How to do something...(help!)-for Fantasy Hero

[mytrustyd20]

Heya!

I'm working on a Fantasy Hero campaign...and I'm trying to use Hero Designer (2.02) to make my life easier. I want to make a spell and assign some common limitations and such to it. Then I want to make more spells, "copying" the limitations to each new spell without having to manually reasign these things. Then I want all of these spells in the same file so that when I make new characters I can add the spells onto their character sheets as needed.

Can someone give me some hints on how this might work best?

Thanks!

[ghost-angel]

There's no way to copy a group of Limitations to apply to a Power, but you can go to Recently Selected to get the list which is a wee bit faster.

AS for all the spells in a single file as a list, use a Prefab.

[Simon]

You can also assign the Modifiers to a list and place the spells in the list -- the list's Modifiers will be applied to each slot automatically. Not a great way to do prefabs, but it is the only way to assign groups of Modifiers automatically in HD.

[mytrustyd20]

Ouch. Okay...

Thanks for the advice. I'll make do.

Will version 3.0 0f HD allow me an easier way to do this? I envision a file for illusion magics with all my illusion spells there, another file for battle magic, etc.

This kind of blows my mind. I mean, Hero sells those spell addons for HD (I own the books) and I'm sure someone didn't just add each of the limitations by hand for every single spell, did they?

[Simon]

They constructed each ability in the list in accordance with the rules of the Hero System. When they were using the same Modifier on multiple abilities, they likely used the "Recently Selected" list to pick and choose from the Modifiers they had recently applied.

[Mark Taylor]

I'd like to suggest a modification to HDv3 that would address this issue, without actually having to add a feature for assigning modifiers in groups as such. Obviously I have no idea how difficult this would be to implement so if it would be a nightmare coding job ignore the suggestion...

Would it be possible to add a feature to lists (perhaps controlled by a checkbox in the list dialogue or something similar) to have powers retain the list's common modifiers when moved out of the list? That way us Fantasy HERO fans could build our spells in a list to make it easy to apply common modifiers, then simply move all of the spells out of the list when we want to create our prefabs.

[Simon]

I'd like to suggest a modification to HDv3 that would address this issue, without actually having to add a feature for assigning modifiers in groups as such. Obviously I have no idea how difficult this would be to implement so if it would be a nightmare coding job ignore the suggestion...

Would it be possible to add a feature to lists (perhaps controlled by a checkbox in the list dialogue or something similar) to have powers retain the list's common modifiers when moved out of the list? That way us Fantasy HERO fans could build our spells in a list to make it easy to apply common modifiers, then simply move all of the spells out of the list when we want to create our prefabs.
It's certainly possible....let's talk it through:

I don't think it would be desirable for it to always happen....so there needs to be some way to toggle it on/off -- I don't think that prompting the user each time an item is moved out of a list would be terribly elegant.....perhaps a variation on the "don't show this again" which remembers your selection for the duration of your HD session?

Alternately, I could make it an application preference. It would avoid the prompting when you move the item out of a list, but would also be more difficult to toggle for behavior.

The only other option that I can see would be to introduce a new menu item in each of the tabs which would (for now) contain a single checkbox which would control the behavior of common modifiers when moving items out of lists.

All of this would occur only when you moved the item out of the list via copy/cut or the up/down buttons.

[Mark Taylor]

It's certainly possible....let's talk it through:

I don't think it would be desirable for it to always happen....so there needs to be some way to toggle it on/off -- I don't think that prompting the user each time an item is moved out of a list would be terribly elegant.....perhaps a variation on the "don't show this again" which remembers your selection for the duration of your HD session?

Alternately, I could make it an application preference. It would avoid the prompting when you move the item out of a list, but would also be more difficult to toggle for behavior.

The only other option that I can see would be to introduce a new menu item in each of the tabs which would (for now) contain a single checkbox which would control the behavior of common modifiers when moving items out of lists.

All of this would occur only when you moved the item out of the list via copy/cut or the up/down buttons.

Sounds great! My original idea for controlling the feature was to have a checkbox actually in the list dialogue specifying whether items moved out of that particular list should retain common modifiers or not. That way the user would control the behaviour of each list individually. Is that possible? If not, any of the other methods you mentioned would work too. The new menu item in each tab you suggested sounds easiest to use.

[Mark Taylor]

P.S. It just occured that where a user wanted items from a list to retain common modifiers, the user would most likely want to retain common adders and any cost multiplier also. So perhaps a single checkbox marked something like "Apply common modifiers, adders and cost multiplier to items moved out from this list". Bit of a mouthful, but hey.

[Kabluey]

Another suggestion sort of along these lines: The Recently Selected list, which was mentioned, would be even nicer if you had a way to remove specific items out of the list, not just clear the whole list. For instance, I'm creating a prefab with a bunch of spells, all of which have the same set of limitations. The Recently Selected makes this quite easy, but it starts getting cluttered with limitations and advantages from specific spells pretty quickly.