Combat Tracker - Advice and Suggestions

[seycyrus]

A few days ago I inserted a few comments in the FG unity engine thread, https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...-engine/page84, that received a few responses and a request for clarification from ddavison.

Perhaps I am doing something incorrectly, or inefficiently, so here goes.

For me, at least the way I have been using it, the issue with the CT is that it seems to handle static scenes ("You enter a cave with 4 orcs and 6 trolls, FIGHT until victory or death.") very well, but not so much simultaneous scenes nor ones that evolve and interact with other scenes.

My group seems to split the party often, not as much as they used to, but it still happens frequently. 6 PCs with 4 NPCs, means that there is a lot of potential for bifurcation. Here is example, with the party split into subgroups A, and B. In game-time, the groups are separated by 5 minutes of time and virtually 0 minutes in real time (because roleplaying exploring a 100 yd. passage doesn't take very long if there aren't any interruptions - monsters, traps/puzzles.) I use teamspeak and have multiple channels to separate the subgroups.

What I have been doing is loading the largest (by number of participants) into the CT, running that for 20 minutes of real time, and then switching to the other group (not finished with the encounter). I then run the second group ad hoc from the encounters tab (not loaded into the CT) for 20 minutes of real time before switching back to the first group. Repeat back and forth until things as needed.

Ddavison suggested I load EVERYTHING up into the CT and run it from there. I'll give this a try, but while it might seem to make sense if the groups are in fairly close proximity with each other, it intuitively seems to a poor solution if the two groups are far apart in time and/or distance would have no idea whatsoever what was going on with the other group.

To me a solution would be to have another combat tracker, but I believe I heard that this was a difficult option to implement. Perhaps moving forward into FGU would make this more of a possibility?

Another solution would be have a temporary holding place for the NPCs in an encounter. It would be useful if I could pull the actors in the CT (at least the NPCs) into a newly created encounter (or some other repository) in a way that showed and maintained their current status. That way I could purge and reload the CT as needed, and keep everything continuous. The way it is now, if Orc Chief is wounded to 8 hps, and I pull him off the CT into an encounter, it reflects his original status, say 16 hps.

This last point references what I mention early on with my comment regarding "evolving and interacting scenes". If 4 orcs get beaten up and run into the nearby cave (cave12 for example), it would be useful to be able to just drag them off the CT in their current state (hurt, crippled, etc.) and plop them into the encounter for cave12. The way I do it now, it to load 4 orcs into cave12 encounter, compare each one individually with its counterpart in the CT and adjust all of the relevant parameters - can be done, but takes more time than I like.

Is there other solutions to any of the above that I am missing?

[Zacchaeus]

Yes put everything on the CT. Use the hide/show button beside each NPC to reap veal or hide the ones currently in combat and enable the option to skip hidden actors. You can’t hide the PCs like that but they can just press end turn if they are not directly involved in the combat at that time.

The heart of FG is the Combat Tracker, so if something is not on it then not much will work. At least not easily.

Oh, and don’t split the party. I think also you may be giving yourself a headache by having things happen at different times. If part of the group are having an encounter in cave A then the rest should be having an encounter in cave B. If they aren’t having an encounter I would leave them out of it completely until you finish with the first half of the party. Having said that I would not want to sit around for that long doing nothing if I was a player.

[damned]

I believe what Doug was saying was -

Load all your PCs into the CT.
Drop them on their respective maps.
Group A runs into trouble and a fight begins - initiative is rolled.
Group A plus their NPCs all have a Combat Action - Group B on 0 init dont act in CT.

Group B reach the end of the corridor and discover that the trolls have been planning dinner with them as the main course and a second encounter begins.
Group B are already in the CT.
Add the new encounter to the CT.
Roll Init.

Everyone now acts on their init.
You might flit back and forth between maps every turn or you might have a string of actors from one map etc - it doesnt really matter - everyone just acts on their init.

[LordEntrails]

I think you've got some good ideas, but I also realize a few of the challenges in developing the logic for something like that. But I think one of the things is just the non-VTT parts of what's happening.

Does group B mind not doing anything for 20 minutes while group A does something? And vise-versa? If not and you go simultaneously, the other suggestions and keeping both groups in rounds would seem to be the approach I would (do) take.

Another thing, are the encounters easy enough that half the party can beat it? I mean in the stuff I run, (and even though I rarely try to balance encounters too much) if only half the party walked into a cave, odds are they would get their butts handed to them or be forced to flee if the other half of the party wasn't their to support them. Or maybe your parties are large (8+) and this is the a big part of the problem?

[Atua]

...You can’t hide the PCs like that but they can just press end turn if they are not directly involved in the combat at that time....

You can actually hide the PC's in the CT, firstly set them to neutral (via the helmet icon in the CT), then set them to invisible. I do this all the time with the wildshape creatures for my druid.

[CrawlingChaox]

Yeah, all you need to do is load all the actors in the combat in the CT. When you need to switch, set the PCs as Neutral and then hide them away. Problem solved.

[Valyar]

If your group is splitting and there will be two or more separate conflicts that require the CT, run all at the same time. In-game time will different yes, one of the groups will be done with the fighting earlier or later than the other, but out of game nobody will be idling. Fast-forward and other tricks are totally OK to keep all players equally engaged.

1 CT but two or more different combat maps.

[rhammer2]

Going to way too much effort. Don't run the combats separately, If they are occuring at the same time, run them at the same time.
Also, the best way to cure your group from separating is to start killing them in separate encounters that were intended for the entire group.

If it happens once in a blue moon, not an issue, but your group should not make a habit of separating.

Robert

[JohnD]

Running combat across multiple maps is a little unwieldy but not arduous.

One time I had a big combat running across 4 interconnected maps. Eight PCs, 15 or so friendly NPCs and around 65 attackers spread across all the maps. I absolutely wished for more screen real estate during those sessions, but it was epic and very memorable (and took about nine hours of game time to resolve!).

But yes, the best way to dissuade your players from splitting up is giving them the regular strength encounter in each location they split up to go into. Unless they are slow learners, you should only have to do that once or at most twice.

[Callum]

If 4 orcs get beaten up and run into the nearby cave (cave12 for example), it would be useful to be able to just drag them off the CT in their current state (hurt, crippled, etc.) and plop them into the encounter for cave12. The way I do it now, it to load 4 orcs into cave12 encounter, compare each one individually with its counterpart in the CT and adjust all of the relevant parameters - can be done, but takes more time than I like.

Is there other solutions to any of the above that I am missing?

This sort of thing happens every now and then in my games. I simply click on the eye symbol in the CT entries for the orcs, to make them invisible to the players both in the CT and on the map, then move their tokens on the map to cave12. Now, if combat continues in the current location, the orcs will be skipped automatically in the CT (assuming you have that option set), but they will retain their states. When the PCs move into cave12, I just click on the eye symbols again, and they're ready to go. If there are other creatures in cave12, I just click to add them from the cave12 encounter, and they are autoamtically mixed in with the orcs.