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Validation for Starting Languages

Gladiator66

Well-known member
I am working to enter the races from the Midgard Heroes Handbook into Hero Lab. One problem that I have come across is giving a new bearfolk character the ability to select either Northern or Umbral as a starting language, but not both, as listed in the Heroes Handbook. I selected these 2 languages in the "Languages Allowed" section in the editor and entered "1" for the number of "Bonus Languages". However, when creating a new bearfolk character and selecting languages, all other languages are still available for selection. I switched to HL - Pathfinder and this capability worked. All of the languages that were not selected under "Languages Allowed" were grayed out, and and the following message displays if I select a non-valid language - "Your background doesn't allow you to learn this language as a starting language." It appears that this capability is not working in HL - D&D 5e SRD. Does anyone know if that is the case, and if so, do you know of a possible fix? Thanks.
 
I can confirm this bug. I encountered it when I was programming language choices for the Ravnica book; HL did not properly limit the choices to the ones I selected.

Have you confirmed it happens without any of the 5e Community Pack content installed? If so, it sounds like it's a bug that needs to be reported to LW.
 
There need to be AllowLang tags or something but the number of "bonus" languages is a misnomer on the race dialog. The "bonus" number is being added to rLanguages, which is a base language field and not a skill or tool option like dialogue.

A workaround I have made in the past is to create a Racial Special that I call "Starting Languages".

In that special I show a selection option with an array based menu listing off the 2 or 3 languages allowed.

I then attach each of those languages as a bootstrap and put a conditional on them like:

fieldval:usrIndex=1

where the usrIndex matches the array index.

Here's the code from the user file for one that has you choose between Abyssal and Dwarvish.

Code:
  <thing id="ra5HBStartLang" name="Start Languages" compset="RaceSpec">
    <arrayval field="usrArray" index="0" value="Abyssal"/>
    <arrayval field="usrArray" index="1" value="Dwarvish"/>
    <tag group="Language" tag="lAbyssal"/>
    <tag group="Helper" tag="ActivMenu"/>
    <tag group="ChooseSrc1" tag="Thing"/>
    <tag group="Helper" tag="ShowSpec"/>
    <tag group="Language" tag="lA2ZBoth"/>
    <bootstrap thing="lAbyssal">
      <containerreq phase="First" priority="500">fieldval:usrIndex=0</containerreq>
      </bootstrap>
    <bootstrap thing="lDwarvish">
      <containerreq phase="First" priority="500">fieldval:usrIndex=1</containerreq>
      </bootstrap>
    </thing>
 
Thanks, dungeonguru. I'll grab this code for Ravnica.

The only portion I don't understand is "<tag group="Language" tag="lA2ZBoth"/>" Can you enlighten me on what that represents? I'm trying to learn what each piece of code I add into my stuff does as I go.
 
Thanks, dungeonguru. I'll grab this code for Ravnica.

The only portion I don't understand is "<tag group="Language" tag="lA2ZBoth"/>" Can you enlighten me on what that represents? I'm trying to learn what each piece of code I add into my stuff does as I go.

Oops, I forgot to clean those up, the tag groups for language are left overs from where I was trying some scripting.

Each language has a Language.thingid tag created for it, where thingid is what you made. lA2ZBoth was representing the "Bothil" language in my files in this case.

You can remove those two tags.
 
Ah perfect. So the code for OP and I should be:

Code:
  <thing id="[B]AAAAA[/B]" name="Starting Languages" compset="RaceSpec">
    <arrayval field="usrArray" index="0" value="[B]BBBBB[/B]"/>
    <arrayval field="usrArray" index="1" value="[B]XXXXX[/B]"/>
    <tag group="Helper" tag="ActivMenu"/>
    <tag group="ChooseSrc1" tag="Thing"/>
    <tag group="Helper" tag="ShowSpec"/>
    <bootstrap thing="[B]CCCCC[/B]">
      <containerreq phase="First" priority="500">fieldval:usrIndex=0</containerreq>
      </bootstrap>
    <bootstrap thing="[B]YYYYY[/B]">
      <containerreq phase="First" priority="500">fieldval:usrIndex=1</containerreq>
      </bootstrap>
    </thing>

  1. AAAAA - The thing ID of whatever new racial special we make.
  2. BBBBB - The name of language 1
  3. CCCCC - The thing ID of language 1
  4. XXXXX - The name of language 2
  5. YYYYY - The thing ID of language 2.
Hopefully that helps, OP!
 
Last edited:
Thanks, Fenris447 and dungeonguru for the feedback. I did confirm yesterday that the error still happens without the 5e Community Pack installed.

I will try the code that you guys supplied. It looks like it ought to work. Thanks again!
 
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