Edge/Ability Effects and Automation

[DoktorPete]

Hey, I have questions about some of the the effect automation for Edges and stuff.

First, how come most Edges such as Alertness or Brawny have their effects coded at the bottom in the usual [], where others such as Brave or Hard to Kill have their effects coded seemingly automagically? Like why can't Alertness do that Notice +2 without the brackets like Brave can for it's Fear +2?

Second, how come some of the Monstrous Abilities are only half automated? Undead is the immediate one that comes to mind; the +2 to rolls to recover from being Shaken is automatically added but the +2 Toughness isn't. I'm guessing its because they're generally meant for NPC's where you have to calculate Toughness manually, but a bunch of them are useful when making Races so it would be nice if they weren't half-baked. Similarly, Gargantuan doesn't increase the Wounds Threshold despite that being the one part of it's effects that it can automate.

For that matter, why don't the derived stats calculate automatically for NPC's like they do for PC's? Wouldn't it save a ton of time for anyone making NPC's?

Personally I'd like to have all of the Abilities automated, so for instance instead of there being Armor, there could be Armor +2, Armor +4, etc. just ready to drag and drop. likewise with Size, or even something like Natural Weapons which could be split into the 3 options for easier NPC building. Hell, even if they had their incomplete effects coded in brackets that you just had to plug a value into it would be easier. It really is a slog to drag and drop a bunch of abilities that don't do anything natively, then remember or lookup how to code their effects, and then test them to make sure they're working right. I'm guessing most people probably use the SW Maker or something to get around this for NPC's but it sure would be easier for adding those abilities to Races or PC's if they were fully implemented.

[Jiminimonka]

NPCs you make as required, there are no "rules" for them like balance. It is how Savage Worlds works. Fast Fun Furious.

A lot of the Edges do add their affects are required, but some things require judgement calls.

Alertness and Brave both work automatically - make sure it is the NPCs turn on the Combat Tracker

If you set a Zombies toughness at 7 and then the Undead edge added an effect for [Toughness +2] then the zombie would have Toughness 9 on the CT. Effects work on the CT.

[DoktorPete]

Appreciate the reply but you are completely missing my point and yet somehow are making the same exact point I'm trying to ask questions about.

First I'll talk about Alertness v Brave. The question I'm asking is why does Alertness need to have [Notice +2] plainly coded there in the Edge where we can see it, but nowhere in the Brave Edge does it say [Fear +2] despite it doing exactly that; ie its effect is coded magically in its wording somehow that doesn't work the same way for 90% of the other Edges and I can't figure out why certain ones work this way and others don't.

Secondly, I'm fully aware of how to make characters and that NPC's don't follow build rules but that doesn't change what the Effects/Abilities do and how their automation SHOULD function. The Undead ability you mention is a perfect example. Say I want to add the ability to a PC race I'm making and a custom NPC. As it stands, I can drag Undead to both of those as abilities and get the added bonus for rolls to un-Shake but neither will get the Toughness modifier. If I want to add that I can code it in easy enough with [Toughness +2] and it will absolutely do that for both NPCs and PC's, the difference being that because NPCs don't use the formula to calculate Toughness you have to manually adjust it. There are 0 reasons that I can think of for why I wouldn't want Toughness to automatically calculate for NPCs. You would no longer have to manually edit those fields or fiddle with only half of the Effects or abilities being automated, items like armor could just be dragged and dropped. It's just bizarre to me. Look at the Abilities that don't do a single thing and/or have to be manually edited every time you add them somewhere to gain automation that could have been parsed from the get-go and work right out of the gate if only NPC stat blocks worked the same way PC ones do. There should be 1 Undead ability that automatically adds ALL of it's effects to both PC's and NPC's with the exact same functionality, but I have to either make 2 separate abilities, or manually edit one of those types of stat blocks every single time I want to use the ability automation.

Lets look at the Size ability as well; for some reason, NPC's can parse their size from the name field of the ability for the purposes of determining Scale modifiers AND the correlated Wounds threshold increase, so for those all you need is say, Size +4 in the name of the ability and it does what it's supposed to do for those aspects. For a PC you need to manually add the modifier from the radial menu or put [Size+4] in the notes. I understand why the Toughness isn't automated as it works similarly to the Undead ability, but it could be. My imperfect solution was to make 23 different Size abilities; 20 for NPC's (Size +1 through to +20) with the corresponding [Toughness +X] already coded in, and 3 for PC's which generally tend to cap out at Size +3 fully coded with [Size|Toughness +x]. It looks sloppy in the menu's but it took me about as much time as it would to manually edit the Size parsing for 20 NPCs and now I never have to do that again, I just have to subtract 2 Toughness from any existing NPC stat blocks I'm copying because for some reason it doesn't do those manually.

I'm not complaining per se, I just don't understand why there would be different coding for different types of stat blocks and effects/abilities; it turns what could be a very streamlined process into a nightmare of double checking that everything is working properly. I get most people probably use SW Maker but it is equally janky and requires just as much tweaking; I just tried to use it to make the Giant Scylla from the Catch of the Day one shot and right off the bat is spits out a creature with 23(6) Toughness on the sheet but calculates at 39(6) in the CT, applies the +1 Wounds Threshold from the Size+10 ability, ignores the +3 Wounds threshold for the Gargantuan ability but does add the associated HW and HA abilities.