the class Dragon
> Shaman. One of the first things the DS needs to do is choose a Dragon
> type as a totem. This choice determines the type of breath weapon the
> Shaman eventually gets, as well as adding some class skills. My question
> is, how do you add a list of the Dragon types to be chosen from, like
> the pulldown list for choosing a Ranger's favored enemy? Looking in the
> Ranger class, i saw the eval script that referred to a 'cFavEnemy' , but
> no such data file appears in the d20 subdirectory. Please help.


There's currently no way to do this in exactly the same way as the
ranger favored enemies (although that's on the "to do" list). Can you
use the "Custom Specials" mechanism, and add all the dragon types as
custom special abilities for that class? Then just set a fixed limit of
1 for the class, and it should require the user to choose a single template.


Hope this helps,


--
Colen McAlister (colen@wolflair.com)
Chief Engineer, Lone Wolf Development
http://www.wolflair.com/
 
I'm still having trouble just getting a picklist for any special ability. How doyou link the custom ability to a list, or to a main special abiity to create a list?
 
I'm afraid I'm not quite sure what you're asking here. If you're trying to get things to appear in the Dragon Shaman "Custom Ability" list, it should be as simple as specifying the "Dragon Shaman" source on the custom ability, then making sure that the class shows the custom ability table.

If this isn't working for you, what exactly is happening? Is the custom abilities table appearing, but not letting you select anything? Or is there something else happening?
 
At first, I couldn't get the custom ability table to appear at all, then I saw the custom ability check box. Then, in the class tab of hero lab, I could pick one of the totems, but it said I had chosen too many. I finally found a section of an eval script under srd_ranger that I used to allow me to choose the totem. So that part of the Dragon Shaman works, I even got the bonus class skills to work. Now I have another question. Is there any way to add a second custom class table without having to go into the .dat files and manually adding it? The dragon shaman has a list of auras that he can choose from, and I can't see a way to add them without another custom ability table. If it has to be manually added, what would the syntax be? I'm a novice with XML and really don't know that much about the structure, and what might break the whole .dat file.
 
JeffSandmeier said:
If it has to be manually added, what would the syntax be? I'm a novice with XML and really don't know that much about the structure, and what might break the whole .dat file.
Click to expand...

I edit the raw XML quite a often, and it's fairly easy to do if there's existing examples in what's shipped with Hero Lab (did so yesterday, as the extra magic level stuff defaults to both arcane and divine spellcasters, and I was working on a PrC that only gains extra divine magic levels).

For your particular case, you should just be able to open the file, find where the stuff you've already added is, copy it, paste it, and then make the necessary changes.

Hope that helps.
 
Cutting and pasting did not work. When I tried to copy the fieldval line to create a second entry for a custom table, the dragon shaman class wouldn't even show up as an option in HL. If I just copied the section giving the number of choices, I get an error about an incorrect syntax in the line, even if I directly cut and pasted from the lines above, that do work normally.
 
JeffSandmeier wrote:
>
>
> Cutting and pasting did not work. When I tried to copy the fieldval line
> to create a second entry for a custom table, the dragon shaman class
> wouldn't even show up as an option in HL. If I just copied the section
> giving the number of choices, I get an error about an incorrect syntax
> in the line, even if I directly cut and pasted from the lines above,
> that do work normally.


With the new stuff that I've worked out over the last few releases, I
should hopefully be able to simplify the custom ability stuff a bit.
I'll do my best to get it into the next update, which will allow you to
have 2 separate tables of different custom stuff.


Thanks,


--
Colen McAlister (colen@wolflair.com)
Chief Engineer, Lone Wolf Development
http://www.wolflair.com/
 
The new update works well, except--the second custom ability does not show up on a separate table in the class panel of HL. Is there a way to force it into a separate table? Also, for the second custom ability of the dragon shaman, the character must choose one of ten dragon types for his totem. I've tried marking each type as unique, which removes the one chosen from the list, but is there a way to remove all the others once one is picked?
 
JeffSandmeier wrote:
>
>
> The new update works well, except--the second custom ability does not
> show up on a separate table in the class panel of HL. Is there a way to
> force it into a separate table? Also, for the second custom ability of
> the dragon shaman, the character must choose one of ten dragon types for
> his totem. I've tried marking each type as unique, which removes the one
> chosen from the list, but is there a way to remove all the others once
> one is picked?


In the editor, you need to mark the second custom ability as "Secondary"
(there should be a checkbox for this). You also need to give the class a
count of secondary abilities, just like you gave it a count of normal
abilities. For your class, you would always have 1 primary custom
ability (the dragon type) and then as many secondary custom abilities as
are required. That way dragon types appear in one table, and the other
abilities in the other.

Note that you'll need to re-create the panel for the class to make it
show the second custom ability table, if you originally created the
panel before our last update.


Hope this helps,

--
Colen McAlister (colen@wolflair.com)
Chief Engineer, Lone Wolf Development
http://www.wolflair.com/
 
I've also been working on adding the Dragon Shaman. I have yet to figure out a good way to do it, so I scrap it and start over. If i figure something out I'll let you know if you agree to let me know if you get it on your end.
 
the reason it's hard is because dragon shaman doesn't follow standard ideas of character templates, It's not really one class, but several, all based on what dragon type is chosen. they condense this for readability and spacial concerns, but you're basically choosing completely different class options with each type. So in my opinion the easiest way would be make each dragon shaman type (black, red, blue etc) it's own class. Which once it's set up initially should be fairly simple to copy until you have all the classes.
 
You're very welcome it just makes more sense then trying to break the way it sets up, especially since once you choose a type you're that type until you mutliclass (unsure if multiclassing is possible) it isn't like some classes where you have a shifting ability set dependent on what you choose before. Forgotten realms scares me when I think of entering some of that stuff in. So does Ebberon
 
What I'm actually looking to do is create a class of barbaric warriors that serve an ancient red dragon in my campaign. So, what I was planning was to enter the Red Dragon Shaman and multiclass them with barbarians to create a primitive beast worshiping warrior caste. (No plans to have any clergy at all.)
 
I'm not sure how to handle Skill Focus. One choice seems to be to use the regular feats mechanism, the problem being that there's no way to restrict the skills list to just the dragon skills. Another seems to be to use Secondary Abilities which gives me the advantage of pre-selecting one of the three skills and adding the +3 bonus to the appropriate skill. The downside is that if the character has Skill Focus in all three skills, the player can then select from the skills list of another dragon color.
 
Now I'm trying to figure out how the Monk's bonus feats are done, because that's very similar to how Skill Focus works for the Dragon Shaman. This brings me to a question though: are the SRD source files still used by Hero Lab or are they now internalized.
 
What's the source on Dragon Shaman? - I looked through my 3.5 bookshelf and Races of the Dragon and Draconomicon don't list it in their tables of contents.

No-one's mentioned the source in this thread, and I have some experience with weird bonus feat stuff, but don't know how you want it to work.

(BTW, I don't know that there's a way to specifiy a skill focus' target when selecting it as a bonus feat - I figure you can trust the user to do that).
 
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