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Odd error with Unlimited NPC

P

Paragon

Well-known member
I'm trying to put McGyver on an NPC built as unlimited, and even though they have the prereq skills, its showing an error that they aren't present. Anyone seen anything like this before?
 
I looked at the error message, and it says "Repair d6 required"; the NPC build has Repair at d8. I pulled up a copy of McGuyver, and nothing jumped out at me as something that would produce that result.
 
Oh this is probably related to when someone uses the Permanent Adjustments on the Personal Tab. They are ignored when the program is looking for requirements.
 
Seeley, what are you talking about? Permanent Adjustments are not ignored when looking for requirements. I just built a character and both Notice and Repair were only D4 until I raised them with Permanent Adjustments to Notice D8 and Repair D6. Then I could take McGyver just fine.
 
Actually I was just wondering what Permanent Adjustments had to do with anything anyway since Paragon mentioned the issue was just on an Unlimited NPC, not mentioning the use of Permanent Adjustments.
 
Yeah, this wasn't done as an adjustment of any sort. Heck, far as I can tell, the NPC would likely be a legal PC other than perhaps level-related things.

What the heck, here's the statblock:

Name: Illuminated
Race: Human
Attributes: Agility d8, Smarts d8, Spirit d6, Strength d6, Vigor d6
Skills: Fighting d8, Intimidation d6, Knowledge: Technology d8, Notice d8, Repair d8, Shooting d8
Pace: 6, Parry: 6, Toughness: 6(1), Charisma: 0
Gear: Unarmed Strike d8 (Str), Pistol, Light Automatic d8 (2d6, 12/24/48), Spear d8 (Str+d6), Leather Armor (+1)
Special Abilities:
•Curious: Must check out everything and solve all mysteries
•McGyver: Rig creative solutions; No penalties for missing tools

Hero Lab and the Hero Lab logo are Registered Trademarks of LWD Technology, Inc. Free download at http://www.wolflair.com
Copyright © 2004-2016 by Pinnacle Entertainment Group. All rights reserved.
 
I know that this thread has nothing directly to do with Permanent Adjustments. But I have seen it where a Permanent Adjustment was ignored for validation for the requirements of an Edge. So because of that it might be related.
 
I tried to replicate the error that I saw about a year ago. The only error is that I have a Derived Trait that has an eval script inside it that does something based on its rating and the timing in that is off for when the Permanent Adjustment is applied.

Interestingly enough it works for Charisma and its affect on skills. Hmmm
 
Paragon, what are your other settings? If I just make a plain-jane Unlimited NPC set Smarts to d6 add Repair at d6 and Notice at d8 I have no problems adding the McGyver Edge. So my guess is the problem should be coming from some source setting you have set (and potentially one that has a replacement version of McGyver?)
 
It was a problem with my Broken Earth setting, as it turned out. I'm really prone to not thinking about dependencies when I do a replacement thing. At one point I replaced several skills because there's a hindrance the Simians have which doesn't allow you to take those skills--but then forgot that anything that uses those skills as a pre-req will now be looking for skills that don't exist.

This is a big old pain in the butt. Since that means I need to go through and replace all those Edges too, which will likely require me to replace even more things as some of those will be needed for other things to operate.

I don't suppose anyone knows any way to make a skill selectively unavailable without replacing it with an edited copy, do you?

Edit: Eh, turns out its not that big a deal; there appear to be only about four Edges effected in the standard rules, and none are pre-reqs for any others. I can see this as being a problem if you're using multiple sources with additional Edges from both, though, and it'd be downright painful if one of the skills involved had been, say, Fighting.
 
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Sadly the only way to do it is to preclude the skill and make up your own version, and new versions of edges that require it. The result is that with each different book we end up with new, incompatible, versions of everything. Mix-and-match is not an option with Hero Lab.
 
Well, quick aside, if you are using "Replace", you shouldn't. The title is misleading, and it's designed for something else entirely. You'll need to preclude the existing thing and replace it with a version with the right source tag. If you're already doing that, great!
Also, why couldn't you write the Skill exclusions on the Hindrance, and not touch the Skills at all? Or on the Race record for the Simians? It doesn't necessarily have to happen on the Skills themselves. Just use a pickreq on the Race record with the Skill named, and check the Preclude box. It's backwards, but it will serve the same purpose, I think.
 
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No, I got the lecture on using Preclude early in my adventures with the editor.

I'd assumed since race selection is done earlier than skills that you couldn't do it on something bootstrapped from the race (its not forbidden on the race actually, but on something the hindrance bootstraps; that was done so you could buy it off with an advance (done by buying an "edge" that removes their version of the Illiterate Hindrance). I hadn't thought that an expr-req would work in reverse (i.e. would prevent the thing it listed, rather than just not letting you take it if you had the thing it listed).

I'll have to experiment.
 
Just tried this, and it doesn't seem to work; I put it on the hindrance, but its still letting me pick the skills without complaint.
 
Hmmm. OK, I can see that, the Hindrance is already chosen.
You could also create a validation script that checks if the race is Simian, then checks to see if those Skills are present, and if they are throw an error. It wouldn't stop a user from selecting it, but it would display an error when they do. It could be attached to the Setting Adjustment.
 
I'd have to have it check for the Hindrance--there's a way to buy if off, so not all Simians have it--but honestly, at this point I've already done the replacement for the Edges and so forth, so it'd mostly just be for the sake of tidiness.
 
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