AoE Effects

[tahl_liadon]

Those repeated messages ("Effect ['Aura of Courage*'] -> [ALREADY EXISTS] [on Ka'Ruun]") are not coming from the AoE Effects extension itself. They’re standard Fantasy Grounds Combat Tracker warnings that appear when something tries to apply an effect that’s already active on the target.

This usually happens when the aura effect isn’t being removed cleanly when a token leaves the aura’s range (or the movement detection is triggering multiple apply attempts).

that clued me in...

when i manually removed effect (likely artifact from previous extension before update?) from ka-ruun, no more spammed feedback.

aura effect added / removed as usual when a target enter / exit aura.

thx

[Toadkiller]

I love all of the new options and effects that you have added, so I decided to take a stab at making an aura for difficult terrain for my token size using the cube option.

If this has already been done somewhere, or can be done better a different way, let me know.

My campaign is 5e Legacy, and my players like to use the Tumble and Overrun options to move through enemy spaces. They also like to move through spaces of their allies, which either way it is difficult terrain whether or not the space is friend or foe. I would like to automate it so it automatically uses the difficult terrain as they move through the space of another token.

I currently use the following which seems to work well for small medium sized tokens:

Personal Space; AURA: 5 all,!self,cube; SPEED: difficult

Would there be a possibility to get a variable for the Token Size to be accounted for when I drop the effect on a token? Something like TS = TokenSize

Personal Space; AURA: TS all,!self,cube; SPEED: difficult

So if I dropped it on a Gargantuan category token, which is 20 × 20 feet (4x4 squares), it would automatically change to:

Personal Space; AURA: 20 all,!self,cube; SPEED: difficult

My goal is to be able to put a singe effect into the Global Effects section of the Combat Tracker, and have the effect applied automatically to each token in the Combat Tracker with the correct size and not have to worry about it. Still working on this part as the Global Effects does not seem to work as I expect, and not finding specific documentation on any limitations on what it does.

Thanks

[bwatford]

Thanks for the feedback and for sharing your setup—it's great to hear you're experimenting with the new aura options!

Just a quick clarification on how cubes work: they’re anchored to grid intersection points by default and expand outward from there. So for a standard 5-foot token, you’d want to add 2.5 feet to the radius (`AURA: 7.5`) to properly cover the token’s space and the adjacent squares around it.

That said, for your use case I’d recommend trying a sphere aura instead. Spheres are designed to be centered directly on tokens and automatically account for the token’s size. An `AURA: 1` setting should cover the token itself plus roughly 1 foot beyond its edges, which should give you the difficult terrain effect you’re looking for as creatures move through the space. If it’s not triggering quite reliably, you can try bumping it up to `AURA: 2` and test it.

Regarding the Global Effects section in the Combat Tracker, there are a few limitations on how effects are applied there. If you’re running into specific behavior that isn’t working as expected, feel free to share more details and I’ll be happy to help troubleshoot or suggest a workaround.

Let me know how it goes or if you’d like any example effect strings for different token sizes!

[MrDDT]

Thanks for the feedback and for sharing your setup—it's great to hear you're experimenting with the new aura options!

Just a quick clarification on how cubes work: they’re anchored to grid intersection points by default and expand outward from there. So for a standard 5-foot token, you’d want to add 2.5 feet to the radius (`AURA: 7.5`) to properly cover the token’s space and the adjacent squares around it.

That said, for your use case I’d recommend trying a sphere aura instead. Spheres are designed to be centered directly on tokens and automatically account for the token’s size. An `AURA: 1` setting should cover the token itself plus roughly 1 foot beyond its edges, which should give you the difficult terrain effect you’re looking for as creatures move through the space. If it’s not triggering quite reliably, you can try bumping it up to `AURA: 2` and test it.

Regarding the Global Effects section in the Combat Tracker, there are a few limitations on how effects are applied there. If you’re running into specific behavior that isn’t working as expected, feel free to share more details and I’ll be happy to help troubleshoot or suggest a workaround.

Let me know how it goes or if you’d like any example effect strings for different token sizes!

They don't want to cover any area around the token, they want it to cover exactly the token sized (space) it occuplies.
Currently can't use less than 1 for auras else they just wont detect anything. (not even self)

Best you could do is use 80% token size setting, then set the AOE to "edge" option use

Personal Space; AURA: 1 all, !self, clear; Squeezed Space; SPEED: difficult

This would apply to any creature.
This will not catch the corners perfectly but its pretty good. Would be nice to see an option for "cube" to be factored in based on size of the creature, maybe call it a cubeaura or something.

If FG allowed for a [SIZE] Modifier, then it would be fine. But there is no coding for having that as a mod like [PRF] you can.

You can use things like [PRF] to set the size of AOE effects.

Testing; AURA: [PRF] all, !self; AoE Testing; Dumbstuff

Would replace [PRF] with what over the applying creatures PRF is.

[bwatford]

Would be nice to see an option for "cube" to be factored in based on size of the creature, maybe call it a cubeaura or something.

This is definitely something to look at for the next version, shouldn't be too hard to implement. An aura that just covers the tokens space should be doable, since we are pretty close to counting outward from it in a sphere, we would just need to reverse that and count inward, and maybe have an option to expand outward by 20% to cover users who do 80% token.

Maybe a token, or token20 option. I will have to look it over.

[Toadkiller]

Thanks Bwatford and MrDDT for looking into this and all of the recommendations, and I have done some basic testing with the Step Counter addon and the 'Aura 1, all, !self' suggested by both of you and look like it works a lot better than what I had proposed. It works as expected if I put it directly on a token and then have another token move through it, the difficult terrain is calculated correctly, but if I put the same effect in the Global Effects in the Combat Tracker, it does not seem to have any affect.

Below are some screenshots I took after I put the Personal Effects directly on a Kobold and had an elf pass through it. It shows that the passing through does calculate the difficult terrain. If I then remove the effect from the Kobold and put it only in Global Effects, and don't get any indication that it has been applied and it does not calculate difficult terrain going through a token.

Putting the effect directly on the Kobold:
Screenshot 2026-06-25 230814.png

Putting the effect only in Global Effects:
Screenshot 2026-06-25 230837.png

I was hoping that under each token it would say the effect and then 'Applied By Global Effects' like it does when an effect was applied by a player, but I have not seen anything like that so far. I'll try and test it a bit more and see if I find anything out to why it is not being applied through Global Effects to all tokens in the Combat tracker.

[samster]

I normally avoid extensions as i am not great with computers (im old). I got the extension, updated the game, but cant see anywhere in options to turn it on, its not in modules to activate - what am i doing wrong?

Its a 5e campaign, though I am using Tales of the Valiant if that makes a difference?

[Lo Zeno]

I normally avoid extensions as i am not great with computers (im old). I got the extension, updated the game, but cant see anywhere in options to turn it on, its not in modules to activate - what am i doing wrong?

Its a 5e campaign, though I am using Tales of the Valiant if that makes a difference?

All you have to do, is to select the extension from the FGU launcher when you start a campaign.
Click on "My Campaigns" at the top, then on the left, where there is the list of the campaigns you run, click on the campaign you want to use the extension with, then on the right (in the "Extensions" box) make sure that AoE Effects has a checkmark beside it:


Then start the campaign. That's it. Extensions are not modules that you activate, they are active as soon as you start the campaign. From this point, you simply can "use it" by creating the correct aura effects in the Actions tabs of your characters.

[samster]

im rubbish, your amazing Lo Zeno. HUGE thanks

[SilentRuin]

This is definitely something to look at for the next version, shouldn't be too hard to implement. An aura that just covers the tokens space should be doable, since we are pretty close to counting outward from it in a sphere, we would just need to reverse that and count inward, and maybe have an option to expand outward by 20% to cover users who do 80% token.

Maybe a token, or token20 option. I will have to look it over.

Are you guys seriously crazy or what?

Cube is not even done with special cube code. You know this.

The key word cube in

AURA: 10 all, cube;

is in reality

AURA: 10 all, 3drect|10|0|0|0, point;

You want a cube that respects token size?

AURA: 10 all, 3drect|10|0|0|0;

Honest to god, its frustrating to write a totally flexible tool and people just... just... ARRGHGHGHGHGH

DO THE MATH!!!

Better yet - do what I originally suggested...

NEVER USE CUBE KEYWORD - its legacy crap. Its a 2d square.