angelwick
commented
12 years ago Hmmm... Just tested my rendition of FiveFold ShadowHand Style. Saw something crop up in what I have.
Let's say I the up a bare-bones new DB Immaculate. Meets all the trait requirements to learn this style once through.
I click on Shadow Palm Invocation, and it also selects all charms in the Breeze path of the Style. As it were, the Breeze Katas are the first ones listed in the two selectiveCharmGroup llists. Is this another limitation in of how selectiveCharmGroup works?
UrsKR
In light of my question from #288 and also as a follow up from my research in #267, I figured I would post a more general question here. Warning, it's a novel...
Here you guys are probably working hectically on ways to prevent the snafu from the 4.5.0 release from happening again and i'm tossing out all these questions at you. Please, I understand if it takes you guys a while to get back to me on these. I just wanted to get them out there before I forget about them.
I've been playing around with trying to incorporate Fivefold Shadow Hand Style from the Scroll of the Monk (pg 75-80) into Anathema via Custom Charms. After reading the structure and experimenting on my own, it looks like there is a limitation within Anathema's architecture that will not allow FFSHS to function quite as described within SotM. There is one key limitation that I've been able to discover so far. This limitation is within the selectiveCharmGroup function.
From what I've seen and experienced, this function allows you to set up a situation where a Charm requires only one or some of the Charms within a defined list of optional prerequisites. Once the threshold count is met, the prerequisite is satisfied, thus allowing you to purchase the new Charm. As mentioned in #288, the most basic of examples of uses can be seen in the Infernal Heretical Charms for the Shintai prerequisites.
FFSHS takes this a step further and gets a bit more complex. The most basic of which can be seen in the final Charm of the Style, Shadow Hand Invocation. The Charm requirements of which are, the Form-Type Charm of the Style, as well as both of the Kata Charms for a particular element.
Making use of selectiveCharmGroup, you could set it up so that the Form Charm is the first requirement, then list all 10 Kata Charms within the SelectiveCharmGroup and set the threshold to 2. This is the closest approximation that I can get so far.
Ideally, in order to make this one particular instance function as it should on paper, we would want to set up 5 separate selectiveCharmGroups, each with a threshold of 2. One for each pair of elemental Katas. Then encapsulate these five groups into a parent selectiveCharmGroup with a threshold of 1. In theory, this way when one of the internal 5 groups are satisfied, it will then also satisfy the parent.
I tried this. It didn't work. I got an error when trying to open Anathema. Error compiling Charms...
If this additional feature could be added to selectiveCharmGroup, then it may also (again in theory) solve the issue of adding this Style into Anathema. Or at least get closer.
Another instance within this same Style where multiple optional groups of Charms would be necessary to properly reflect how this Style functions would be with the Kata Charms themselves.
Under normal circumstances, each pair of elemental Katas become available upon learning the appropriate elemental Adept Gesture Charm. However, this style also offers a back door of sorts. Upon learning the Form-type Charm, the martial artist can then also learn other "compatible" Kata Charms.
Let me stop here for a moment. Fivefold Shadow Hand Style introduces a specialized set of Keywords: Shared-[Element]. One for each elemental path of the Style. Each of the 10 Kata Charms combine 3 elements to produce their effects. To reflect this, each Kata carries with it two of the Shared-[Element] keywords, one for each of the additional elements outside of the martial artists primary element.
So upon learning Fivefold ShadowHand Form, the martial artist opens the back door to learn the additional Kata Charms that carry the Shared-[Element] keyword that is associated with his primary element. Presumably, this would be the element for which the character has learned the Adept Gesture Charm.
So, to reflect this limitation within Anathema, there could again be something along the lines similar to what I described above with Shadow Palm Invocation. A parent instance of selectiveCharmGroup with a threshold of 1. Thes then would encapsulate the 3 different optional requirement groups for each kata.
Example:
selective Charm Group theshold=1 selective Charm Group theshold=1 matching elemental Adept Gesture (this one may perhaps even be able to be negated) / selective Charm Group
selective Charm Group theshold=2 compatible elemental Adept Gesture A Fivefold Shadow hand Form / selective Charm Group
selective Charm Group theshold=2 compatible elemental Adept Gesture B Fivefold Shadow hand Form / selective Charm Group
/ selective Charm Group
There is one place within this Style where selectiveCharmGroup is a godsend. That's in learning Fivefold Shadow Hand Form. This requires only one of the Adept Gesture Charms. Simple enough.
There's one more place where additional functionality to selectiveCharmGroup would be useful for this MA style in particular. The Apprentice Gesture Charms. There are a few things going on with the Apprentice Gestures actually. First note, you learn one, your first one. This is your primary element for the Style and, ideally, the element that you should complete the Style with to Shadow hand Invocation. However, nothing stops the martial artist from spending the XP and learning additional Apprentice Gesture Charms, nor their associated Adept Gesture Charms for that matter. Here's the kicker though, just as there is a back door to learning the elemental Kata Charms, there is also a back door to learning the Apprentice Gesture Charms.
When the martial artist chooses to take the back door to learn additional Kata Charms outside of his primary element, there lies the back door to learning additional Apprentice Charms outside of his primary element. Once the character learns both Kata charms from a non-primary element, he automatically gains that element's Apprentice Gesture for no additional XP.
Now, the "no additional XP" part of this is a different issue entirely and would probably require some special coding. Alternatively, the GM could simply add the additional XP within his copy of Anathema as a work-around.
The main issue here is again, something that I'm not sure can be settled without some super special coding. That's the "front door vs back door" requirements. On one hand, you have no prerequisites to learn aly of the Apprentice Gestures. On the other hand, in order to pick up any additional Apprentice Gestures without additional XP cost, you have the prerequisite of both Katas from the same element. So you have a "something or nothing" option here. It would be my guess that this is not something that Anathema could cover.
Edit: Just had a bit of a light bulb moment. For Shadow Palm Invocation, I had originally set up one large selectiveCharmGroup with a theshold of 2 and listed all 10 Kata Charms within. A better (but still not perfect) alternative to this would be to have two selectiveCharmGroups, each with a threshold of 1. Each of these have one set of 5 elemental Katas listed. The other contains the matching set of Katas. As mentioned, still not entirely perfect but this makes it a little more strict as to what is allowed prior to learning the terminal Charm of this Style.