Getting maximum automation in PF2e

Hey all,

I've loved running 5e in FGU and want to shift over to pf2e but I'm completely new to the pathfinder system and not sure how feature complete this is. For 5e I have a bunch of Rob2e extensions + a few others and they've made running games an absolute breeze. I'm looking for a similar level of automation and in truth, I'm considering a move to foundry but would rather avoid that as running premade adventures is not their speciality.

So basically, what extensions are required to get the most of the ruleset?

Thanks in advance!

You really don't need any extensions - there's a lot of built in functionality in the ruleset, and the upcoming Release 19 will add more PC side functionality. In my opinion the automation and functionality in FGU for PF2 is more advanced than Foundry and will only get better; as well as FGU having the largest official Paizo PF2 product conversion inventory of any VTT.

Having said that, the GM Enhancement extension adds some nice features: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...ment-extension

And ShadeRaven's drag/drop modules provide some useful action coding: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...ers-and-Spells

There is indeed a lot of functionality but a lot of automation that is available seems to be hidden or not accessible through the direct UI. I am currently working on converting my campaign world guide over from 5E to PF2E as I just made the switch myself and let me tell you, making new races is much more complex. I am confused by where some the Heritage Traits and Feats are getting their automation from. They are flagged with a small A in their entries. When I copy the wording used in such traits and feats verbatim it does not flag it as automated so I am assuming this is something hardcoded inside the PF2E CoreRPG code and is not using the parsing system?

Is there a master list of phrases that get parsed in text blocks? Apart from looking at all the races already in the data sets and looking at the Racial Traits listing, is there a better place to see all parsable wording that can be used what making custom content?

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Originally Posted by Kuragiman

I am confused by where some the Heritage Traits and Feats are getting their automation from. They are flagged with a small A in their entries. When I copy the wording used in such traits and feats verbatim it does not flag it as automated so I am assuming this is something hardcoded inside the PF2E CoreRPG code and is not using the parsing system?

Is there a master list of phrases that get parsed in text blocks? Apart from looking at all the races already in the data sets and looking at the Racial Traits listing, is there a better place to see all parsable wording that can be used what making custom content?

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Parsing, which was very hit/miss for Pathfinder and only used for spells, is slowly being reworked to have the spell actions embedded within the spell - at this point on the Core Rules and Secrets of Magic have the spell actions pre-coded, otherwise the original parsing attempts to create the actions based off the spell description.

There's limited parsing for Ancestry records - based off the feature title if there is not an automation A indicator for the entry. There's no documentation for this, copying a base ancestry is the recommended approach.

Other automation is programmed by the PC (and NPC) automation, where the coding is entered into the "automation" field of the ability/feat/feature.

See the PF2 Wiki here: https://fantasygroundsunity.atlassia...nder+2+Ruleset Refer to the PFRPG2 - PC Feature Automation and PFRPG2 - NPC Ability Automation pages and the "Enabling view/editing of the automation data" section of both of these Wiki pages to control if the automation code for A tagged records is visible.

Thank you very much for the information. This is what I was looking for. Time to get to work.

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Originally Posted by Shiska

Hey all,

I've loved running 5e in FGU and want to shift over to pf2e but I'm completely new to the pathfinder system and not sure how feature complete this is. For 5e I have a bunch of Rob2e extensions + a few others and they've made running games an absolute breeze. I'm looking for a similar level of automation and in truth, I'm considering a move to foundry but would rather avoid that as running premade adventures is not their speciality.

So basically, what extensions are required to get the most of the ruleset?

Thanks in advance!

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Hey there - just wanted to chime in here a little about moving to Foundry. After about a year and a half, I have moved *back* to Fantasy Grounds for PF2e. Foundry is very pretty, and it has a lot of automation - but that comes with some caveats. One of the major drawbacks to playing on Foundry is that no one but the GM and a player owning a sheet can alter the sheet - so there's no automatic damage application, no automatic resistances or immunity, and the GM has to micromanage every condition, spell effect, save, or whatever. It is a total miasma of micromanagement that really just busted my enjoyment of playing the game; in FG players can take care of their own conditions and effects, including effects on targets. Second, unless you are knowledgeable about coding in javascript, you really can't make any kind of effects yourself easily. They have a 'rules element' generator, but in all truth, I never got the hang of it, because it has no documentation to guide you the way FG does.

The chat in PF2e, and Foundry in general, is just terrible. It uses chat cards, and posting things to the chat will move whatever you're trying to drag from the chat card (like the effect of a bless spell) off screen really quickly, so you wind up spending alot of time scrolling back to find the effect to drag to a token; unless you use mods, every time someone types something in and commits it to chat, it rolls right back down to the bottom, and you have to scroll back again.

Trenloe has done a great job constructing PF2nd for Fantasy Grounds. The automation is superior in almost every way. The only thing Foundry has going for it over FG for PF2nd is perhaps the graphics and animations, which I have found get lost on the players after an initial "Wow!" phase.

Foundry boasts having all of the official content in it (FOR FREE!), but again, there's no context. Yeah, you have all the spells, NPC stats and such, but if you are going to run pre-made modules, FG is still the best. The recent Foundry official releases for PF2nd on Foundry are really rather nicely done - they beat FG in a few areas (ambient sounds included, neat macros), but the depth is pretty shallow, and you certainly don't have access to the rules in any sort of succinct and easy to access way inside the software.

Just to be clear - I used Foundry a great deal, and for a good while, really thought it might be the better system. But, after getting used to PF2nd on FG, it's much easier to run, and far more robust from an automation standpoint. Also, you get great customer service here with FG. Foundry has a Discord channel, where someone may or may not be able to help you if there's something you need; I got told "write a macro!" so much that I wanted to punch my screen every time I asked how to do something there. In FG, I just read the documentation and basically make what I want. All of my players so far (save 1) have expressed they like playing in FG better (all are fairly experienced with FG). I have a couple who will be trying it out for the first time next Friday, so we'll see, but they won't get me to shift back to Foundry.

Also, lots of hubris over there on the PF2nd Discord about their own system. You'd think they can s**t Tiffany cuff links. It's quite distasteful.

I agree, the official Abomination Vault module on Foundry is very pretty and nice, but I eventually ended up buying it for FGU as well because Foundry is a headache to GM compared to FGU.

I find Foundry to be more tedious to maintain and its web based which means it has some limitations. Heck, I can't even use it right now as I get a WebGL error all of a sudden when using the Brave browser so I can't load maps or anything. This nonsense of suddenly not being able to use Foundry because of a random change in either Brave or Foundry was one of the things that made me start looking for alternative. My DM friend suggested FGU so I gave it a shot and fell in love with its customization, organization and data structuring. It just made sense to my brain. Are there features missing from FGU that the others have? Oh yeah... a lot of it revolving around audio processing of which we have none without plugins and those require subscriptions to 3rd party products. Maybe one day we will be able to add sound nodes to our maps like light nodes and be able to build private playlists for BGM for our campaigns. The programming language that is used by FGU also for effects just makes sense to me as well so if I need to make automation I can (within limits). Roll20 and Foundry have some great things and some not great things but I think FGU took the right direction by making their software App based instead of Web. I don't have to be an HTML/CSS master to be able to make great content with FGU.