Version 5.3 of the d20 System data files are now available!

[ShadowChemosh]

How would you like me to start with the Spells and getting them aligned?

I would just go ahead and use the editor to add new spells starting with the first letter A spell. Give it a new unique ID starting with "sp" and ending in the spell level. In example Acid Arrow would have a unique id of "spAcidArr2". Now we easily know its a "spell" its Acid Arrow and its the level 2 version. Some spells like Read Magic will have a both a level 0 and level 1 version of the spell.

When I get close to the next release date I will let you know and you can send me what you have. Then I can merge it in and obsolete all the old spells.

Thanks so much for helping out with this.

 

[Kendall-DM]

Wouldn't it be better to make it s<spell level><spell abbrev>, as the 'sp' prefix limits the amount of characters by one (and this is consistent with how it was previously done). And that way it is easier to look for all x level spells, although I guess tags handle that as well. Anyhow, I'm good either way, just seems more logical if the spell level is listed first. I don't think it matters if the spell ids are alphabetized, since there is a search feature anyhow. I'll leave it up to you.

 

[ShadowChemosh]

Wouldn't it be better to make it s<spell level><spell abbrev>, as the 'sp' prefix limits the amount of characters by one (and this is consistent with how it was previously done). And that way it is easier to look for all x level spells, although I guess tags handle that as well. Anyhow, I'm good either way, just seems more logical if the spell level is listed first. I don't think it matters if the spell ids are alphabetized, since there is a search feature anyhow. I'll leave it up to you.

In this case I was going with LW standards. They do the above for Spells in Pathfinder and they decided that was the best method or improved method from d20. So may as well follow along here sense we have the opportunity to upgrade.

This also provides consistency for those that move between d20 and Pathfinder.

 

[Kendall-DM]

There is something that I'd like to add to the TO-DO list of yours. IT would be great if HL would allow for the damage to have either or both of 1) adding textual context to damage (the timing doesn't allow this to happen) and/or 2) add and effect to an attack, say via a drop down menu.

Here is the examples of each, so you get the idea:

1. Contextual Damage

• A fire elemental does slam damage plus 1 die of fire damage, i.e. 1d6 plus 1d4 fire.
• An arrowhawk only deals energy damage, i.e. 1d8 electricity.

• Drop-Down Damage (or similar methodology)

• A sword is activated and now applies shock damage in addition to its regular damage, but only does regular damage when not activated.
• Poison is applied to a blade, i.e. 1d8 plus 1d8 Con.

Anyways, you get the general gist of what I'm getting at. Currently, when I have tried doing this, the damage table has the textual context, but once HL gets to the damage calculation from the table, it clears the table for the assigned tags on the creature, which eliminates all the textual context, and then during the same timing outputs it to HL. So it is not possible to squeeze into that timing to re-update the damage table with textual context because it has already been output to the screen. Hopefully that is clear as mud, and not more than just wishful thinking.

 

[ShadowChemosh]

There is something that I'd like to add to the TO-DO list of yours. IT would be great if HL would allow for the damage to have either or both of 1) adding textual context to damage (the timing doesn't allow this to happen) and/or 2) add and effect to an attack, say via a drop down menu.

Here is the examples of each, so you get the idea:

1. Contextual Damage

• A fire elemental does slam damage plus 1 die of fire damage, i.e. 1d6 plus 1d4 fire.
• An arrowhawk only deals energy damage, i.e. 1d8 electricity.

• Drop-Down Damage (or similar methodology)

• A sword is activated and now applies shock damage in addition to its regular damage, but only does regular damage when not activated.
• Poison is applied to a blade, i.e. 1d8 plus 1d8 Con.

Anyways, you get the general gist of what I'm getting at. Currently, when I have tried doing this, the damage table has the textual context, but once HL gets to the damage calculation from the table, it clears the table for the assigned tags on the creature, which eliminates all the textual context, and then during the same timing outputs it to HL. So it is not possible to squeeze into that timing to re-update the damage table with textual context because it has already been output to the screen. Hopefully that is clear as mud, and not more than just wishful thinking.

Yep already on the to-do list actually. In Pathfinder these are run off a macro called "#extradamage[]". Sendric ask for months ago. Its filtering up higher on the list to be done. I don't think its "hard" per say but will require allot of small changes so its time consuming. So it still falls below fixing "CORE" issues still section.

But yep its coming!

 

[JustinThomason]

Just a quick after action report. Last night was the first time I got to play with the fixed in-play tab, and it worked great. I absolutely love the Power Attack adjustment - it made running my barbarian a breeze.

Thanks to all the folks who keep the d20 rules set alive and growing.

 

[Sendric]

In researching the problem with the custom abilities from Tome of Battle, it looks like Custom Abilities no longer appear in the Activated Abilities portion of the In-Play tab. This is likely due to not having the tag "Helper.ShowSpec" assigned to it, but I cannot verify this as I have been unsuccessful in assigning that tag to any Custom Abilities even through scripts. It appears there may be something internal that does not allow this tag to be assigned to Custom Abilities, which unfortunately means I can't create a work-around for this issue.

 

[Sendric]

Along the same lines as above, specials with the tag "Usage.AtWill" do not appear in the In-Play tab. Is this expected? If so, is there a way to put these in to the In-Play tab without giving it a number of charges?

 

[ShadowChemosh]

In researching the problem with the custom abilities from Tome of Battle, it looks like Custom Abilities no longer appear in the Activated Abilities portion of the In-Play tab. This is likely due to not having the tag "Helper.ShowSpec" assigned to it, but I cannot verify this as I have been unsuccessful in assigning that tag to any Custom Abilities even through scripts. It appears there may be something internal that does not allow this tag to be assigned to Custom Abilities, which unfortunately means I can't create a work-around for this issue.

I will need to take a look. It "should" work but will look into this.

Along the same lines as above, specials with the tag "Usage.AtWill" do not appear in the In-Play tab. Is this expected? If so, is there a way to put these in to the In-Play tab without giving it a number of charges?

Oh hmm. Yeah that is a good point is it not. Need to look into this as I think I will need to change the display in this special case. As if I have it display it will show 0/0 charges. Hmmm.

 

[ShadowChemosh]

In researching the problem with the custom abilities from Tome of Battle, it looks like Custom Abilities no longer appear in the Activated Abilities portion of the In-Play tab. This is likely due to not having the tag "Helper.ShowSpec" assigned to it, but I cannot verify this as I have been unsuccessful in assigning that tag to any Custom Abilities even through scripts. It appears there may be something internal that does not allow this tag to be assigned to Custom Abilities, which unfortunately means I can't create a work-around for this issue.

So it time to track this backwards as its coming from the community data set. In example look at Crusader class helper Thing (cHelpCru). It has a script that runs at Render/15000 that deletes the Helper.ShowSpec tag on custom abilities.

I think you want to change the code to delete the "Helper.ShowCharge" tag instead so that the custom ability does not display in the Tracked Resources section but does show in the Activated Ability section. Then when the Maneuver is "readied" it shows on the "Tracked Resources" section.

 

[ShadowChemosh]

Along the same lines as above, specials with the tag "Usage.AtWill" do not appear in the In-Play tab. Is this expected? If so, is there a way to put these in to the In-Play tab without giving it a number of charges?

Back and forth on this one still. I was looking at having Spell-Like abilities appear on the Spells tab. They then will display with the (At Will) info and this can be used on Class Abilities like the Paladin's detect evil. I have this working currently.

Should any At Will ability display on the In-Play tab? I mean it has nothing really to display in the Tracked Resources section as it has no resources. So it seems counter intuitive to display it...

 

[Sendric]

So it time to track this backwards as its coming from the community data set. In example look at Crusader class helper Thing (cHelpCru). It has a script that runs at Render/15000 that deletes the Helper.ShowSpec tag on custom abilities.

I think you want to change the code to delete the "Helper.ShowCharge" tag instead so that the custom ability does not display in the Tracked Resources section but does show in the Activated Ability section. Then when the Maneuver is "readied" it shows on the "Tracked Resources" section.

Ah, crud. Sorry for wasting your time, Shadow. When I did that, I needed to remove those specials from the Specials tab. Perhaps adding SpecUp would have been a better alternative. I'll check it out, thanks.

 

[Sendric]

Back and forth on this one still. I was looking at having Spell-Like abilities appear on the Spells tab. They then will display with the (At Will) info and this can be used on Class Abilities like the Paladin's detect evil. I have this working currently.

Should any At Will ability display on the In-Play tab? I mean it has nothing really to display in the Tracked Resources section as it has no resources. So it seems counter intuitive to display it...

Well, I think it would be nice if we could display them somewhere so that players can easily see them. The specials tab is certainly the simplest, but I feel like that tab gets abused as it is and some specials would get lost. I am working on creating a new set of SLA and PLA specials that can be easily bootstrapped and include descriptions of the spells and psionics that they represent. This is no problem for the abilities that use charges, but the at-will ones don't display anywhere. For me, I would be fine with it showing 0/0 for charges and (At Will) in the livename assuming that isn't too complicated. Otherwise, we'll need to come up with another solution.

 

[ShadowChemosh]

Well, I think it would be nice if we could display them somewhere so that players can easily see them. The specials tab is certainly the simplest, but I feel like that tab gets abused as it is and some specials would get lost. I am working on creating a new set of SLA and PLA specials that can be easily bootstrapped and include descriptions of the spells and psionics that they represent. This is no problem for the abilities that use charges, but the at-will ones don't display anywhere. For me, I would be fine with it showing 0/0 for charges and (At Will) in the livename assuming that isn't too complicated. Otherwise, we'll need to come up with another solution.

0/0 would be the quick and dirty method which I am not happy with. Hmm let me see what I can do this weekend.....

 

[Sendric]

0/0 would be the quick and dirty method which I am not happy with. Hmm let me see what I can do this weekend.....

Pathfinder utilizes the Spells tab for this. I assume adding that feature is something on the to-do list, but perhaps not something that is imminent. Maybe a quick and dirty fix for now would be adequate until that feature could be added?

 

[ShadowChemosh]

Pathfinder utilizes the Spells tab for this. I assume adding that feature is something on the to-do list, but perhaps not something that is imminent. Maybe a quick and dirty fix for now would be adequate until that feature could be added?

I did add logic that makes a "Special" appear on the "Spells" tab (in a new section called "Spell-Like Abilites" if the Pick meets the following expression

AbilType.SpellLike & Usage.? & Helper.ShowSpec

So for example I have the paladins Detect Evil changed to display on the Spells tab under the new 'Spell-like Abilities' section. So that will display as "At-Will". I need to get the counter logic to work still for those Sp that are NOT constant/At-Will.

But this does only cover "Spell-Like Abilities" and would not work for Ex or Su abilities. That was what I was going to take a look at this weekend to see if I can easily suppress the "tracker" when at will or constant. Plus I need to make sure I don't break the printed character sheet also....

 

[Sendric]

I did add logic that makes a "Special" appear on the "Spells" tab (in a new section called "Spell-Like Abilites" if the Pick meets the following expression

AbilType.SpellLike & Usage.? & Helper.ShowSpec

So for example I have the paladins Detect Evil changed to display on the Spells tab under the new 'Spell-like Abilities' section. So that will display as "At-Will". I need to get the counter logic to work still for those Sp that are NOT constant/At-Will.

But this does only cover "Spell-Like Abilities" and would not work for Ex or Su abilities. That was what I was going to take a look at this weekend to see if I can easily suppress the "tracker" when at will or constant. Plus I need to make sure I don't break the printed character sheet also....

Awesome. That sounds good to me. Thanks!

Is this something that could also be done for psi-like abilities or is that just a rabbit hole?

 

[ShadowChemosh]

Awesome. That sounds good to me. Thanks!

Is this something that could also be done for psi-like abilities or is that just a rabbit hole?

That is a good point also. Hmmm... I think I may hold off with that until I hit the Psionic Classes (Slowly going through each class). I may have other changes/fixes to do so would rather do it all together.

One step at a time.

So many areas need help still. Really want to get those deities added. Pretty sure I may need to do some layout changes to allow that. I would really love to make the layout more like Pathfinder. I think it has a much nicer interface with the tabs that walks a person through character setup.

 

[Kendall-DM]

Guys, a much easier method would be to create a racial or class tag in the spell class tag, one that won't actually get picked up by anything.Then those with the Spell-Like Ability tag could be shown in the SLA area of the Spell tab. That way you aren't reinventing the wheel by recreating a spell as an SLA. All spells that are SLAs have a equivalent spell level (or the same as the spell of the same name in most cases). This gives it re-usability as well. Lastly, you can still wrap the spells themselves into a Special for the Specials tab.

Just my two xp worth.

 

[Kendall-DM]

ShadowChemosh, I've started mowing through the spells. I've been busy lately, and will be busy again the week after the holiday, but for this week and next, I'm going to see how much of this I can whip out. Doesn't look too hard, just a lot of spells to get through. I'll keep you posted.

EDIT: Just noticed you've already done a few for testing. Also noticed that there are material components and such a manually typed in, which means I'd have to look them up and delete them from the description entries (or should I delete these from the descriptive text?). Oh, and the target text... so... will do what I can do over the next week and a half.

EDIT AGAIN: How are you handling domain spells, on their own?