Lesson #12: .lst - Feats (Part 1 - basic setup) - PCGen Documentation

# Lesson #12: .lst - Feats (Part 1 - basic setup)

By Professor Chris Chandler (Barak)

File(s) Covered: *feat.lst

Tags used:

`OUTPUTNAME , TYPE , VISIBLE , STACK , MULT , CHOOSE , DESC , DESCISPI , BENEFIT , COST , SOURCELONG , SOURCESHORT , SOURCEWEB , SOURCEPAGE`

The feat object in PCGen is one of the main workhorses used in getting the RSRD rules implemented, so it’s very important to learn to create them and what can and cannot be accomplished with them. While it covers the usual business that is covered by a feat in the 3.5e game, it also does a lot of behind the scenes work in PCGen to make all the mechanics happen.

As an example of what I’m speaking of, a Ranger’s Favored Enemy ability and a Cleric’s Turning ability are both coded as “feats” in PCGen, even though they don’t appear as such in the program or on output.

I’ll run through the most common tags, explain how to put them together and then I will go into some specific uses for feats and how to configure PCGen feats to achieve the desired outcome. In order to cover all of this, I’m going to split it into different lessons. This first part of the feat lesson will deal with setting the feat up for use in general, the second lesson will deal with implementing the prerequisites (if there are any) to take the feat and how to implement the effects of the feat as far as the game mechanics go and a final one to discuss anything that didn’t fit in the first two lessons.

Feat Name

The feat file is currently a lst file that has one feat entry per line. The first thing on each line is the feat name. There is no tag for it, the program assumes that whatever is there is the name of a feat. Note that you should not use parens in the name of a feat as those are used by PCGen when referencing a feat with a sub choice/target.

For demonstration purposes we’ll code up the “Improved Critical” feat from the RSRD. So our feat line will start with those words.

OUTPUTNAME

The OUTPUTNAME tag can be used in a couple of different manners. You can completely change the name of an object (as far as output is concerned) and not reference the real name at all, or you can use part of the real name. A special string was developed to grant access to only the text contained in parens. That string is “[NAME]” (no quotes).

In feats this is mostly done when there are some sort of math operator characters in the feat name (hyphens being the most often occurring issue). In newer versions of PCGen this appears to have been fixed somewhat but in older versions those characters in feat names caused issues, so we started dropping those characters from the feat name and then using an OUTPUTNAME tag with those characters in it to get around the issues.

So, as an example of OUTPUTNAME use, if we wanted the name on output to be “Critical (Improved)”, we could cause it to happen by entering `OUTPUTNAME:Critical (Improved)` . Note that there is a preference setting that turns off output names so the user may not see it if they have elected to turn them off.

The name “Improved Critical” is just fine as it is, so we’ll skip an OUTPUTNAME tag on this one.

TYPE

The TYPE tag is used for a couple of different purposes. The first and most obvious is to set the feat type as indicated by the source. Another use of it is for internal program use to group a set of feats together for later selection by an `ADD:FEAT(TYPE=type)` tag elsewhere. This is especially useful when you have several benefits that a PC can choose from. These TYPEs can also be used in separating feats for display in different areas on an output sheet.

By convention we do not put spaces in the TYPEs (historically it caused issues in the program). If there is more than one word in the TYPE, we run them together and capitalize each one. A feat *can* have more than one TYPE. In that case we put each TYPE in and separate them with periods.

From the RSRD you will see TYPEs of: General, Fighter, Metamagic, Psionic and ItemCreation. Codemonkey Publishing went so far as to start creating all class and racial abilities as hidden feats and they have added SpecialAttack, SpecialQuality, ClassFeature, Extraordinary, SpellLike and Supernatural as standards in their datasets. Please note that you are not limited to just those TYPEs mentioned, you can make a TYPE of anything, those listed above are just ones you might commonly see.

Looking at the RSRD, Improved Critical is a General feat and a Fighter feat, so we enter `TYPE:General.Fighter`

VISIBLE

This is a tag that takes one of four values; YES, NO, DISPLAY and EXPORT. It controls whether or not the user can see the feat in the program UI feat list and on the output sheet feat list.

If the VISIBLE tag is set to YES (or is not present) then the user will see the feat in their feat list in the UI and on their output sheet and they will be able to access it in the UI.

If the VISIBLE tag is set to DISPLAY, that means that the user will be able to access it in the UI, but it will not be listed in their feat list when they generate an output sheet.

If the VISIBLE tag is set to EXPORT then the user will not see or be able to access the feat in the UI, but it *will* appear in the feat list when they generate an output sheet.

Setting VISIBLE to NO creates what we call a “hidden feat”. It’s how we make a lot of things work behind the scenes. The Ranger Favored Enemy and Cleric Turn Undead are examples of hidden feats used to implement game mechanics. The only way for this type of feat to be accessed is by being specifically granted by a .lst file or being called via an ADD:FEAT chooser tag in a lst file. It will never appear/be available for selection as a bonus feat from the UI.

A good rule of thumb is that if the feat is listed in the feat section of a data source, it should be VISIBLE:YES (or leave out the VISIBLE tag so it defaults to YES). If it’s not listed as a feat in the source, it should be `VISIBLE:NO` . The EXPORT and DISPLAY options are used for special cases where we need to something very strange… :)

Since the Improved Critical feat is a normal feat listed in the RSRD feat section, we’ll skip the VISIBLE tag and it will default to being visible to the user in the UI and on output.

MULT

The MULT tag is a simple YES or NO tag. It determines whether you can take a feat more than once. This information is usually found under the “Special” section in the feat description. It will tell you whether or not the feat may be taken multiple times.

Note that if set to YES, then you *must* use a CHOOSE tag in the feat also.

According to the RSRD, Improved Critical can be taken more than once, so we’ll use `MULT:YES` .

STACK

The STACK tag is another tag that is a simple YES or NO. Default if the tag is not present however is NO in this case. If you have the MULT tag set to NO, then the STACK tag will have no effect. If you have the MULT tag set to yes however, this determines whether or not the feat will stack with itself if you take it more than once. Like with the MULT tag, this information is usually given to you in the “Special” section of the feat description.

According to the RSRD, Improved Critical does not stack with itself (you can take it again but must choose a different weapon) so we need to put `STACK:NO` in the feat line.

CHOOSE

There are many versions of the CHOOSE tag. For full information please read the section of the PCGen documentation dedicated to CHOOSE in all it’s different forms. In this tutorial I’m just going to touch on a couple of common ones that you might see/use over and over again.

First is the free text version. That would simply appear as “CHOOSE:Choice 1|Choice 2|Choice 3” in the .lst file and pop a chooser with a list containing Choice 1, Choice 2 and Choice 3. You would use this when the choice is something that is not a game effect coded for PCGen (a good example of this is the CHOOSE statement in the 3.0 Ranger Favored Enemy hidden feat).

Next comes CHOOSE:NOCHOICE. This causes the CHOOSER to not be displayed. This is useful when you have a feat that may be taken multiple times that doesn’t really have any choice to it. Since you used MULT:YES you must have a CHOOSE, but there really is no choice. A good example of this is the Toughness feat.

Another popular one is CHOOSE:FEAT=featname. This is used mostly in cascading feats where the new feat will apply to the object of a previous feat. A good example of the use of this is the Weapon Specialization feat. It uses “CHOOSE:FEAT=Weapon Focus|1” which presents a list of all the weapons that the character has taken the Weapon Focus feat for and lets the user pick one.

Moving on to our current feat under construction, we see that Improved Critical requires that you be proficient with the weapon you choose this feat for. While this is listed as a prerequisite, it actually affects what you can choose from so we implement it via a CHOOSE restriction.

Looking through the PCGen documentation for a CHOOSE tag that will suit our purposes, we find the following: CHOOSE:WEAPONPROFS|LIST which is supposed to present a chooser containing a list of all the weapon proficiencies that your character has. We’ll add “CHOOSE:WEAPONPROFS|LIST|1” to the feat line.

DESC

This tag is used to hold the one to two line “flavor text” that describes the feat. This is usually the first couple of sentences found under the feat name.

This is what will be output to the feat description field if the “Display Feat Description” checkbox is checked in the preferences. Otherwise the more verbose contents of the BENEFIT tag will be displayed.

For the Improved Critical feat we can paraphrase the short description and enter “DESC:With your selected weapon you know how to hit where it hurts.”

DESCISPI

Another simple YES or NO tag. If the tag is not present it defaults to NO.

This tag is used to indicate to the program that the description is considered to be Product Identity of the publisher and should be marked as such when displayed in the program. Permission must be obtained from the publisher to use Product Identity.

There is no Product Identity in the Improved Critical description, so we will leave this tag out of our feat.

BENEFIT

This tag is meant to contain the text from the “Benefit” section of the feat from the source material. This text will be displayed in the feat description field in both the UI and on output if the “Display Feat Description” checkbox in the Appearance/Display Options Preference window is unchecked. Otherwise the (much shorter) text from the DESC tag will be displayed.

For the Improved Critical feat we would enter `BENEFIT:When using the weapon you selected, your threat range is doubled.`

Note that it is quite common to leave this tag out so as to encourage people to purchase the books that the dataset represents.

COST

This tag is used to set the cost (in feat slots) of the feat. If it is not present it defaults to a value of 1. This tag can be used to set up a system where you can take a penalty type feat to get another positive effect feat (think Flaws & Traits).

Since Improved Critical is a normal feat, we will leave the COST tag out and let it default to a cost of one feat slot.

SOURCELONG

This is a free-form text tag. We put the full name of the source here. This tag may be entered once at the top of the .lst file and will apply to everything below it until another SOURCELONG tag is encountered, or it may be placed on each feat line (which is the practice CMP has adopted for this tag).

Since we are using the RSRD for our example, the tag would be `SOURCELONG:Revised (v.3.5) System Reference Document`

SOURCESHORT

This tag is also a free-form text tag. We put an abbreviated version of the source name here for use in the program to help keep everything on the screen. This tag may be entered once at the top of the .lst file and will apply to everything below it until another SOURCESHORT tag is encountered, or it may be placed on each feat line (which is the practice CMP has adopted for this tag).

Again, since we are using the RSRD for our example reference, the tag would be SOURCESHORT:RSRD

SOURCEWEB

This tag is for the entry of the URL pointing to the product/book. This tag may be entered once at the top of the .lst file and will apply to everything below it until another SOURCEWEB tag is encountered, or it may be placed on each feat line.

In the case of the RSRD, the tag would be `SOURCEWEB:http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=d20/article/srd35`

SOURCEPAGE

This is just what it seems, where we indicate the page from the source material where you can find the text for the feat. It takes freeform text, so anything you put in there will be displayed when using the SOURCEPAGE output token.

When you are going from an OGL book the format is usually `SOURCEPAGE:p.#` . If you are working from an online document such as the SRD, it would be the filename, so `SOURCEPAGE:<filename>`

Since we are working from the RSRD, our tag will look like `SOURCEPAGE:Feats.rtf`

I’m going to end this lesson here even though our example feat isn’t complete yet. We’ve covered the most commonly occurring tags in feats here (other than PRE and BONUS tags). In the next lesson I will cover setting up prerequisites to take the feats and implementing the effects of feats (which will allow us to complete the entry of the Improved Critical feat).

For quick reference, we currently have the following for our feat so far (new lines should tab characters):

> `Improved Critical TYPE:General.Fighter MULT:YES STACK:NO CHOOSE:WEAPONPROFS|LIST|1 DESC:With your selected weapon you know how to hit where it hurts. BENEFIT:When using the weapon you selected, your threat range is doubled. SOURCELONG:Revised (v.3.5) System Reference Document SOURCESHORT:RSRD SOURCEWEB: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=d20/article/srd35 SOURCEPAGE:Feats.rtf`

Barak
LST Chimp

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