Modifiers: Do they take cat() tags?

[Sunrunners_Fire]

As it says on the tin.

Going through the characters.gdf, I've noticed a large number of what-are-essentially-duplicate traits under various category <_name> sub-headers and so I became curious ...

[Armin]

No, modifiers belong to more restricted groups, using the group() tag. In the data file, they're defined the same way categories are for traits, using the angle brackets, but each modifier can be part of only one group.

Why mods are grouped that way is an old technical thing related to something that I never bothered to fully implement, because it never seemed to be a priority.

There's no reason not to share groups of modifiers for various traits, but often if a single modifier within a group is the only overlap, it's easier to duplicate it for that trait's modifier group than to rope in another group for a particular trait. And sometimes a modifier is the same except for one little bit, which is enough of an annoyance that it's just easier to make a separate mod instead of trying to write one that supports both use cases.

Armin