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Get List Of Animal Companion Options

L

Lizard

Member
I am trying to develop a race which has native shapechanging into a single animal species available as a druid/ranger animal companion. I am having a devil of a time figuring out how to present this as a list. Tearing into the "Animal Companion" special abilities in the editor presents me with a maze of twisty little field and tag names, all alike.

I think I need to do "Custom Selection" under "Selection Type" under "Racial Specials", but I have no idea what the correct syntax is.
 
Try setting the custom expression to "component.BaseComp" and restrict the list to "All things"
 
Aaron said:
Try setting the custom expression to "component.BaseComp" and restrict the list to "All things"
Click to expand...

That mostly worked! Thank you! A few more questions, if I may:
a)Is it possible to restrict the list to those companions a first level Druid could pick?

b)Where is it documented that "component.BaseComp" means "Animal Companions"? I've looked at help pages such as this: file:///C:/ProgramData/Hero%20Lab/data/pathfinder/authoring/pathfindereditwhere.htm, looked through the tutorials, looked through the Authoring kit wiki (I know that's for new systems, not for editing existing systems, but I thought it might be useful...), and what I'm not finding is any kind of data structure reference that lists all the elements, their syntax, etc. I'm mostly looking into existing items in the editor, seeing how they're put together, and guessing.

c)On a similar line, this race can pick any humanoid subtype (elf, dwarf, etc) as their subtype, but do not gain any racial abilities. They just look like them. What would be the best way to do this, and could it be restricted to "common" races? (I'd prefer this to a hard-coded list, so any setting with different "common" races would get the right list.)

Thanks for any help!
 
a) I don't believe that's a meaningful distinction in Pathfinder. In 3.5 you might have to wait for bigger animals, but in Pathfinder everything is available from first and they get bigger as you level up.

b) I used Develop -> Enable Data File Debugging on an animal companion, then went to Floating Info Windows, and Show Selection tags, then scrolled through the list to select the animal companion race I picked (giraffe in my case). Then I looked through the list of tags on that race to see which component was specific to animal companion races (as opposed to all races).

c) I'd make it another selector. Unfortunately, there isn't an easy way to mark certain humanoid subtypes as the "common" ones, so I'd either let the user choose from all of them and rely on them to self edit and argue with their DM as to what is common, or I would make it a hard coded list depending on what you consider common.
 
Sorry, I am still lost in this maze.

Here is my goal: The user can select a humanoid type (elf, dwarf, human, etc..) and "counts as" that type for purposes of spell effects, but does not otherwise get any benefits of that type -- their actual race, the one I'm trying to build, has its own suite of racial benefits.

I am still struggling with "How do I say 'Show me the races', or, ideally, 'Show me the humanoid races'."

I am using the debugWindows, but with no kind of context or hierarchy, it's seemingly random which one "matters". tpRaceHumanoid? tRaceBase? Any of a dozen others? I've tried a few likely candidates, and either got "every damn pickable item in the game" or "nothing".

People produce complex data files for use with HeroLab, so there must be some kind of documentation somewhere, but it is not easily found, apparently. I did "trial and error" API learning back in the 1990s, when there was no google and going online for help on CI$ cost 12.95/hour, but is seems odd to have to do it in 2014.

EDIT: To be clear, I've tried "Race" (gets a list of all possible picks, it seems), "Component.Race" (gets no selection) and "Race.Humanoid" (gets the word "Humanoid")

Is there any way to look at the Pathfinder XML files directly? That would help.

I'm thinking it might be good to create each subtype pick as its own special ability, with a custom tag, and a script that somehow bootstraps on the "counts as" property, but I'm still at a loss for the generic syntax for "Display a list of this type of item, and then execute the script for it when it's selected". Maybe I need to look at the Authoring Kit wiki some more.
 
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You're always looking for something that's 10 characters or less, so tpRaceHumanoid, at 14 characters, is not a valid option.

Also,be very careful about capitalization; component.Race, not Component.Race

What you'll want to do for this is to create several different test characters, and compare the tag lists for each. For example, create a new character, and add the human race to it - open the tag list for that race. Then, in the Portfolio menu, choose "Create new Hero" - add the Elf race to that one, and open the tag list for that race. Then, create a third hero, and add the Aasimar race, and open its race's tag list.

Now, you've got three different races you can look at - all three are size M bipeds, so they're similar in many respects, and two of them are humanoids, so valid targets for your selection, and one of them is a native outsider, so it's not a valid target. Compare the tag lists for each of the three races - what tags exist on the human and elf that do not appear on the Aasimar?
 
Well, if I try component.BaseType, I get a list of all types, including Air, devil, demon, etc. I then tried component.BaseType & Race.tpHumanoid (and other variants on an "and" condition) and got either nothing or just "Humanoid".

I looked at the array add, which is inferior because it would hard-code in races, but it might work. Getting it to show was easy, but I am not sure how to write a script that will, on a selection, add the "counts as race" tag, and change it appropriately when the race changes. I also want the subtype to show up in the list in the "background" screen.)

(FWIW, Aasimar get "Outsider" and "Native" as their racial types, as opposed to the "Humanoid" and "Elf" types that, for instance, Elves get.)
 
Aren't you looking to select from races that use the humanoid type?

"component.BaseType & Race.tpHumanoid" should get you exactly one option: the helper pick that stores data about the humanoid type, like the fact that humanoids with racial HD default to d8 for their HD and 2 skill points/hit die.

I think the expression you want will be:

component.BaseRace & HasType.tpHumanoid

Also, make sure you've got "Restrict First List To" set to "All things" - you want the entire list of possibilities, not the race that's been added to the character.

Outsider and Humanoid are Types. Native and Elf are Subtypes.
 
I think it was HasType that wasn't working... let me try this... yes, that worked.

I was looking at the tags I got, on the "Background" tab, when I right-clicked on the list of types/subtypes to the right of the race dropdown. Is there a better list of tags to examine for these purposes?
 
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