Help with Editor - Make Knowledge Skill Checks Untrained

[JustinThomason]

In my group, our house rule is any character can make an untrained Knowledge check. Is there any way in the Editor to build a script that will apply this to all characters at creation?

Thanks in advance for the help.

 

[AndrewD2]

You'll have to create a mechanic that loops through the knowledge skills on the characters and deletes the Helper.Trained (I think that's the tag I don't have HL access at the moment).

 

[JustinThomason]

Conceptually that makes sense. However, I'm fairly green with the editor (I've made some feats and a few class special abilities), but I have not done a whole lot of scripting. I'm not sure where to start with the scripting syntax.

I'm also not sure where I would put a script to apply to all characters always since to this point I've just been making Things that are pretty limited in scope.

Any pointers would be most appreciated.

 

[AndrewD2]

Do you know any class abilities that give this ability to a character? (Maybe on a Bard). Make a copy of that ability in the editor and see how its done.

 

[Togainu]

You can avoid using the editor by giving everyone the "breadth of experience" feat and in the adjustment tab under "other adjustments" give penalties to all knowledge skill of 2 to counter the buff they were getting from the feat.

Otherwise I am afraid you will have to mess with the editor and I wont be able to help you with that. Sadly enough hadnt have enough time myself yet to toy with it. (taking that feat and removing the buff will give you a custom feat as well of course that does it. Than you can just give everyone a bonus feat in the adjustment and select it to prevent the warning of too many feat selected)

 

[JustinThomason]

I think I found the bit of code that works for the Bard:

      ~if we're not the first copy, just get out now
      doneif (tagis[Helper.FirstCopy] = 0)

      ~if we're not shown, just get out now
      doneif (tagis[Helper.ShowSpec] = 0)

      ~ If we're disabled, do nothing
      doneif (tagis[Helper.SpcDisable] <> 0)

      foreach pick in hero from BaseSkill where "Helper.SkCatKnow"
        eachpick.field[Bonus].value += field[abValue].value
        perform eachpick.delete[Helper.TrainOnly]
        nexteach

It looks like this section -

eachpick.field[Bonus].value += field[abValue].value

is the part that adds half the Bard's level to the check, so I cut this. I put the rest of it into a new mechanic Thing, but when I tested it nothing happened. I tried pushing it very late in the Phase (Post-Attributes [User]; Priority 10000), and also getting rid of everything before the foreach loop, but still nothing.

Any thoughts? I think I'm on the right track, but for some reason it remains elusive.

 

[ShadowChemosh]

As the attribute score needs to add to the skill I would put it in Pre-attributes phase at like 1000.

 

[Aaron]

Also, the three doneifs at the start should be removed.

 

[JustinThomason]

Thanks for the help everyone.

Aaron - I removed the doneifs yesterday afternoon since they didn't seem germane to this situation, although I'm not entirely sure what they were doing in the first place.

Shadow - changing the timing seemed to have done it. I had to do a full reload of the game system, not just a Test Now!, but it seems to be working fine. I even added it to the "House Rules" source I created and I can toggle the effect on and off by switching the source in the Configure Hero screen.

For anyone else's reference, there is the eval-script I used:

        foreach pick in hero from BaseSkill where "Helper.SkCatKnow"
        perform eachpick.delete[Helper.TrainOnly]
        nexteach

and the timing is set to Pre-Attributes (Users) at Priority 1000.

 

[ShadowChemosh]

I had to do a full reload of the game system, not just a Test Now!, but it seems to be working fine.

Oh my bad. I forgot to mention this to you. When dealing with Mechanics Test Now! will tell if you the script has any compile errors. But to actually get it to run you have to do a CTRL-R to reload. That situation also appears when dealing with Bootstrap conditions.

Glad you got it working!

 

[Aaron]

Aaron - I removed the doneifs yesterday afternoon since they didn't seem germane to this situation, although I'm not entirely sure what they were doing in the first place.

doneifs stop the script if the conditions inside the parenthesis are true. Those three are looking for the presence or abscence of specific tags.

Helper.FirstCopy is present on the first copy of a class special, so stopping if it isn't present means we won't do the script multiple times if a copy of the class special is bootstrapped at several different levels.

Helper.ShowSpec is assigned to a class special once the associated class has reached a high enough level to gain this copy. Stopping if it isn't present means we don't run the script if the hero is too low level for its effects to apply.

Helper.SpcDisable is assigned to disable various sorts of special abilities (perhaps because they are replaced by an archetype, or some other pre-req isn't met). Stopping if it is present means we won't be gaining benefits we should have lost.

None of those tags are really needed in the context of a mechanic, which is a unique pick bootstrapped to all heroes, not dependant on level, and probably only disabled if the user hasn't enabled some source or other.