Gestalt Character Help

[JustinThomason]

Hello all,

I'm new to the Editor and I tried to build a gestalt character class for the d20 ruleset. Specifically I'm playing a Barbarian Rogue gestalt, and I have no plans to multi-class or break into a prestige class.

To cover this I tried to build a Barbarian/Rogue class in the editor, but this is the first thing I've ever done in the editor and I think I missed something.

My basic strategy was to build the class by selecting the special abilities from the existing Barbarian and Rogue class abilities.

It seems to work OK at lower levels, but I don't get any of the special abilities in the "Barbarian Rogue Gestalt" tab that is immediately to the right of the "Basic" tab. If I build a high level Rogue, for instance, this tab is filled with lots of class abilities noting when they came in, and the Rogue special abilities are there to be selected. In the gestalt class I have built, I cannot select the Rogue abilities that are selectable after level 10.

I'm thinking I might need to rebuild the class, but I would like to get some input and guidance before I just blindly rebuild the class from the ground up.

I hope that I'm making sense - unfortunately I'm so green to the Editor that I'm not even sure how to explain what I need to do.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Sendric]

I haven't done much with Gestalt, but another option would be to do it as a Class variant based on the Rogue. Then just add the Barbarian abilities. This would probably be easier than trying to build a class from scratch.

 

[TobyFox2002]

From what I can understand the simplest way to fix that is to start over and use the Rogue as the base class, otherwise you'll need to entirely recreate the rogue custom abilities for the Barbarian. The 10th level rogue abilities are LINKED specifically to the rogue class and cannot be linked to another class even if you use a class variant (or if they can, I don't know how/is probably complicated).

I hope that helps, please let us know how things turn out.

That being said, I've toyed around with making gestalts using the Class variants as Sendric said. I made a Cleric/Rogue (into Divine Seeker). The problem I ran into was when you use the class variant you can't the class specials of the rogue to show up when you mouse over (and/or) click on the button for class specials for the cleric. For some people this might be acceptable but I just couldn't handle it. So I kinda tabled the idea to finish the faerun stuff.

I plan on taking another look at gestalts after the update, Fortunately for you.. Rog/Bbn is an easy one. There isn't any wierd stuff going on, only one class has a class 'custom ability' set so.. no conflicts there, neither class has spells so you dont have to worry about those pesky arrays. The only problem your gonna run into is the math involved with determining when you gain an extra level of your uncanny dodge.


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I guess I'm too sleepy to think, because my answer was just a rewording of Sendric's sorry. heh

 

[JustinThomason]

Thanks for the advice.

TobyFox2002, I tried a rebuild starting with Rogue instead of Barbarian. Once I got the class blocked out, I built a 10th level character using the new gestalt combination. The first special ability was flagged under the Class tab, and mousing over the Special Abilities icon shows the levels where Special Abilities should be. However, when I clicked on it to select the Special Ability I got a message that no options exist.

Apparently the links to the Special Abilities are not carrying over from cloning the Rogue class. I don't mind cloning the Special Abilities and linking the new copies to the new class, but I'm not sure how best to do that.

Sendric's idea of making a variant Rogue with the Barbarian's abilites might work too - I'm just not entirely certain how to make a variant class as opposed to a new base class (which is what I've done so far).

Boy howdy, have I a new found and deep respect for the HeroLab Editor ninjas in our midst!

*Edited for clarity*

 

[TobyFox2002]

Thanks for the advice.

TobyFox2002, I tried a rebuild starting with Rogue instead of Barbarian. Once I got the class blocked out, I built a 10th level character using the new gestalt combination. The first special ability was flagged under the Class tab, and mousing over the Special Abilities icon shows the levels where Special Abilities should be. However, when I clicked on it to select the Special Ability I got a message that no options exist.

Apparently the links to the Special Abilities are not carrying over from cloning the Rogue class. I don't mind cloning the Special Abilities and linking the new copies to the new class, but I'm not sure how best to do that.

Sendric's idea of making a variant Rogue with the Barbarian's abilites might work too - I'm just not entirely certain how to make a variant class as opposed to a new base class (which is what I've done so far).

Boy howdy, have I a new found and deep respect for the HeroLab Editor ninjas in our midst!

*Edited for clarity*

Hero Labs is a great program but the documentation just plain lousy. I am not a traditional programmer, so things like "thing," "parent," "container," "root," make my eyes glaze over.

Unfortunately, this is not an easily explainable problem, for the same reason as I mentioned I don't know the words to explain things either.

However, it might be that you havent set your "Custom Ability Count" on the Class tab.

Row 09: 1
Row 12: 2
Row 15: 3
Row 18: 4

Each Row corresponds to a level of the class with the 1st level being "0" The numbers are the number of special abilities you are allowed to take at that level, where blank levels are unchanged.

You might try that, beyond that, I'd really need to see whats going on to help.

 

[Sendric]

Custom abilities are specific to a class, but you don't need to make new copies of them. Instead, use the "Allow Class Abilities..." option in the Custom Abilities section. Select Rogue, and your new class will have all of the custom ability options of the Rogue.

That is, assuming you put in the Custom Ability Count as Toby discusses above.

 

[ShadowChemosh]

Hero Labs is a great program but the documentation just plain lousy. I am not a traditional programmer, so things like "thing," "parent," "container," "root," make my eyes glaze over.

You may wish to see some of the community documentation put together for Pathfinder. I know evil word but allot of it is generic HL scripting.

Here are some good places to check out:

1. Glossary of Terms for HL.
2. Go to "Tools->Start Editor.." and then from inside the editor go to "Help->Help on using the Editor".
3. Mathias has put together some very useful articles about scripting in Hero Lab. A little is specific to Pathfinder but most is generic script info including root, parent, and container stuff...
4. Go to THIS post and watch the 4 videos. The videos go over many of the important features of using the Hero Lab Editor. Very little in those videos if at all would not apply to d20. Yea the editor looks a little different as it has different colors but the basic functions and creating .user files is the same.

 

[JustinThomason]

Thanks to all the help I finally figured this out. I was able to tweak my first build, and by turning on Rogue in "Allow Class Abilities" and adding the correct array to the "Custom Abilities Count" it seems to be working.

I'm still not seeing any of the special abilities in the class tab, but when I built an 11th level character it let me choose a special ability anyway, so good enough.

Mission Accomplished.

 

[TobyFox2002]

"...I'm still not seeing any of the special abilities in the class tab..."

That is my pet peeve as well, and I've tried a dozen different ways from Sunday to get them to show up, I don't think it can be done without creating new specials specifically for this "class"

But I'm glad you got it working.