Templating for Dummies?

[Shirizaan]

Sorry, I'm a newbie and I'm sure that this is a stupid question, but I am playing in a game that uses two custom characteristics and I need to know how I can add these to a template?

The game that we are playing is a converted Shadowrun so we need to display Essence and Magic. These need to cost 0 to increase and decrease so that they do not yield a lost or gain of points.

Please help.

[Shirizaan]

Here is what I have so far... but it doesn't seem to like it.

CUSTOM1 DISPLAY="Essence" BASE="60" LVLCOST="0" LVLVAL="0" MAXVAL="60" MINVAL="0"

[Killer Shrike]

The next update for HD2 may provide more functionality for this. Currently there are 3 unused Characteristics you can overload for your custom stats, but Dan mentioned he might extend this functionality.

[Killer Shrike]

Here's the relative comment.

Dan Simon For my next trick, I'm working on custom characteristics. I'm just about done.....I've got things set so that you can define up to 10 custom characteristics without having to reuse things like DEF and the like.

[Shirizaan]

Yeah, I'm trying to do just that. The CUSTOM1-CUSTOM10 tags were added in 2.07 but I'm having problems figuring them out.

[Simon]

Originally posted by Shirizaan
Here is what I have so far... but it doesn't seem to like it.

CUSTOM1 DISPLAY="Essence" BASE="60" LVLCOST="0" LVLVAL="0" MAXVAL="60" MINVAL="0"
The way you have it set in there, there is no base codt and no way to increase the levels (no level cost). Set the LVLCOST and LVLVAL appropriately.

[Shirizaan]

CUSTOM1 XMLID="ESSENCE" DISPLAY="Essence" BASE="60" MINVAL="0" MAXVAL="60" LVLCOST="0" LVLVAL="1" POSITION="20" NCM="0" NCM40="0" NCM60="0" NCM10="0" NCM10NICE="0"

That works. But the program now says that I will succeed on a roll of 21-. Is there any way to make this a figured characteristic like PD or STUN?

[Simon]

Originally posted by Shirizaan
CUSTOM1 XMLID="ESSENCE" DISPLAY="Essence" BASE="60" MINVAL="0" MAXVAL="60" LVLCOST="0" LVLVAL="1" POSITION="20" NCM="0" NCM40="0" NCM60="0" NCM10="0" NCM10NICE="0"

That works. But the program now says that I will succeed on a roll of 21-. Is there any way to make this a figured characteristic like PD or STUN?
Well, you've given it a base (starting) value of 60. 9+60/5 = 21.

If you want to make it a figured characteristic then you would (typically) give it a BASE of 0 and then include the attributes CUSTOM1INCREASE and CUSTOM1INCREASELEVELS in the primary Characteristics that affect it.

I'd suggest looking through Main.hdt for examples of how this works.

[Shirizaan]

It has no characteristics that affect it. It is it's own, but there are no rolls associated with it. Every character has 60 essence. As they are implanted with Cyberware, they lose essence... It's something that will only ever be affected by equipment.

[Simon]

Then it's not a Figured Characteristic (which you had asked to make it). Just ignore the roll column. When you create an export template which includes that characteristic, don't export a value for the roll and you're good to go.

[Killer Shrike]

Why not set the base to be figured off of EGO plus some number like DEX & SPD. In Shadowrun everyone else started off w/ the same essence IIRC, but that never made much sense to me. Since Essence basically determined how much cybercrap you could have imbedded in you, and conversely Essense loss affected your magic use it always seemed to me that people w/ strong "spirits" or willpower should have more essense.

[paxx]

The main reason for essence in SR is game balance. Essence is basically your “natural” level or spiritual potential. And while I have some issues in or about how it works, it works in a way as to make the cyber people different from the not cyber people. No quick healing and such.

In general it also make most races very applicable as mages, while giving a little preference to certain races/subraces none have a large advantage.

If you could raise your essence with another stat or two, then cyber junkies would raise it as much as it is efficient to get healed, or to have a speed of 7d6 +30…say a wired phisad. At that point the system totally breaks down. As you have people going 5-7 times Vs 1-2 times and doing a lot of damage to boot.

All in all there are many abuses in SR and controlling the power level is interesting. I ran many different types of campaigns with a large group 8-12 players at a time and 6-16 hour sessions. So we had a lot of variety and specialists, depending on the type of Champaign we where running. My only regret with the game is it almost forces players to do background/planning for missions, and my players where much more, “barge in the front door” types.

But there are ways to increase magic level and such, though essence is a great balancer, 10- essence + mods for target numbers works quite well, and that would fail if we had magic users with 10 essence or better.

In short, it is a balance in a world where people can swallow a grenade and live after it explodes.

Also if anyone has a good transform for SR-Hero, I would love to give it a whirl.

[Killer Shrike]

In Shadowrun yes, but in the HERO System they are paying points for the abilities they want, and they run out of points. So, unless you arent charging points for Cyberware (which would be a mistake IMO), a player trying to bump a stat to raise their essence has fewer points to spend on cyber-doodads and thus Game Balance is upheld.

[Damon_Dusk]

Shirizaan is playing in the Shadowrun conversion that I created. To sum things up, it is a heroic level game, and characters do not pay points for cyberware, rather the cyberware is paid for with Essence and Money (just like in the source material). We did have issues with game balance but playtesting has pretty much fixed those problems. There are quite a few custom tweaks that have been done to ensure game balance, but they are all done in keeping with the source material. The conversion is an attempt to stay as true to the spirit of Shadowrun as possible while still using the Hero System.

If you are interested in checking it out, email me at:

damondusk@cox.net

Be forewarned, the conversion is about 160 pages (809 Kb .zipped)