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  1. #1

    Character Creation. What am I doing wrong?

    Hiya,

    I'm transitioning from D&D 3.5 to Pathfinder 2E and having significant difficulty with character creation. I'm used to using Heroforge, which is a spreadsheet that literally does everything and allows the creation of nearly every character, from every book.

    But now I can't even get the basic PF2E characters. I've invested heavily in buying Fantasy Grounds and am really concerned that my money is going down the tube.

    One player wants to play a bomb throwing alchemist, but I can't for the life of me figure how he can use his bombs as weapons within the program. Similarly, another player wants to play a cleric, but can't even put her deity into the character sheet and as a result, is again limited in what she can do within the program.

    Am I missing something? These seem like fairly basic tasks to do, but they have me stumped. It seems like there are some incredibly basic functionalities missing from the character creation and I haven't even attempted to run a gaming session.

    What other traps are waiting for me.

    I want to be able to use Fantasy Grounds to be able to play during lockdown, but if my player's can't even access their basic attack modes (like throwing bombs), how am I supposed to make it work? As things stand, I'm looking at just having to dump the whole program and PF2E and playing 3.5 over Discord, which will mean that I've wasted several hundred dollars that I simply can't afford.

    Any help would be appreciated.

  2. #2
    Trenloe's Avatar
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    Welcome to the FG forums.

    The Pathfinder 2 ruleset is still relatively new compared with other FG rulesets and there are still some areas that aren't quite there yet.

    One thing I have to mention, please try to take this on board, Fantasy Grounds is not designed to be a character generation application. It is designed to allow you to play RPGs with your friends online. That being said, there are constant updates and the process of entering your character into FG, and maintaining it once there, get improvements with each release. Some things that might appear on the surface to be "incredibly basic functionalities" aren't simple to implement in the underlying code. There is already more character based functionality in the PFRPG2 ruleset than some other rulesets, but it still needs more functionality, and that will come.

    Now, with that being said, let's look at your specific questions.

    A lot of the FG data that comes in official products can be added to the character by drag/dropping of the record to the PC sheet. For a lot of data all this will do is provide information only data within the PC sheet - that is, it's up to you have you handle the feat/ability/feature in game.

    The most common place to add automation is in the actions tab of the PC sheet. Have a look at this thread (and the attached module) for examples of how to create things like bombs as actions in the PC sheet: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...ers-and-Spells

    Regarding adding a cleric's deity - this is currently handled manually and is a bit of a kludge at the moment. Deities are accessed from the "Deities" link in the library window for the Core Rules module (or from the button at the top of the "Lookup data" campaign data window). Currently (in release 16 of the ruleset) these records can't be dragged directly to the PC sheet (they can in release 17 which is is the test channel currently). The way I do it is to open up the "Deity" cleric class ability once added to the PC, and unlock the record. Then drag/drop the link to the deity into the record to put the link to the deity record within. All this will do is give you a link to the deity information - any mechanical aspects of adding the deity will need to be done manually.




    Yeah, it's a kludge and it's far from ideal. Like I mention, release 17 will allow you to drag/drop the deity record into your PC sheet. And when the conversion of Lost Omens Gods & Magic is released. there'll be more functionality around this as well.
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  3. #3
    Thanks for the speedy and comprehensive reply.

    I guess I'm probably expecting more from the program than it is designed to handle. When I was doing my research into which one to go for, it seemed that there was more functionality within the program, with people able to have their characters move and attack freely. I also don't have a huge amount of time to create workarounds, so was really looking for a program that would streamline everything.

    I'll look into what you've mentioned and hope that I am able to make things work for my group.

    Thanks!

  4. #4
    Trenloe's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by GregKasarik View Post
    ...it seemed that there was more functionality within the program, with people able to have their characters move and attack freely..
    That functionality is there. It's just that everything isn't auto created for you. You still need to do some work on the PC to set it up how you want to use it.

    The module I linked will give you a lot of drag-and-drop records that will help to get you there for a lot of the abilities and non-standard (not standard melee or ranged weapons) entries.
    Private Messages: My inbox is forever filling up with PMs. Please don't send me PMs unless they are actually private/personal messages. General FG questions should be asked in the forums - don't be afraid, the FG community don't bite and you're giving everyone the chance to respond and learn!

  5. #5
    Trenloe's Avatar
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    A bit of time setting up your PC - as shown in the thread I linked, will get the automation going. Once familiar with FG this is pretty straightforward to do - and that module will help a lot, to give you ideas on how to use the actions tab (key thing - don't think of the bottom section as just for spells) and also give you a lot of ready-to-go drag/drop entries.
    Private Messages: My inbox is forever filling up with PMs. Please don't send me PMs unless they are actually private/personal messages. General FG questions should be asked in the forums - don't be afraid, the FG community don't bite and you're giving everyone the chance to respond and learn!

  6. #6
    You can have people make their characters in an app like Pathbuilder 2 or just one and paper then reenter them over in fantasy grounds. If I were you I'd check out Fantasy Grounds College and take a GMing 101 or PF2e course. It'll take a couple of hours on an evening but it is worth it if you've spent the money and you'll feel better with the program.

  7. #7
    Example of two of my player's character sheets setup. First one is a Human Cleric Second one is a Half-Orc Barbarian
    overview_02_by_digger2000-d64uzhw.jpg
    "When questing once in noble wood of gray medieval pine, I came upon a tomb, rain-slicked, rubbed cool, ethereal, its inscription long vanished, yet still within its melancholy fissures."

  8. #8
    My experience with Fantasy Grounds is that it does a fairly fantastic job of automating gameplay, and a moderately poor job of automating character creation. Based on things I've heard Trenloe say, I think this is more or less on purpose. And honestly the gameplay automation saves me a lot more time than the character creation automation, so I'm quite happy with that being the focus.

  9. #9
    One thing that is great about Fantasy Grounds is that the devs are always improving both the core system and supported packages -- but FG isn't a videogame. The map support and combat tracker help quite a bit, and once one gets past the initial learning curve, I've found prep time to be about the same with or without it but I'm a lot more organized.

  10. #10
    Hey Greg, if you have some time today I’d be happy to jump on Discord and help walk you through how to do some of this stuff. I’m no expert or anything, but I’d be glad to try to show you what I’ve learned. Let me know?
    Also, DEFINITELY go and get The drag and drop module that Trenloe posted about. It’s amazing.

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