First session report with some detailed questions

[Robbo]

I hosted 4 players the other night for over 2 hours. My client had no crashes at all and the homework I had done over the last month (learning how to use the 4e version of FG) paid off nicely, as I was able to answer almost all the questions my players had.

When the players originally connected to my client, the first couple of players had 20 minute connection times. That worried me quite a bit. But after that the other players had faster connection times.

A few of the players had crashes. I don't know what caused them, but when they logged back on they connected very quickly.

I ran a sample 4E combat session, and that went fine and everyone figured out how to use powers, roll damage, target things, etc.

At the end of the session, I was left with the following questions:

1.) There were a few occasions when attack rolls or damage rolls were made and there were two dice thrown instead of just one. There were a few times when this was a targeting issue (the player had accidentally targeted himself and the enemy, etc.), but there were other times when I could not explain this. I feel like over the last month of messing around with the program that I had seen this happen before. Is this a known issue?

2.) I don't understand how effects end. I've read the documentation that exists on it, but I still don't get it (my questions below delve into this). If someone could explain it to me, I would truly be thankful. When a player uses a power to assign a condition, I assume that the condition will end when it is supposed to, without any maintenance from me or the player. Is this true?

3.) When I create a condition in the campaign's list of conditions, I am given a list of choices, but I don't know how to properly use them. They are: Save, Enc, End N, Start, End, and blank. And then on top of that, I can choose how many times the effect is used (apply once, apply once each, apply to all rolls). Here is how I think they might work:

Save - effect ends when the person with the effect makes a save
Enc - lasts the whole encounter, won't come off without a rest.
End N - effect lasts N turns, but how do I enter a number for N?
Start - effect ends at the start of the effect holder's turn.
End - effect ends at the end of the effect holder's turn.
Apply once - effect's bonus only used on the first roll of the effect holder's turn.
Apply once each - huh? I don't get this one at all.

It is a complicated situation, because frequently the effect won't end until the end of the perpetrator's turn (the person who put the effect upon the target). Is this handled in some way? I apologize for being completely lost.

4.) In the documentation for the 4e rule set there are suggestions for certain effects, such as combat advantage and cover and concealment. These seem to me to be better used as modifiers, since these states grant bonuses to perpetrators (I don't know why I'm using that term) trying to hit targets under
certain circumstances, such as you have them flanked or they are hiding behind a wall. But for other perpetrators, they may not be flanking the target or they may be behind the wall with the target, and thus those conditions don't apply. If I make combat advantage or concealment an effect then it is going to apply for everyone, which would be wrong. This is my long winded way of saying, shouldn't modifiers be for one time bonuses, and effects should be for conditions (dazed, prone, etc.) or complex power effects (vanguards lightning, etc)?


Thank you in advance for your help.

[Griogre]

At the end of the session, I was left with the following questions:

1.) There were a few occasions when attack rolls or damage rolls were made and there were two dice thrown instead of just one. There were a few times when this was a targeting issue (the player had accidentally targeted himself and the enemy, etc.), but there were other times when I could not explain this. I feel like over the last month of messing around with the program that I had seen this happen before. Is this a known issue?

I don't think this is a problem. I may not be understanding your issue but if you have mulitiple things targeted you get multiple dice, ie one d20 roll for each target per the 4E rules. If you have a power that does more than 1W then you get more than one dice too.


2.) I don't understand how effects end. I've read the documentation that exists on it, but I still don't get it (my questions below delve into this). If someone could explain it to me, I would truly be thankful. When a player uses a power to assign a condition, I assume that the condition will end when it is supposed to, without any maintenance from me or the player. Is this true?

That is generally true - but assumes that the effects are set correctly. There are some fairly rare durations that are not yet supported, IE I think there are some effects that expire based on the target's turns not just based on who hit them. The biggest things you still need to deal with manually are zones and auras. FG has no way of letting a ruleset know whether something is within such and such an area or radius of something else. See below, too.


3.) When I create a condition in the campaign's list of conditions, I am given a list of choices, but I don't know how to properly use them. They are: Save, Enc, End N, Start, End, and blank. And then on top of that, I can choose how many times the effect is used (apply once, apply once each, apply to all rolls). Here is how I think they might work:

Save - effect ends when the person with the effect makes a save
Enc - lasts the whole encounter, won't come off without a rest.
Correct

End N - effect lasts N turns, but how do I enter a number for N?
You are confused here this means End NEXT. The number is what initiative the the effect ends after not the number of rounds. When the effect is dropped it uses the initiative the effect is actually dropped on. So if the effect is dropped on the wrong time it won't work right. You may also need to adjust things due to delay's or readies too.

Start - effect ends at the start of the effect holder's turn. True, but remember the ruleset does this based on the initiative number not necessity a specific character. You'll notice this if a character changes initiative.

End - effect ends at the end of the effect holder's turn.
Apply once - effect's bonus only used on the first roll of the effect holder's turn.
Apply once each - huh? I don't get this one at all.
I haven't used "Apply once each" but I presume that it is for when multiple targets are hit and the effect does something to the first thing each does. Apply once would have just effected the first one in the group and the rest would have been ok. It would be really nice if examples were given for each of these of these.


It is a complicated situation, because frequently the effect won't end until the end of the perpetrator's turn (the person who put the effect upon the target). Is this handled in some way? I apologize for being completely lost. That's that end next.


4.) In the documentation for the 4e rule set there are suggestions for certain effects, such as combat advantage and cover and concealment. These seem to me to be better used as modifiers, since these states grant bonuses to perpetrators (I don't know why I'm using that term) trying to hit targets under
certain circumstances, such as you have them flanked or they are hiding behind a wall. But for other perpetrators, they may not be flanking the target or they may be behind the wall with the target, and thus those conditions don't apply. If I make combat advantage or concealment an effect then it is going to apply for everyone, which would be wrong. This is my long winded way of saying, shouldn't modifiers be for one time bonuses, and effects should be for conditions (dazed, prone, etc.) or complex power effects (vanguards lightning, etc)?


Thank you in advance for your help.
My experience is you really only want people dropping effects if they effect someone else's character or a monster and last more than one turn. I think it's easier for players to just use modifiers for things like individual situations like flanking, and if the target has cover etc that are likely to change every turn. Be careful with things like prone because unless it is a save ends FG doesn't know when a monsters stands up so most prone conditions have to be removed manually. That being the case you might as well use modifiers.

[Moon Wizard]

Robbo,

I'm glad that things went well for you in your game.

Before I answer your questions, let me give you some background on effects support in 4E.
* The effects in 4E were added to let GMs decide how much automation that they want to manage in their game. Effects let you handle a lot more situations automatically, but the complexity for both GM and players rises. As you noted, you can handle a lot of the situations in the game by simply assessing the situation in your head, and applying the correct modifiers.
* While you can enter effects manually, I designed the system to build the effect information directly from power description text, by parsing the words of the power description to build the effects. Just enter the text in the exact same format as the rulebooks (and then use the radial menu on PC sheets to parse out abilities for customization), or drop the powers from your own data modules.
* The effect system was built to handle 90% of the situations. 4E can be a very complex game with all the exceptions that are defined by powers, and the primary focus of the effects support was for the core rulebooks (PHB, DMG, MM). There will definitely be some powers and effects that will not be able to be represented in the current ruleset.

Now to your questions,

1. There should not be any situations where any extra dice are rolled, unless the user accidentally rolled twice (double click twice), or the user was targeting multiple targets.

2 & 3. As noted in my dialog above, the effects support most situations but not all. Here is a breakdown of the effect expiration options and how they work:


- : Never expires
Enc: Only expires once a rest is performed.
Save: Expires on a successful save. (Auto-save option will roll saves for each effect at end of creature's turn. Manual save rolls will end effect if only one effect with save.)
End N.: Expires at end of next turn, based on initiative value set with expiration. Currently, these effects will always use the originator's initiative, but can be edited manually to a different initiative value.
Start: Expires at start of next turn. (same notes as End N.)
End: Expires at end of current turn. (same notes as End N.)


To clarify, effects that end based on the target's initiative rather than the originator's initiative are currently not automatically supported, though they are on the wish list. These occur rarely in the core rulebooks (about 6-8 powers only).

There are also a number of options that you can set for effects depending on where they originate:


Targeting: PC effects only. Determines whether the effect applies t PC targets ("Target"), or only applies to PC ("Self").
Application: Determines how many times that effect is applied regardless of expiration. The options are: always apply ("All"); apply any part of effect once then expire ("Once"); or apply each part of effect once ("Single").


To clarify the difference between "Once" and "Single" setting.
* For "Once", consider an effect that applies a +1 to any d20 roll. (ATK:1, DMG:1, SKILL:1, ABIL:1, SAVE:1) This effect would have an apply option of "Once", because you want the overall effect to only apply once before the entire effect expires.
* For "Single", consider an effect that applies +2 to your next attack and damage roll (ATK:2; DMG:2). That effect would have the apply option of "Single", since you want the bonus to apply to a single attack roll (but not any other attack rolls), but then also apply to a subsequent single damage roll (before finally expiring). For this example, after the attack roll, the effect would be updated to (DMG: 2), since the ATK modifier of the effect no longer applies.

4. The effects that I suggested for the campaign can definitely be handled as modifiers as well. The benefit of using effects vs. modifiers is that any overlapping or negated conditions can be handled automatically. (i.e. total cover does not stack with cover, CA only applies once such as when target is stunned and you are flanking, etc.) As I mentioned above, it can be a tradeoff between complexity and automation/features.

Hope this long-winded answer helps with your questions.

Cheers,
JPG

[Robbo]

Thank you for these very detailed responses.

It may very well be that the multiple dice rolls were targeting issues. If it happens again I will report what the circumstances are in the house of healing forum.

I have a much better sense of how to create effects and what to expect from the various settings. Thanks!

[Robbo]

I am five sessions into my use of Fantasy Grounds, with two groups, one group of four people and one group of five people.

There are a number of issues that keep popping up and I wanted to mention them here and ask for advice on how to deal with them. Here they are in no particular order.

Notes: My players would like to be able to share their notes with one another, either with the whole group using the share note command, or by dragging their notes onto individual's portraits. However, it appears the host is the only person that can do this. What am I missing?

Portraits: I am very frustrated with assigning portraits. I have moved the jpg/png files into both the main portraits folder and within the campaign's portrait folder, but my players can only see the Uhura Six that comes with Fantasy Grounds. If I enter a session as a player then I can select the proper portrait, but that is a poor work around. Why can't my players see portraits?

Combat Tracker/Token crashes: I've had a series of client crashes in nearly every session, usually when I add a token from the combat tracker onto the map. If, at the beginning of the session, I add every npc and pc to the combat tracker and then drag their tokens from the combat tracker to the map, things work the way they are supposed to work. But, if I try and move a token to a different map (such as the upstairs floor of a 2 story building), or even if I just want to add an npc from the combat tracker onto the map later in the session, then my players start crashing. And usually one or more of them have repeated crashes as they try and get the map reshared. Why is the combat tracker/token moving so glitchy later in a combat?


Thank you in advance for responses. I am a huge fan of Fantasy Grounds. Beyond the issues I mention above, the software tends to be rock solid. The JPG ruleset is fantastic, and I love the flow of combat when using it.

[Moon Wizard]

Robbo,

Thanks for your questions and feedback. Let me take a stab at answering.

Notes: Let me look into this one. The ruleset defines the notes as sharable objects, but it's not appearing in the radial menu for some reason. Also, a player can only share with all. The GM would have to share via portraits.

Portraits: Unlike all the other image assets in FG, portraits have to be installed locally on each player's machine. This allows your players to choose portraits on their own, and just assign them when they are in the game.

CT/Token Crashes: Please private message me with any information you have on re-creating this issue. I have not seen this in my personal game, so I'm very interested in finding out what you might be doing differently.

Thanks,
JPG

[Zeus]

The client crashing issue sounds similar to a problem I experienced last year. This is a trick I picked up from Tenian which nicely fixed it for me:

When you add tokens to a map or about to share a new map, ask your players to first close their Combat Tracker windows. Make sure they all report them as closed and then add your token(s)/share your new map. Once you have added the token(s) or shared the new map, then have the players open their Combat Tracker windows again.

This simple workaround has eliminated all client crashes relating to map and token actions for my groups.

Try it out and let us know if it does the trick.

[dm-crazy]

Take a look in my tutorial (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11997) :)

[Robbo]

Thanks for the responses, and I apologize for taking so long to get back to this thread.

Notes - I talked a bit more with my players about notes, and what they really want is the ability to store other player's notes along side their notes. So, if they hit 'share note' it will show up in everyone else's list of notes. I think right now all it does is pop open the note in front of the other players, but they have no ability to add it to their list of notes. I hope I'm being clear.

Portraits - Thank you!!! That was driving me crazy, but as with so many things in FG, there's always a sensible reason for why it is driving me crazy.

Crashing - the night after I made my last post I had the same problem. I had the combat humming along nicely, but then realized I hadn't added an npc, dragged her on, and boom, crashed us all. I will immediately implement Dr Zeuss's fix and see how that goes.

I have also noticed some quick bar issues. My players were using the quick bar to roll initiative (both groups), and I ran into some strange re-ordering issues. With the first group, two players were using the quick bar to roll initiative, and in the chat window they're characters names were swapped. With the second group, they all rolled initiative using the quick bar, and instead of the results corresponding to their characters in the combat tracker, the numbers appeared sequentially starting at the top of the combat tracker. I hadn't rolled NPC initiative yet, so the numbers were filled in to some of the npcs. It was very confusing. In both cases, switching back over to just rolling off the character sheets fixed the problems. But now no one will use the quick bar, which is a bummer.