Power Description Verbiage to Force Attack and Save "Base" to be Parsed as "Fixed"

[Minty23185Fresh]

Is there verbiage that can be added to a spell or power description (specifically in 5E) so that the parser sets the Attack and/or Save "Base" field to "Fixed". The defaults appear to be "Group Atk +" and "Group DC +" respectively.

A picture might help:
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[LordEntrails]

I don't think so.

Is their any WotC spell that does that? If so, it might be something that would get supported sooner rather than later. But if its homebrew or third party... would have to add to the wishlist and wait (probably a long time).

[Minty23185Fresh]

Is their any WotC spell that does that? If so, it might be something that would get supported sooner rather than later.
Kinda. But not really. I am migrating WotC Adventurers League DDAL04-01. There is a hazard in there that acts similar to Alchemist’s Fire. So this is really related more to an improvised weapon issue than an actual spell. Having the “Base” field set to “Fixed” removes the application of the pluses for ability score and proficiency.

(There are plenty of other posts like me whining about the improvised weapon issue - I thought I’d look into yet another way to approach it.)

Thanks for responding LordEntrails

[LordEntrails]

Hmm, yea.

You've probably already thought of this, but I usually do hazards as NPCs, and then put their things in as actions/attacks. I'm sure you're smart enough to know about that option, so I'm sure it won't work. But I'm not sure what I'm missing. I don't have that module to look at (though kind of funny as I'm converting Moon1-2 to 1-5 for PAX at the moment).

Maybe Mr Z or someone will comment with some other ideas.

[Minty23185Fresh]

****
**** SPOILER WARNING: DDEX04-01 Suits of the Mists (Adventurers League Season 4, Curse of Strahd)
****

@LordEntrails I do too, set up hazards as NPCs. Probably wouldn’t have had I not read your excellent creator’s guide. It really helps things go smoothly with everything in one place when running an encounter. With this particular hazard, creative players might use part of the hazard to their advantage, equivalent to Alchemist’s Fire. There is an ongoing per round fire damage for this improvised weapon so I was creating a spell or power that I could drop on the PC(s) that employ it. When it’s parsed it needs to not apply the PC’s ability mod and proficiency bonus to the To Hit and Dmg rolls it set up on the Actions tab.

[superteddy57]

Moved: Putting in 5e forum for more visibility

[Zacchaeus]

I'm not exactly sure what you are looking for but if you word things in this way then the save DC is effectively fixed: "The target must make a DC 15 dexterity saving throw".

[Minty23185Fresh]

I'm not exactly sure what you are looking for but if you word things in this way then the save DC is effectively fixed: "The target must make a DC 15 dexterity saving throw".

I'm sorry Zacchaeus, threads in these forums certainly get convoluted, sometimes even by the original poster.

To the best of my knowledge, an effect cannot be attached to a weapon, so I am creating a "power" for this improvised weapon because of it's ongoing damage property.

Here is what is happening when I drop my created "power" on to a PC (see screenshot).

In the upper panel is the default behavior of the parser: the verbiage of my power results in an Attack "Base" setting of "Group Atk +". This setting adds a +2 (for proficiency) to the Ranged Attack d20 dice roll.

In the lower panel is the desired behavior: with a different verbiage maybe the parser would assign an Attack "Base" setting of "Fixed", which would result in a Ranged Attack d20 roll without the +2 proficiency bonus.

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Here is the exact verbiage of my power's description: "Make a ranged spell attack against a creature or object, treating the item as an improvised weapon. On a hit, the target takes 1d4 fire damage and additional 1d4 fire damage at the start of each of its turns."

Restating my question from the original post: Does anyone know if there is some verbiage that can be added to the power's description so that I will get the desired parser behavior, which is, a "Fixed" setting in the Attack "Base" field instead of the default setting "Group Atk +"?

Some things that come to mind are:

"Make an improvised ranged spell attack against a creature..."
"Make an ad-hoc ranged spell attack against a creature..."
"Make an in-the-moment ranged spell attack against a creature..."
"Make an non-proficient ranged spell attack against a creature..."
"Make an fixed roll ranged spell attack against a creature..."


*** Those helpful soles responding to this thread, please note, I am looking for an answer to my question about power verbiage and parser response, not information about how to create an improvised weapon. I have read just about every post in the forums about how to effect an improvised weapon, which by-the-way, all fall short just a bit, requiring the player to tweak this-or-that just a little to make the weapon behave as desired.

Thanks, in advance, for any answers to my question.

[Zacchaeus]

OK, I think I understand now what you mean.

And I think the answer is no. When you drag something into the actions tab FG expects either a spell or an action and when you create a power group your only options are to set the ability that the power group uses to calculate the save DC and/or attack bonus.

If that isn't going to be the case then you would have to manually change the save DC or attack bonus in the individual effects within the power group to make the save or attack bonus not be auto calculated but rather force it to have the value that you impose.

[LordEntrails]

Agree with Mr Z, I don't see a clean way to do this either. Perhaps if you had a power group called Improvised Weapons and added it to that. But that would assume that group already has the attack group set like you want.

[Zacchaeus]

Agree with Mr Z, I don't see a clean way to do this either. Perhaps if you had a power group called Improvised Weapons and added it to that. But that would assume that group already has the attack group set like you want.

You can't set a Power Group to a fixed DC or attack value. It's only in the effects dialog that you can set that.

[Minty23185Fresh]

Thank you Zacchaeus and LordEntrails.

I tried one more thing to solve this: I went exploring in the 5E ruleset code (lua and XML), and it proved fruitless.

I concur there is no verbiage that can be added to the spell description that will trigger the spell parser to put "Fixed" into the Spell's Attack "Base" field.

However I have found a solution. A really simple solution. I know that the two two of you know this, as the solution, but I tersely and specifically asked for a verbiage solution, so I am sure that threw you off track. I'll write it up and post it.

[LordEntrails]

And you leave us hanging! :)

[Minty23185Fresh]

In the forum's there are many suggestions for handling an improvised weapon. All the posts that I read required some additional step, a tweak here or a modification there by the player to the DM created item (typically a weapon). In this post I'll present the steps needed to created an improvised weapon. Because my improvised weapon of choice is Alchemist's Fire, there is per round ongoing damage. To handle ongoing damage the implementation must employ an effect. An item (weapon) cannot have an effect attached to it, but a spell can. So my implementation of an Alchemist's Fire Improvised Weapon uses a spell.

Here are the steps:

in Items, make a copy of "Alchemist's Fire" (so I can edit the copy)
edit the copy of "Alchemist's Fire"
copy the textual description of "Alchemist's Fire"
create a new spell
fill in the fields of the new spell - I used "Alchemist's Fire (default)" as the name
paste the copied Item description into the Spell description
edit the third sentence to read "Make a ranged spell attack..."
create a new PC in the PCs dataset
drop the new Spell on the Actions tab, it creates an Alchemist's Fire Cantrip
IMPORTANT: the display may actually be wrong when it first comes up - Atk "Ranged" is displayed. The display should read "Ranged + 2".
to confirm this and correct the display, click on the magnifying glass icon on the "Cast" line, then close the pop-up dialog
the display should have corrected upon refresh, displaying "Ranged +2"
reopen the dialog by clicking the same magnifying glass
cycle the ATTACK Base field to the value "Fixed"
close the dialog
back on the Actions tab, rename the spell to "Alchemist's Fire (Fixed)"
copy the modified spell back into the Spells dataset library dialog by dragging the little shield icon
to test the Improvised Weapon, create another new PC
drag the newer (Fixed) spell onto the Actions tab from the Spells dataset
click on the Atk icon, there should be no proficiency bonus added to the attack role
this (Fixed) Improvised Weapon (Alchemist's Fire) will require no tweaking by the player when dropped on their character sheet


So what's the trick here?
I was aware of this behavior, and I am sure many others are too. When you change the default parsed behavior on the character sheet (for example, "Group Atk +" to "Fixed"), those changes are saved to the db.xml file to preserve their persistence from session to session. If you copy that changed spell back to the dataset library, the changed property values go with it.

Here is a picture of the final Alchemist's Fire Improvised Weapon (using a spell to implement it):
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Attached is a copy of my db.xml file (with the two spells in it).