Character advancement with custom modules

[sactoking]

I've seen related questions but nothing that directly answers this: will selecting a class from a custom module mess up advancement of prior levels came from the PHB?

I have several custom modules, some with archetype options, that I can turn on and off depending on campaign. I have a player that took two levels of monk using the PHB data. Now, at 3rd level, they've decided to choose one of the monk Ways from one of my custom modules. I'm of the impression that this will show up as Monk2/Monk1, yes?

If so, is there an easy way to fix this?

Is there a way to prevent this in the future? It doesn't make much sense to dump all my custom content into one merged module because then I can't selectively turn parts off. I also can't force players to select a level 2 or 3 archetype at level 1 character creation.

TIA for the advice!

[Zacchaeus]

Hi sactoking, welcome to FG.

You’re thinking is correct. The modules you have create index things differently than those in the PHB so as far as FG is concerned it is a different class. This is also the reason why your archetypes will only show up if you select the class from your module.

You can fix this if you go into the xml code and change the way the classes you’ve created are indexed. If you copy out the SRD data module and change the .mod to .zip you can then extract the client.xml file and see how the classes are configured there. You can then adjust the xml in your module and merge it in.

If you don’t want to go to that length then your players will need to grab the class solely from your modules from level one.

[sactoking]

Thank you for the quick reply!

Just to be clear so I don't mess anything up I need to copy out the PHB xml not the SRD, correct, since the player has used the PHB for the first two levels?

Then, once I've extracted the xml and merged in my custom archetype data I need to repack it into a PHB mod file?

[Zacchaeus]

You won’t be able to extract the xml from the PHB since it is protected. This is why I suggested the SRD so that you can see the xml code in that. It will be the same as in the PHB except it will point to the SRD rather than the PHB.

I fear that it is too late now to change things so that it will work with an existing character. My suggestion was really a solution for new characters. For the player who wants to add one of your archetypes the best solution is to start the character again but only pick the class from your module.

[sactoking]

Ok, I understand now.

Really, it sounds like the best course of action may be to import ALL of my custom archetypes into the SRD file and delete them from the individual modules. Then I won't have to worry about this in the future and I can still turn off other module data. I'll just ensure that none of my players select an ineligible class.

Is this the suggested way of handling an Unearthed Arcana archetype as well?

[sactoking]

So I messed around with this a bit. I copied the 5e SRD so I had an original safe somewhere. I changed another copy to .zip extension and unpacked it. I opened the client.xml with Notepad++. I did the same for my custom module. I entered a custom Barbarian archetype into the SRD xml. I saved the xml file, repacked into a .zip, renamed to a .mod, then loaded back to the mod folder to replace the original SRD mod. The new SRD mod doesn't show up in the mod library when I start any of my campaigns. Any ideas on what I did wrong?

[Zacchaeus]

Most likely you zipped up the entire folder rather than just the contents. So open the folder select all of the contents and zip that up.

[sactoking]

Yup, I think I did. Rookie mistake. Thanks!

[deer_buster]

Veteran mistake too. Do it all the time and I know better.