Tag Count vs. Other Methods

[RavenX]

Mathias,

We've had numerous talks about the use of "Class Levels and Helpers" before, and I hate to go back to this, but I've noticed whenever I have to bootstrap Spell-Like Abilities for Pathfinder, the bootstrap condition usually counts the number of Class.? tags to determine if the condition is met for the SLA. Is this a good reason for using Class Levels and Helpers? If not, what other method would you recommend for accessing a class's level from a custom ability?

I'm trying to understand how I could get a bootstrap condition for an SLA on a Specialist School to calculate the level of the class and all I can seem to think of is tags...

 

[Mathias]

In Pathfinder, what happens is that the xTotalLev/xAllLev/cTotalLev fields are set in the Levels phase - that gives anything else that adds effective levels, like a Monk's Robe, time to set up and apply those bonus levels.

The Classes tags, on the other hand, are set up in the Testing Global Tags phase or in the single digits of the First phase. That way, they're available for anything to look at.

Since bootstrap conditions need to be set up early, xTotalLev/cTotalLev/xAllLev hasn't been set yet, so all the information that's available is the Classes tags.

If we could do that over, I'm not sure how we'd handle it. One option would be to have two fields on a class and class special - the base level and the adjusted level. The base level could be set extremely early, which would make it available for bootstrap conditions, with the adjusted level being set later.

 

[RavenX]

Could addition of tags also be handled with a for loop?

Say something like...

Initialize 100

  var i as number
  for i=1 to field[cTotalLev].value
    perform forward[Class.?]
    next

This would, in theory apply enough Class Tags to the character early on enough to test in bootstraps would it not?

 

[Mathias]

Try it. Looks like it should work.

 

[RavenX]

That seems to do the trick. I now get enough tags to run a tagcount in bootstrap conditions with it.