[extension] Spell Tokens Extension

[MrDDT]

I agree it's when the token is selected. I have token lock on so players can measure out their movement better, and of course it applies to NPCs and spell tokens too. The result is that it ends up selected and opaque, but I noticed that player tokens don't seem to have any change in opacity when selected - just the green ring.

It's normal for this to happen to tokens with transparency on them. The transparent area is showing up when selected as kinda light colored/white. This would happen with a player token also with transparency.

I will let B9 talk more on this maybe he can do something with it, me or my players currently not having this issue as we just know to unselect the token to see under it just fine. Also only the owner/DM of the spell can even do anything with it.

[bratch9]

Spell tokens have a number of issues like this, normally you dont select them as dragging them does not require it to be selected. The token system has no control of the amount of transparency, this is defined by the graphic, if this is from a pack you dont control then you will have to request it to be reduced by the owner of the pack. Or as others have said, if you have access to the token you can tone this down to the level you like.

The stacking order, ie getting the spell token to be 'under' the player tokens ( also a pain for the dm as the npc tokens tend to go under the spell tokens ), we have a 'wish list' item to try and get this fixed as the api side has no control to split the draw order of the tokens. ( and hence the spell tokens that are mixed in with it. )

We have issues getting these sorts of fixes sorted out with the dev team because they decided the way to do spell tokens is to have the DM add them into the map edit layer. This solves the issue of tokens been under the spell token, it also gives you some alpha control of the layer. But the biggest issue is that its all done by the DM and the players have to tell the location and the DM has to edit the map. Its generally also a pain to do and gives more work to the busy DM.

A lot depends on how often you plan to place spell tokens. Our group session tonight had just one placed on the map for a while out of the full 3 hour session and the DM had to move it about to access the npcs under it due to it been a dark token. ( hungar of hadar spell by gareth is a very nice token but very dark around the edge of the circle. )

I feel the biggest issue is that people want it to 'work' perfectly. ( I'm going to go with the like foundry which I have not used, but i think they get all sorts of nice animated spell effects from the videos I've seen.. ) But the reality is we have to work based on the api that is exposed to us and due to the dev team deciding that you have to edit the map to add spell effects by the DM, we are stuck wanting changes to the api that I feel with never happen. Since they think its already a solved issue. Even if players want to place down spell tokens.

On an 'map/image' you can place 'shortcut' pins or 'tokens', and spell tokens become a 'token' just like a player/npc token. And the system is designed to 'bring' the last moved token to the top, and it fails to do this consistently in the game. I've seen the just moved token end up at the bottom of the stack under everything. Which is also a pain if you end up with a smaller token under a big token due to grid snap.

Token locking is also an issue, our group does not use this and its not advised with spell tokens to use this either. It complicates things, because again the api while in token locked mode does not call the token move call back to the clients properly. Which can cause all sorts of issues to try and keep synced positions for the spell tokens. ( Specially linked tokens like spirit guardians etc.. )

I know its not a lot of help and does not answer or solve issues, I've been asking the dev team for nearly 2 years to get some of the important fixes sorted out so we can have better spell token support. They do need a new category to go with 'shortcuts' and 'tokens', but its a brick wall for suggestions as they have a massive wish list of things to deal with. Maybe at some point they might help out and give us some api access.

Spell tokens are the current best 'bodge' to get this working, its got issues that have been talked about a lot on this thread and in wish list for the devs. We have what we have at the moment, when i find 'bugs' i can exploit to sort thing I use them until it gets fixed... And the system uses a couple of bugs and some un-documented api calls to do the things it does. ( And a lot of reverse engineered maths to re-translate and redo lots of the token selection logic )

Its not perfect, I dont advise it to be used on every spell just on the ones that stick around for a while. ( ie I dont advise it for markers on 'instant' spells that vanish instantly, its not a fantastic marker/selector tool for these )

The other option is to have your DM do all the map edit work to add/place/move/configure/size, and I know when I DM that I dont have the time and effort to do that. (Specially for an instant vanish spell, for a multi-round spell maybe at a push. )

What we need to do is get it as good as it can, and I dont see any real ways to improve it further, and continue with the pressure that players want to be able to add spell tokens. Maybe the dev team will allow limited map edit to clients, I dont know.

I wish I could fix some of the stack order issues as I think this would help a lot, I'd love to be able to have animated spell tokens, I'd love to be able to mask them with the line of sight data... but these are flights of fancy for the wish list that I expect never to see.

-pete

[anathemort]

What we need to do is get it as good as it can, and I dont see any real ways to improve it further, and continue with the pressure that players want to be able to add spell tokens. Maybe the dev team will allow limited map edit to clients, I dont know.

I wish I could fix some of the stack order issues as I think this would help a lot, I'd love to be able to have animated spell tokens, I'd love to be able to mask them with the line of sight data... but these are flights of fancy for the wish list that I expect never to see.

-pete

Thanks pete, this resonates with me. Compared to Foundry, which one of my players recently evaluated, we aren't missing a lot of core functionality, albeit the UX is jankier because you've had to do work around instead of with the system; there is a certain smoothness to spell templates that Foundry has out of the box (click cast, click the map to drop your token; it is beneath character tokens and auto-targets affected tokens as you move it around), but what you've built with this extension helps quite a bit and adds a coveted glitz factor for spells that have visible effects.

I sympathize with the struggles and I've voted for these issues on the ideainformer when I've seen them (like this one). Thanks for the extra tips on how you are using spell tokens, as that helps me make some suggestions to my players as well.

[nephranka]

Last night my players noticed that if they used the red/green helmets on a spell token to target they pick up hidden tokens on the map as well. These npcs were hidden on the CT and invisible to players on the map but they got picked up in targeting. I was not sure this is expected and if it is possible to change?

[bratch9]

Last night my players noticed that if they used the red/green helmets on a spell token to target they pick up hidden tokens on the map as well. These npcs were hidden on the CT and invisible to players on the map but they got picked up in targeting. I was not sure this is expected and if it is possible to change?

I'm not sure on this one, as I actually think they should get targeted. But I also think in some situations that it should not target them, and the game has no context for it...

An example would be this I guess ?

bat.JPG

Which has 3 npc bats, and a player. Only one bat is 'shown' to the player. ( player screen is on the right of the image, gm on the left. )

If the player drags on a fireball, and targets they get to see 'bat 3,2,1' on the target list. The player screen even with the 'arrows' to selected target does not 'give the position' of bat 2,3 away.

But I'm sure the player and I'd agree, that all 3 bats are about to take damage ?

When the damage is rolled, the GM sees the bat 2,3 damage with the 'hidden' icon, and the bat 1 damage... and the player sees only bat 1 damage.

I guess the question is 'should' the combat tracker show hidden NPC names if they are targets or not ?

If its this is hidden from the player on the combat tracker, it might still be selected without them knowing, when they target something else next round ? ( How would they resolve this.. )

Also if they were not targeted, then the DM would have to hand 'fix' the damage on 'bat 2,3' because they should have taken damage. ( Not been shown on the CT, is not 'invincible' )

I'm inclined to say this is fine, unless my player was 'fafing' with the spell token... and selecting targets, moving the spell token, and re-selecting to try and 'find' hidden. In which cased I'd be telling off the player to finalise the placement before targeting..

Can you give a better description of the exact situation in your game, player/npc basic name, and why the gm thought this was an issue ? ( Just some basic context so we can chat about it.. )

-pete

[nephranka]

I'm not sure on this one, as I actually think they should get targeted. But I also think in some situations that it should not target them, and the game has no context for it...

An example would be this I guess ?

bat.JPG

Which has 3 npc bats, and a player. Only one bat is 'shown' to the player. ( player screen is on the right of the image, gm on the left. )

If the player drags on a fireball, and targets they get to see 'bat 3,2,1' on the target list. The player screen even with the 'arrows' to selected target does not 'give the position' of bat 2,3 away.

But I'm sure the player and I'd agree, that all 3 bats are about to take damage ?

When the damage is rolled, the GM sees the bat 2,3 damage with the 'hidden' icon, and the bat 1 damage... and the player sees only bat 1 damage.

I guess the question is 'should' the combat tracker show hidden NPC names if they are targets or not ?

If its this is hidden from the player on the combat tracker, it might still be selected without them knowing, when they target something else next round ? ( How would they resolve this.. )

Also if they were not targeted, then the DM would have to hand 'fix' the damage on 'bat 2,3' because they should have taken damage. ( Not been shown on the CT, is not 'invincible' )

I'm inclined to say this is fine, unless my player was 'fafing' with the spell token... and selecting targets, moving the spell token, and re-selecting to try and 'find' hidden. In which cased I'd be telling off the player to finalise the placement before targeting..

Can you give a better description of the exact situation in your game, player/npc basic name, and why the gm thought this was an issue ? ( Just some basic context so we can chat about it.. )

-pete

For me I agree that things like fireballs will move around corners and pick up targets. I can live with that. What the spell tokens don't handle is full cover since the graphic can go through walls, for example.

Our case was a covered wagon where there were thugs inside and thugs driving it. The player did hypnotic pattern, laid out the graphic and clicked the helmet. I had the ones inside the wagon hidden on the CT. The targeting picked them all up.

Foe me, I would like it not to target anything hidden on the CT and the GM can assign the targets manually if the graphic indicates they would be effected.

Perfect world the use of LoS would solve the problem as you could hide things on the CT but the wall would block the targeting on the token. But that is more than likely not possible.

In the bats case, the GM would see all the other bats that are effected at target the player for them. They pick up new information but the GM controls when and how much.

[bratch9]

For me I agree that things like fireballs will move around corners and pick up targets. I can live with that. What the spell tokens don't handle is full cover since the graphic can go through walls, for example.

Our case was a covered wagon where there were thugs inside and thugs driving it. The player did hypnotic pattern, laid out the graphic and clicked the helmet. I had the ones inside the wagon hidden on the CT. The targeting picked them all up.

Foe me, I would like it not to target anything hidden on the CT and the GM can assign the targets manually if the graphic indicates they would be effected.

Perfect world the use of LoS would solve the problem as you could hide things on the CT but the wall would block the targeting on the token. But that is more than likely not possible.

In the bats case, the GM would see all the other bats that are effected at target the player for them. They pick up new information but the GM controls when and how much.

Yep ive been talking with other Gm in my my group.. Some would prefer to it to target them so that it can do the 'save rolls' and 'damage' rolls as required. But they also did not want it showing to the player..

I think the best is to not add them and hence not apply the damage rolls to the non-visible-CT npc...

Then its upto the GM to decide to 'show' the extra bats and have a re-target/add the targets if they want to have it deal the damage with the roll for them.. or not like in your case when inside a cart..

I dont like the idea of possible having 'hidden' selected items on the player side, even if the gm can see what that player has selected.

Also without the spell tokens, the playing situation would be that the non-visible-CT npc would not get targeted or damage rolled for it, as the player would not be able to select the non-visible item... so it would then be the same... the gm would have to decide if the hidden npc would get hit, un-hide them and allow target onto them etc..

I'll add it to my todo list.

( But I still suspect people will ask for hidden npc to get damage... as you say with LoS access we might be able to do that, but its getting spell tokens to be a first class entity which they are not at the moment. It would be nice to just be able to right click a spell token and have the UI for 'cast' and 'damage' icons off the power/spell page show up and it just target everything correct under the shape/LoS taken into account... spell info taken into account for 'hits every body including players or enemies... and maybe popups on the gm side to allow them to 'include or not' hidden npc on the CT... it would be a massive automation change to how FG works... I dont see it happening as the devs dont want to fully automate because a lot of context is missing/not known making it near impossible to manage properly.. its always going to have edge cases to cope with. )

-pete

[nephranka]

I thought the GM can drag the target to npc (hidden) and they do not appear on the player CT but do get listed on the target list of the player's CT?

If so, the way I would see it play out is:
1. The player uses the spell token to target
2. Only non hidden npcs on the CT get targeted.
3. The GM stops the player while they add any additional hidden targets.
4. Rolls are done.
5. GM removed the hidden targets from the player's CT.

So really is is changing the helmets function to only target non hidden npcs. Maybe this could be an option setting?

[bratch9]

I thought the GM can drag the target to npc (hidden) and they do not appear on the player CT but do get listed on the target list of the player's CT?

If so, the way I would see it play out is:
1. The player uses the spell token to target
2. Only non hidden npcs on the CT get targeted.
3. The GM stops the player while they add any additional hidden targets.
4. Rolls are done.
5. GM removed the hidden targets from the player's CT.

So really is is changing the helmets function to only target non hidden npcs. Maybe this could be an option setting?

Not sure on the wording of your first sentence.

But if the Player can only see 'bat 1' and spell token selects it and it only targets non hidden... so player CT target lists 'bat 1'.

when the GM drags the players 'target cursor on the CT' to say 'bat 2', this will show as 'bat 1, bat2' on the players CT, exposing the still hidden npc (bat 2) to the player... in just the same way as it does with the spell token target at the moment.

Which is what I said in my response... Basically if I change the spell token to only add non-hidden, then the GM would have to manually add the hidden to the players target list. This will expose that npc to the player, so the gm may as well just make it shown.

The gm can not make the player CT target list on the gm side list 'bat1, bat2,bat3' and have the player CT target list on the players side only show 'bat 1'. its always going to show the other added npc's to the player.

To allow the GM to have a different target list for a player to what the player is seeing would cause a lot of sync issues.

Its only possible to 'expose' the names of the hidden item to the player, if the gm wants the save/roll/damage system to damage all the bats. ( Or the people in your cart. )

Or the GM will have to work out the save/roll/damage by hand for the bat2,3 ( people in the cart) if they dont want to expose the hidden npc name on the player CT. ( By not adding them )

-pete

[nephranka]

Not sure on the wording of your first sentence.

But if the Player can only see 'bat 1' and spell token selects it and it only targets non hidden... so player CT target lists 'bat 1'.

when the GM drags the players 'target cursor on the CT' to say 'bat 2', this will show as 'bat 1, bat2' on the players CT, exposing the still hidden npc (bat 2) to the player... in just the same way as it does with the spell token target at the moment.

Which is what I said in my response... Basically if I change the spell token to only add non-hidden, then the GM would have to manually add the hidden to the players target list. This will expose that npc to the player, so the gm may as well just make it shown.

The gm can not make the player CT target list on the gm side list 'bat1, bat2,bat3' and have the player CT target list on the players side only show 'bat 1'. its always going to show the other added npc's to the player.

To allow the GM to have a different target list for a player to what the player is seeing would cause a lot of sync issues.

Its only possible to 'expose' the names of the hidden item to the player, if the gm wants the save/roll/damage system to damage all the bats. ( Or the people in your cart. )

Or the GM will have to work out the save/roll/damage by hand for the bat2,3 ( people in the cart) if they dont want to expose the hidden npc name on the player CT. ( By not adding them )

-pete

I guess my point is letting the GM add the hidden npcs, allows the GM the choice of what information to share and when. In the case of the wagon, I would have not added them to the target list (those inside) and the party would not have that information. When the player uses their token, they can picked up new information before I am ready to share or should share. I understand that at some point the information will be know (appearing on the target list). It is just a matter of when. As it is right now, when they target they get all the npcs alerting them to the presence of the ones in the wagon even though they can not be effected by the spell. Forcing me to remove them from their target list but now the info is out there. This caught me off guard.

In the case of the bats, I would add them and they would get the information but that is fine since it is the best that can be done at this time. When npcs are in buildings and other full cover, I think it would be better to let the GM add them or not. Even if this means a more manual process under different circumstances like the bat (which would have been done automatically with the spell tokens function currently).

This is really my preference, hence I thought an option to let others play the way they want would make sense but may be too much work.

Just giving my 2 cents.

I don't want different lists so sorry if that came across that way.

I currently just keep npcs off the map that are behind total cover and add them back at the correct time. It is more work but it is the current system we have. Either way the spell tokens are worth the work, at least in my games.

I hope this helps explain my position better.