✨ Return feat prerequisites in a more edition-agnostic way

[jboehm77]

Describe the solution you'd like

The prerequisite resource for feats often returns complex strings. Level prerequisites are always ordinal numbers without any accompanying text, and if additional prerequisites follow it, they may be delimited by a combination of ; and or. In addition, the handling of the 5etools data often makes the output longer than it otherwise could be. For example, many 2024 feats have prerequisites output in the format

4th; Strength 13 or higher or 4th; Dexterity 13 or higher

Perhaps the first improvement that could be made here is breaking out the level prerequisite into its own resource that can be called separately within templates. The ordinal numbering could then be removed so that templates could either call it as {resource.level}th Level for 2014 feats, or Level {resource.level}+ for 2024 feats. This may then make it easier for the tool to consolidate the other prerequisites like many 2024 feats do (e.g. "Strength or Dexterity 13+").

I believe I noticed some placeholders for feat levels already existing in the source. If this description matches your original intention for that section of the tool, then I'd imagine you're well aware of all this, and can just consider this a long-winded expression of my support for that plan.

[ebullient]

To the extent that I can, I do what 5eTools does, including any templated strings that are built into that tool.

[jboehm77]

So to clarify, is the level resource for feats something that you still plan to add, or is it entirely superseded by the prerequisite field?

I wasn't hoping to find a complicated multi-edition solution by having the tool assemble strings in different formats based on edition, or however else that might be accomplished. Rather, I had thought that pulling level prerequisites into the level resource could open up the possibility for the prerequisite resource to be a little simpler for a lot of feats and, as a byproduct, potentially make both resources more adaptable to the formatting of the separate editions of 5e (which could be fully realized in the templates).

[jboehm77]

If this all just doesn't seem like something you think would be worth trying to implement, I understand. I think I may not have understood some of the intent behind what I've seen in the code.

[ebullient]

I think there was a time, before official rules came out, where they/we/whatever were kind of guessing what format it would be in. I remember there being a time where the level field was there, but it never had a value set..

What we should do, if it looks weird, is have a look back at how they are rendering things. It has likely changed. When in doubt, I should be doing what they're doing.. so if I'm not, then I missed something or it changed since I (or now often you) last looked. ;)

[jboehm77]

Gotcha, and unsurprisingly I have checked the source data, and there don't appear to be any instances of a level field independent of a parent prerequisite field for any feat, so it does appear that the current functionality of the tool matches 5etools. Cross referencing a feat with a level prerequisite in both the 2014 and 2024 versions of 5etools also confirmed that the two sites stick to their edition's standard text formatting for feat prerequisites (i.e. "4th Level" in 2014, and "Level 4+" in 2024).

So it doesn't seem like adding a level resource to feats independent of prerequisite would achieve any particular goal you have at the moment. The tool already does what it's supposed to in this regard.

[jboehm77]

I'm just now realizing perhaps I didn't point out something that I should have. Feats with both level and ability score prerequisites, but more than one of the latter, will always have the prerequisite data structured as follows:

"prerequisite": [
  {
    "level": 4,
    "ability": [
      {
        "str": 13
      }
    ]
  },
  {
    "level": 4,
    "ability": [
      {
        "dex": 13
      }
    ]
  }
],

Which seems unintuitive and a little difficult to parse. I'm not sure why each instance of ability needs to be paired with a level, but this structure is what causes the prerequisite text constructed by the tool to be formatted as:

4th; Strength 13 or higher or 4th; Dexterity 13 or higher

whilst 5etools manages to put it together as one of the following:

2014:

4th level; Strength or Dexterity 13 or higher

2024:

Level 4+, Strength or Dexterity 13+

Though I should note there is no instance of a pre-2024 feat having both a level and ability prerequisite.