5E Character Create Playlist
  1. #1

    I need help with some clarifications

    Hi guys,
    I'm quite new on FG, I'm a Novice Gamemaster, And I bought this software yesterday. I was using tts for DND 5e in the past months but I wanted to switch in order to have a better way to organize myself plus have a tool that help me with calculation, remembering effects or etc.

    Has been quite frustrating. I see how good can be with images and when it comes to organize your story etc. But when it comes with spells, effects, statuses, modifiers, I feel frustration. Like I see missing some crucial things that would help or necessary without workarounds.

    I've spent 12 hours in googling and checking online, but nothing answered my questions. So I'll try to write here because maybe I was incompetent into finding what I was looking for. Firstly I'm using DnD 5e basic core rules if that helps.

    1. Health potion without using spells: An item that a player can find, click on it, using once, and it disappears giving effects.
    2. Individual drops, loot without me having to drop the parcel into the player's inventory and without dropping it in the shared party inventory. Plus if a player take the money after selling it, the coins remains in the party inventory screen. They should disappear.
    3. Apply some personalized effect like If I'm affected by exhaustion and I apply the same effect, it will be counted up to exhaustion x5. Or something like that. I used If criterias, but I can't find like an automatic status that every turn applies an X amount of damage automatically.
    4. Spells: I don't get them. I can create a spell with a very nice description, but I need to create an addition manually into character sheet action? Why? How to have all the actions applied to the spells?
    5. Temporary hit points: Do I have to manually change my HP if they are temporarily reduced? Then I have to write them back after the effect vanishes?
    6. How to edit internal rules? I need to change the long rest to just replenish hit dice rolls but not full recovery.

    I guess that's all for now guys. Pardon me but quite frustrated for something obvious that you expect to find but you can't or unable to see it.

  2. #2
    Zacchaeus's Avatar
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    Welcome to FGU.

    You have to understand that not everything is automated and you will have to do some things manually. That said in answer to your questions

    1. See the last video in this series for how to set up a healing potion for one use only. https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...-Videos-for-5E Items don't have any effects added to them automatically so you need to set up the effects yourself.
    2. Loot parcels can only be distributed either by dropping them onto the players inventory or by distributing treasure from the party inventory sheet. Players don't sell things the DM does that - again via the party sheet. See here for more information on how the party sheet works. https://fantasygroundsunity.atlassia...5E+Party+Sheet
    3. To apply an effect that does damage each turn use DMGO: ndn or DMGO: x (example DMGO: 1d4 slashing DMGO: 4, bludgeoning). Not sure what that has to do with exhaustion since it doesn't cause damage every round. See here for more on effects https://fantasygroundsunity.atlassia...ced+Automation and again the videos linked above will also help
    4. You can't apply actions to spells directly. FG uses an internal parser to try and work out from the words in the spell what the effects should be. Most of the spells in the PHB will create effects when they are dragged into the actions tab but many do not since FG doesn't recognise the wording (or the spell doesn't require any effects). If you are writing your own spells then if you follow closely the wording used by a similar official spell then it may well work. However in some cases the effects are actually hard coded into the spell so you may not get the expected result.
    5. Yes, changing hit points due to temporary hit points loss is a manual process. I believe there is an extension which does this on the forge https://forge.fantasygrounds.com/
    5. You will need to write an extension if you want to change the code in the ruleset. It is beyond my knowledge as to how you do that but here's a link to the developer page in the wiki https://fantasygroundsunity.atlassia...eveloper+Guide
    Last edited by Zacchaeus; October 11th, 2021 at 16:09.
    If there is something that you would like to see in Fantasy Grounds that isn't currently part of the software or if there is something you think would improve a ruleset then add your idea here https://www.fantasygrounds.com/featu...rerequests.php

  3. #3
    Thank you Zacchaeus. I wasn't expecting an answer that fast. I really appreciated.

    I'm going to take some time to read through it after.

  4. #4
    LordEntrails's Avatar
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    After you check out Mr Z's links, and when you can't find an answer you are looking for after a short/reasonable amount of looking, don't let yourself get frustrated. Instead come on here and ask or try out the FG Discord server; https://discord.gg/VKbhkSt

    You can also take some free classes at FG Academy, or jump on their Discord as well; https://fantasygroundscollege.net/

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  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by Zacchaeus View Post
    Welcome to FGU.

    You have to understand that not everything is automated and you will have to do some things manually. That said in answer to your questions

    1. See the last video in this series for how to set up a healing potion for one use only. https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...-Videos-for-5E Items don't have any effects added to them automatically so you need to set up the effects yourself.
    2. Loot parcels can only be distributed either by dropping them onto the players inventory or by distributing treasure from the party inventory sheet. Players don't sell things the DM does that - again via the party sheet. See here for more information on how the party sheet works. https://fantasygroundsunity.atlassia...5E+Party+Sheet
    3. To apply an effect that does damage each turn use DMGO: ndn or DMGO: x (example DMGO: 1d4 slashing DMGO: 4, bludgeoning). Not sure what that has to do with exhaustion since it doesn't cause damage every round. See here for more on effects https://fantasygroundsunity.atlassia...ced+Automation and again the videos linked above will also help
    4. You can't apply actions to spells directly. FG uses an internal parser to try and work out from the words in the spell what the effects should be. Most of the spells in the PHB will create effects when they are dragged into the actions tab but many do not since FG doesn't recognise the wording (or the spell doesn't require any effects). If you are writing your own spells then if you follow closely the wording used by a similar official spell then it may well work. However in some cases the effects are actually hard coded into the spell so you may not get the expected result.
    5. Yes, changing hit points due to temporary hit points loss is a manual process. I believe there is an extension which does this on the forge https://forge.fantasygrounds.com/
    5. You will need to write an extension if you want to change the code in the ruleset. It is beyond my knowledge as to how you do that but here's a link to the developer page in the wiki https://fantasygroundsunity.atlassia...eveloper+Guide
    Hi guys, thank you both for your warm support. It helped me with my frustration a bit.

    About my previous questions:

    1. I see. I watched your video yesterday but looks like this is the only way to do it. It is somewhat disappointing because I was expecting item to be used as they are items. It is not very efficient if I have to do manually for 5 people every time I need to add a new action or a new item. This is annoying unless there is a way to do it faster.
    2. That's fine, I've been playing a little bit with it, but I was expecting to leave like a pin point on the ground and the first player opening it could have seen the content plus would have been able to take that manually.
    3. This is very good and DMGO works like I wanted it. Regarding the exhaustion, I didn't want to apply to it. I just wrote 2 question together but I didn't explain it very well. I was looking like a conditional checker too: If I have status 1, then remove status one and add status 2. Something like that.
    4. This is a shame, because again, as items, I thought they should be applied to the proper section without the need of a workaround. But again, it is possible but it is annoying to do so (but again unless there is a way to do it faster).
    5. I'm going to give it a look. Or maybe there is an effect that can calculate the half of max HP and then add it to Wounds?
    6. Thank you, I will give a look. I'm not new into coding. If it is too demanding I might avoid it. Otherwise I'll give it a shot.

    Thank you for your time replying to me.

  6. #6
    Zacchaeus's Avatar
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    1. Once you have added something like a healing potion into the actions tab you don't need to add it again. When you make it one use and it is used it disappears from combat mode but it is still there and can come back if you go back into preparation mode and untick the use. I generally set up character sheets when they are creating characters with this kind of thing already there and the uses ticked off so it doesn't show; but when they find one the tick box gets unticked and it is there ready to go. Effects embedded into items is something that we will se down the line I am sure. So much development time over the last few years has gone into Unity so some ruleset improvements have probably taken a back seat.
    2. I believe that there is an extension on the Forge which does what you are looking for. I think you can pin it to the map and it will open if a player clicks the pin. Not absolutely sure on that but browsing the Forge will likely be useful for you if you want to do things that FG doesn't do natively. There may even be an extension which adds effects to items as well.
    3. Exhaustion does accumulate. So if you have EXHAUSTION: 1 on you and you put on another EXHAUSTION: 1 then you will be exhausted 2.
    4. It's not a workaround per se; it is the way that FGU works. The developers have tried to make the ruleset as flexible as possible and the more hard coding you do then the less flexible things become. By using a text parser then howebrewed items have a chance of working whereas otherwise they wouldn't if everything was hard coded. Again however there is the possibility that this will change in the future. And again although I don't like pointing people to paid stuff there are a host of items on the Forge which will add the automation (for published spells - not homebrewed stuff) at a cost if you want to browse there. Personally I'd suggest that you learn the effects system - it isn't hard and you will find that it adds quite significant value to your games.

    I'd echo what LE says above; join the official Discord and/or the Academy one. You'll get immediate (well usually immediate) answers to your questions and can discuss issues with others.
    If there is something that you would like to see in Fantasy Grounds that isn't currently part of the software or if there is something you think would improve a ruleset then add your idea here https://www.fantasygrounds.com/featu...rerequests.php

  7. #7
    LordEntrails's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Zacchaeus View Post
    I'd echo what LE says above; join the official Discord and/or the Academy one. You'll get immediate (well usually immediate) answers to your questions and can discuss issues with others.
    And screen share dynamically. i.e. you can actively show someone what you are doing and they can actively show you how to solve it
    Last edited by LordEntrails; October 11th, 2021 at 19:55.

    Problems? See; How to Report Issues, Bugs & Problems
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