CHOOSE:ABILITY should be explicit about its interaction with ABILITY:
Description
Ref today's discussion on abilities vs ability selections, it would be very helpful if CHOOSE:ABILITY could be explicit about the fact that CHOOSE:ABILITY|<stuff> cannot be used with ABILITY:<stuff>|%LIST and what the poor confused data monkey should do instead.
Environment
WinXP
Activity
Looking at it again I'm still at a loss on what needs to be documented, especially as it relates to the CHOOSE:ABILITY tag.
In the docs for the ABILITY tag the reference to %LIST is specifically aimed at the feats. The last line in the "What it Does" section does say that the ABILITY tag can be used as a replacement for the FEAT, VFEAT, and FEATAUTO tags. Do these tags work in similar fasion as the ABILITY tag with respect to the feat selection?
Hi Eric
The gist of my complaint, and the thing that would I think be amazingly useful to have referenced in the docs, is that the result of something like CHOOSE:ABILITY|Special Ability|PC[TYPE=Mercy] cannot be used with a construct like ABILITY:Special Ability|AUTOMATIC|%LIST (because CHOOSE:ABILITY returns an AbilitySelection, not an Ability).
A simple "Note: the object returned from this chooser is an AbilitySelection and cannot be used with ABILITY:" would do the trick admirably.
This is really counterintuitive to the monkey (if not the coder) and really easy to forget!
Cheers
Paul
Hmmm, I'll think some more to see if I can come up with a way to do this without including what essentially is a "PCGen won't do that" statement. As I've said before, we should not get into the business of documenting what PCGen won't do.
I now have a good idea of what you are looking for . . . thinking, I am . . .
Point them to CHOOSE:ABILITYSELECTION for use with ABILITY:blah|foo|%LIST
Yep. That will be the best solution, and if that tag will be done in the near term, I believe the solution to this problem is greatly simplified.
Oh wait! I just noticed its done! Nuff said.
