Setting up encounters.

[Slightly]

A few questions about setting up encounters (using the 4E_JPG ruleset):

1) Other than providing a quick way to add a number of creatures to the combat tracker what is the Encounter panel for?

2) Is there a way I can set up the Personalities for an encounter on the map in advance without also putting them in the combat tracker? All I see to be able to do is put down tokens but I can't enter them into the combat tracker later that way - they seem to just be viewed as abstract tokens and not linked to the personality anymore.

[EugeneZ]

I am pretty sure I remember moon_wizard saying he was working on saved map positions but that the FG2 functionality just didn't have the neccessary tools. Maybe I'm making that up but that's what I remember, vaguely.

As for your first question, that's pretty much all its for. I agree that having it remember positions would be VERY useful, I still find encounters handy. They tell me the XP amount and I can rename monsters for just THAT encounter (or change their token) without creating a whole new personality.

As a workaround for the position issue, I take some time to drop invisible "placeholder" tokens using the same letters the adventure uses. These tokens don't dissapear when you exit the game like combat tracker tokens sometimes do, and make placing the enemies a breeze.

[Griogre]

That's a good idea, on the preplacing of letter tokens EugeneZ. I may snag that idea. The reason that works is because the Letter tokens are from your main campaign. You could also use invisible monster tokens as long as they came from your main campaign and not a module.

[Slightly]

Great suggestion EugeneZ, cheers.

[Wenin]

I'm confused about your statements regarding prepositioning.

I've prepositioned tokens on maps before. When I launch the application and load that map, the tokens are there.

[Griogre]

That's correct tokens placed on maps will stay. What the OP was talking about was the ability to preload encounters *and* have the tokens already preplaced on the map and linked to the tracker. Thus you could just load the encounter and not have to place anything.

That would be a nice feature but it isn't possible right now.

[Tenian]

Actually tokens in Modules will NOT stay. For some reason they disappear. If I had to guess I would assume it was a loading issue (maps are loaded before modules for example).

I looked at pre-placing encounters and it's not a trivial matter from a code perspective. It might be possible but I got lost in the tangle of scaling, npc size, grids, etc.

[Griogre]

Yes that was already mentioned, but to be clear non module tokens placed from the campaign running the module *will* stay. With the 4E ruleset you can even place then in encounters after you activate the module and they'll stay attached until you re-export the module, you can even deactivate the module and as long as you don't re-export it if you reactivate the module the tokens will still be attached.