Advanced Race

Although Race Definition is pretty simple, it has a few advanced tricks that are good to know.

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Ability Override

Instead of relying only on predefined ability defaults or config, you can override ability triggers and conditions directly inside the Race Definition.

{
  "abilities": [
    {
      "id": "justracesshowcase:damage_inversion",
      "trigger": "left_click",
      "conditions": [
        "empty_hand",
        "is_sneaking"
      ]
    },
    "justracesshowcase:ecdysis"
  ]
}

NOTE

Both fields (trigger and conditions) are optional, allowing you to change only one of them without needing to modify both.

TIP

Inline configuration is the primary way to resolve trigger conflicts. If two abilities on the same race share a default activation input (e.g., both trigger on offhand_swap), you can rebind one inline to left_click without modifying the underlying ability source code or changing global config (could've led to even bigger conflicts).

Attributes

The attributes field supports two different types of attribute change: Setting Base Values and Applying Attribute Modifiers.

Operation	Description
-	Directly overrides the base value of the attribute.
add_number	Adds a fixed number directly to the base value.
add_scalar	Multiplies the base value by the specified scalar.
multiply_scalar_1	Multiplies the value incrementally after all additive modifiers are applied.

{
  "attributes": [
    {
      "id": "minecraft:max_health",
      "amount": 26
    },
    {
      "id": "minecraft:attack_damage",
      "amount": 3,
      "operation": "add_number"
    },
    {
      "id": "minecraft:fall_damage_multiplier",
      "amount": -0.5,
      "operation": "add_scalar"
    },
    {
      "id": "minecraft:movement_speed",
      "amount": 0.1,
      "operation": "multiply_scalar_1"
    }
  ]
}

Recipes

The recipes field holds race-specific recipes.

{
  "recipes": [
    "justraces:namespace/recipe"
  ]
}

IMPORTANT

There’s a small catch with this field: it only works with recipes from the justraces namespace.

This is because, without it, the system would have to know every single recipe a player can and cannot craft, which could potentially break some vanilla crafting recipes (since they would be blocked for everyone except a single race).

TIP

You can, place your recipe in a separate sub-namespace to avoid potential recipe conflicts.