Ran my first 4E session in FG today, ran into some questions...

Everything went more or less smoothly after the players got the basics down, I'd imported their characters earlier this week and set up the encounter ahead of time, however I ran into a few snags where I couldn't find an immediately obvious solution.

1. Tweaking rolls. I couldn't find a way to override a roll after FG had decided the outcome. For example, player makes an attack, hits 2/3 of the targets, forgot he had combat advantage that would've made him hit the third as well. I couldn't find any combination of clicks to tell the program to turn the miss into a hit before he rolled damage. Also, player attacked an insubstantial target, it takes 1/2 damage from non-force attacks, FG makes the attack do 1/2 damage. Except it was a force attack, so I clicked on the damage result to try to tell it to not halve the damage and could change the damage result in the chat window, but not make the change take effect on the target in the combat tracker, I had to go and manually change its wound total.

2. Applying different modifiers to different targets for an attack. Swordmage wanted to Sword Burst, which would hit two targets. One of the two was granting combat advantage, and should have a +2 that the other doesn't. I couldn't find a way to quickly stick a bonus to his attack roll on just one of multiple targets; if I used the modifier stack down in the lower left corner or opened the party modifier window and clicked on Combat Advantage, his attack would use that for both targets instead of just the one target that it should have affected. I tried dragging the number on the modifier stack to the one monster it should be applied to, but no luck.

Someone will come along shortly with a better way to do these things, but here's my approach;

1. I don't know of ways to tweak rolls once they are made. What I do in your examples are; a) just roll the damage and then as the DM drag the damage result from the chat onto the third target (either the map token or the CT entry). b) just re-drag the damage over a like above and apply 1/2 damage a second time.

You should be able to change some of this behavior. I use 5E so some of this might be different, but... check the Options and see if you prefer the behavior about remove target on miss. You (or the player) can also all the third target back to the selected targets before rolling damage, then it will effect at 3 targets when damage is rolled.

You should be able to apply things like force to the damage type, then the NPC should have effects like resistance and then FG will automatically either apply or bypass resistance as needed. Sounds like you had the resistance, but not the damage type. Check the wiki for 4E to know which damage types are valid/availability.

2) Not sure on this... is their an effect that the second target can have applied to it before the attack roll? It is definitely something that would need to be on the target and not on the attack roll side of things. Again, you can manually adjust the targets after the attack has been rolled (adding or removing targets) and before the damage roll is made.

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Originally Posted by Valatar

Everything went more or less smoothly after the players got the basics down, I'd imported their characters earlier this week and set up the encounter ahead of time, however I ran into a few snags where I couldn't find an immediately obvious solution.

1. Tweaking rolls. I couldn't find a way to override a roll after FG had decided the outcome. For example, player makes an attack, hits 2/3 of the targets, forgot he had combat advantage that would've made him hit the third as well. I couldn't find any combination of clicks to tell the program to turn the miss into a hit before he rolled damage. Also, player attacked an insubstantial target, it takes 1/2 damage from non-force attacks, FG makes the attack do 1/2 damage. Except it was a force attack, so I clicked on the damage result to try to tell it to not halve the damage and could change the damage result in the chat window, but not make the change take effect on the target in the combat tracker, I had to go and manually change its wound total.

2. Applying different modifiers to different targets for an attack. Swordmage wanted to Sword Burst, which would hit two targets. One of the two was granting combat advantage, and should have a +2 that the other doesn't. I couldn't find a way to quickly stick a bonus to his attack roll on just one of multiple targets; if I used the modifier stack down in the lower left corner or opened the party modifier window and clicked on Combat Advantage, his attack would use that for both targets instead of just the one target that it should have affected. I tried dragging the number on the modifier stack to the one monster it should be applied to, but no luck.

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There is easy ways for both of these!

1a. the little modifier box under your chat window? Putting any number (including negatives) and then dragging the attack roll result from the chat window onto the target again will apply the bonuses, and check the new total vs the relevant defence. This will tell you if it hit or still miss. Then it's simply a matter of the player re-targeting (ctrl + click) the target before rolling damage. Alternatively, if damage has already been rolled. Just drag it onto the target that it missed originally from the chat window, and it will apply the damage to his wounds. You can drag these onto either the token on map, or the creature on the tracker itself.
1b. The damage being halved on the force attack can be fixed by simply dragging the result from chat, unchanged, on to the target again. It will halve the damage again and apply the rest to target taking its total to the correct amount. This falls apart when VULN comes into play, so for me, I would roll the damage WITHOUT targeting him, then right click on the chat window result, select "double result" and drag that onto the target.

2. To understand this, was the target under an effect that Fantasy Grounds registers as granting CA? Like Dazed, Stunned, Blinded etc? If so, do not add a modifier, FG will do it automatically. Alternatively, you can put an effect simply "GRANTCA" on the target that does so. (you can save these effects in the effects window found top right of your screen for easy access). This will ensure you do not provide a straight +2 to a target that might be automatically providing a +2 from CA elsewhere. FG will only apply CA from one source at a time (as the game rules dictate).

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Originally Posted by spite

There is easy ways for both of these!

1a. the little modifier box under your chat window? Putting any number (including negatives) and then dragging the attack roll result from the chat window onto the target again will apply the bonuses, and check the new total vs the relevant defence. This will tell you if it hit or still miss. Then it's simply a matter of the player re-targeting (ctrl + click) the target before rolling damage. Alternatively, if damage has already been rolled. Just drag it onto the target that it missed originally from the chat window, and it will apply the damage to his wounds. You can drag these onto either the token on map, or the creature on the tracker itself.
1b. The damage being halved on the force attack can be fixed by simply dragging the result from chat, unchanged, on to the target again. It will halve the damage again and apply the rest to target taking its total to the correct amount. This falls apart when VULN comes into play, so for me, I would roll the damage WITHOUT targeting him, then right click on the chat window result, select "double result" and drag that onto the target.

2. To understand this, was the target under an effect that Fantasy Grounds registers as granting CA? Like Dazed, Stunned, Blinded etc? If so, do not add a modifier, FG will do it automatically. Alternatively, you can put an effect simply "GRANTCA" on the target that does so. (you can save these effects in the effects window found top right of your screen for easy access). This will ensure you do not provide a straight +2 to a target that might be automatically providing a +2 from CA elsewhere. FG will only apply CA from one source at a time (as the game rules dictate).

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2 extended. If you have other effects that aren't CA, but are only to be against specific monsters/from specific monsters/to specific targets, you can open the effects in the combat tracker, by clicking that little man https://puu.sh/wF9Y0/7fc522ec5e.jpg and as you can see my player Orzohv have resist 2 ranged area, if I drag that little crosshair on the right hand side of his section, and drop it on a specific monster, that will only apply to that monster. So if I had Monster A and Monster B. As that picture shows, both of them would have ranged/area attack damage reduced by 2 when they attack him. However, if I target it at Monster A so it looks like this https://puu.sh/wFa1f/b6302213e7.jpg (see under the effect line in brackets), then attacks from Monster A will have the resist, but from monster B will not. You can do this with any effect, including defence bonuses, CA, ATK minuses, concealment etc.
If a player wants to make an effect automatically target on a select monster, he needs to hold shift when applying it. Feel free to ask if you want more clarification on that.


EDIT IS NOT QUOTE. Sorry for double post.

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Originally Posted by LordEntrails

You should be able to apply things like force to the damage type, then the NPC should have effects like resistance and then FG will automatically either apply or bypass resistance as needed. Sounds like you had the resistance, but not the damage type. Check the wiki for 4E to know which damage types are valid/availability.

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Unfortunately 4e effects dont work the way for Insubstantial which is a half-damage resistance. Resistance in 4e and in FG's effects for it expect a value, where RESIST X and X is equal to how much of the damage it will resist. It's not like 5e's resistance which is half all.

Thank you for the help! That's put a few things in a clearer light for me. And yeah, insubstantial by default has no exceptions, this was against mad wraiths, which specify that force circumvents their insubstantiality and radiant disables it for a turn. The parser was unsurprisingly not able to automate those exceptions.