Levelled advantages, non-integer granted bonuses, and points costs

[Shimmin Beg]

I've been making some levelled advantages recently which grant other advantages at rates less than 1/level. For example, a Rat King advantage (each level representing an additional rat) granting Animal Control Talent, at a rate of +1 per four levels.

I've run into two issues and would be grateful for some advice.

1. I'm doing this by using the Gives Builder, then manually changing the bonus in the field to +0.25. However, it seems to be rounding the values rather than adding +1 Talent for every 4 levels, as I'd expect. Is there another way I should do this?

2. Advantages granted this way appear to be free. I've tried using the Gives Builder to add a cost - for example, I have "+4 to AD:Parabolic Hearing::points" - but this doesn't seem to alter the points cost. I get the impression this is instead granting free points, e.g. to a skill? Is there a way to have the advantage grant levels of X but at their normal cost?

[ericbsmith]

Originally Posted by Shimmin Beg

1. I'm doing this by using the Gives Builder, then manually changing the bonus in the field to +0.25. However, it seems to be rounding the values rather than adding +1 Talent for every 4 levels, as I'd expect. Is there another way I should do this?

GCA supports both integer, round, roundup, and rounddown functions. In this specific case using:

+@int(me::level/4) to AD:Foo

Originally Posted by Shimmin Beg

2. Advantages granted this way appear to be free. I've tried using the Gives Builder to add a cost - for example, I have "+4 to AD:Parabolic Hearing::points" - but this doesn't seem to alter the points cost. I get the impression this is instead granting free points, e.g. to a skill? Is there a way to have the advantage grant levels of X but at their normal cost?

Gives is used to give free stuff, either free levels in advantages, free levels in skills, or free points in skills (or free levels in other things, depending on how you set it up).

What you appear to be wanting is a prerequisite - that is, to have level 8 of FooBar you must have at least level 2 of FuBar. Or in order to have this Spell you must have at least Magery 2, but you still have to buy Magery 2 on its own. That is handled in the needs() tag of GCA.

[Shimmin Beg]

Originally Posted by ericbsmith

GCA supports both integer, round, roundup, and rounddown functions. In this specific case using:

+@int(me::level/4) to AD:Foo

Thank you! Yes, that seems to work

Originally Posted by ericbsmith

What you appear to be wanting is a prerequisite - that is, to have level 8 of FooBar you must have at least level 2 of FuBar. Or in order to have this Spell you must have at least Magery 2, but you still have to buy Magery 2 on its own. That is handled in the needs() tag of GCA.

Not quite, but that's useful, thanks. I am trying to set up the advantage to streamline things so that you can just add X levels of the advantage and it buys the associated traits for that level. So when you raise Advantage to 4, Advantage automatically purchases Foo at its normal cost.

In this specific case, to build a Rat King (or any other King) with 9 heads, you'd simply raise the Rat King advantage to level 9. The advantage would assign the various traits appropriate for a 9-headed Rat King. The cost is just as if you bought those traits manually, but it saves effort and makes sure you don't miss anything.

Does that make sense?

EDIT: Having played around a bit more, I think you may be right, as I see needs() is used to automatically add prerequisite skills etc. Is there a way to have it add levels of FuBar based on the level of FooBar, as we did with the bonuses? I've tried using the Needs field in Edit and things like:

AD:Stretching =@int(me::level/4)

but this doesn't work - it seems to be treating the @ bit as text rather than a variable. AD:Stretching =3 works though, so I assume there's a specific way I need to format it to reference me::level. I have tried the user manual but wasn't able to spot anything explaining how to do this - apologies if I've overlooked it.

[ericbsmith]

Originally Posted by Shimmin Beg

Is there a way to have it add levels of FuBar based on the level of FooBar, as we did with the bonuses?

What I've done for this in the past is to treat each level as a new advantage. So I would create:
FooBar 1
FooBar 2
FooBar 3
etc...

Then the needs for each one is set to require the appropriate levels of FuBar. When a character wants to level it up they simply remove Foo Bar 1 and add Foo Bar 2 to replace it, this will add or increase the levels of any necessary advantages or skills to be at least the level required in the needs() tag.

[Armin]

Thanks, Eric!

To add on....

One key factor to keep in mind is that traits will only be auto-added to a character when the user is adding a trait to a character already. So, if you add a trait to a character, the auto-adding of needs may be triggered, and the auto-adding of template items may be triggered, and so forth. Once the item is on the sheet, no more auto-adding can be triggered by that trait. If a needs-check is triggered, it'll just be a pass/fail; no changes to the character will be made.

I think for what you're doing, you want to look at these as meta-traits and use template features.

So, you may want to use adds() to have all the traits covered by the 'master trait' added to the character at 0. Then have the gives() from the master trait adjusting bonuses to those traits to get the levels that they need for each level of the master trait.

You can even 'lock' the sub-traits, so that the user can't change them independently.

There's also the option of using lockstep(), if all the levels of the sub-traits happen to be synchronous with the levels of the master trait. (With lockstep(yes), GCA tries to ensure that any change in level of the template also changes the level of the components to match.)

ETA: You'll probably want the Data File Reference Guide from my GCA 5 Blog page if you want real details on most tags in GCA.

[Shimmin Beg]

Thanks Armin, that's really helpful.

I do have the DFRG, it's been helpful for various things :) but still lots to learn.