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listeningflames
November 21st, 2010, 02:24
Hello everyone,

I'm just wondering if someone could help me out with something. I want to get to playing D&D 4th Ed. I just purchased the full license to FGII and I was wondering what add-ons, library's, or modules I should acquire. I don't mind spending a few bucks if necessary, I'm just the type that likes to have the extra tools and stuff to make gaming easier.

So, any advice or direction? It would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Moon Wizard
November 21st, 2010, 21:15
Here are a few things to look at for setting up a game:

* Map and token packs for your game. We offer some for sale through the FG store, or you can scour the Internet and find your own maps and tokens. I personally scan premade adventures, and clip out the maps; then use token packs for characters and creatures.

* You should definitely look up the 4E parser on the forums, which is written by one of our community members. It allows you to access your DDI subscription data from within your 4E campaign in FG.

Cheers,
JPG

LordDeathJC
November 22nd, 2010, 04:35
Flames,

I am also a newbie to 4e. I have the full license as well and am also wondering how to gather the materials in order to create a game and/or hopefully find a game to join that people are willing to help newbies. Perhaps we can find figure out the game and system together in a game or something?

Jake

Fot5
November 22nd, 2010, 06:13
Personally, I don't know of much that you need to buy. I purchased most of the fiery dragon 4e tokens (https://www.rpgnow.com/index.php?cPath=50_4889), although it's pretty simple to make your own, and you can find them in some of the user groups around.

The 4e parser (by Tenian, https://tenian.eugenez.net/Parser/) and a subscription to DDI (https://www.wizards.com/dndinsider/compendium/database.aspx) is almost essential because the parser allows you to download all of the WOTC data into a format that can be read by FGII. As a result, you can pull up all of the creatures and magic items for use in an adventure as a GM. I've also found a couple of extensions to be really useful.

1) The 4e party sheet (by DrZeuss, https://zgp.eugenez.net/) allows the GM to track PC stats and automatically roll party skill checks.

2) The lore extension (by Tenian, https://dnd-4e.blogspot.com/2010/08/4e-lore-extension.html) automatically shares lore data with the PCs, making that part of combat a bit simpler.

3) The language extension (by Tenian, https://dnd-4e.blogspot.com/2010/07/i-did-some-more-work-and-locked.html) is also pretty cool. It allows you to share conversations in languages other than common only with PCs who have that language listed on their character sheets.

There are also a couple of good module preparation tools on DrZeuss' site, although I don't use them.

However, that said, if you have the parser and a DDI account, you really have all you need to make adventures because you can pull all of the data down from the DDI account and can prepare most of the adventures published in Dungeon magazine for delivery via FGII in just a few hours.

The video tutorials by Xorn (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?t=12665) will give you a really good introduction to how to use FGII and how to prepare your own adventures.

If you want to PM me, I can demo some of the materials in my 4e campaign.

listeningflames
November 22nd, 2010, 15:54
Flames,

I am also a newbie to 4e. I have the full license as well and am also wondering how to gather the materials in order to create a game and/or hopefully find a game to join that people are willing to help newbies. Perhaps we can find figure out the game and system together in a game or something?

Jake

Hey Jake,

Yeah, I'd be up for fumbling through together. I have two other people that may or may not be getting into this as well. They're friends of mind that live away from me. I told them about FGII and they said they'd check it out. I'd be more than happy to DM if needed/wanted.

Are you good with weekends? I'm pretty busy during the week, so that's my preferred time. I can do weekdays, but its a little less flexible.

Have you played a lot of D&D 4E?

listeningflames
November 22nd, 2010, 22:23
Okay, is there a place that breaks down how to use this parser? I'd really like to be able to load all of the D&D 4E stuff into FGII, but I have no idea what I'm doing.

I might be able to figure it out, but it'd be nice to have some guidance.

Griogre
November 23rd, 2010, 04:00
Check out this post: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showpost.php?p=84732&postcount=8

mattcolville
November 23rd, 2010, 20:22
Here's a collection of all the 4E data...or at least, a whole lot of it, already parsed and ready to be dropped in.

[MODERATOR: link removed]

Saves you a ton of time, as even with the parser, the act of scrubbing the compendium is not simple or quick.

I trust that if the mods feel this post is in danger of violating something, they'll remove it.

Zeus
November 23rd, 2010, 21:15
4E is a licensed product and is not released under the OGL used in previous editions. I'm afraid you will have to remove the link as you are in effect distributing Wizards IP (Free of Charge I might add) without their direct permission, this therefore violates the Terms & Conditions of their material and infringes upon their copyright.

The 4EParser was in effect created because of this very reason, as it allows a DMs who subscribe to Wizards DDI membership to scrape content from the Compendium into FGII compatible 4E ruleset modules (legally).

Th0rh4mm3r
November 25th, 2010, 15:37
I have a question about the data scraped from the compendium.

I have scraped and added PHBI+ to FG, but when I go in to create a character none of the class features, like the fighters weapon specialization in two handed or sword and shield are in my library?

The racial abilities like dragonborn fury are in there, so am i just getting a bad scrape or is that data not accessible in the compendium scrape?

Fot5
November 25th, 2010, 18:24
I remember that there were some powers that did not get scraped the last time I parsed from the DDI compendium. The most notable ones were the class features, and I think that these stopped being scraped about the time Essentials came out. I suspect that this occurs because class features are now buried within the class descriptions in the DDI and do not appear in the powers descriptions (e.g., do a search on combat agility, and nothing comes up in the powers option of the search). Tenian can probably confirm this.

What I did was to go through each class description in the compendium and cut-and-paste all class features into the powers file that is created by the scraper and then parse the file with this additional information in it. Doing this didn't take that much time--maybe an hour or so. I used two general formats for these class features (shown below with fake data). I typically add these descriptions to the Abilities tab (and not to the Powers tab) of the character sheet in FGII.

Combat Agility Fighter Feature
FLAVOR TEXT.
FREQUENCY ? KEYWORDS
ACTION RANGE
Trigger: TRIGGER TEXT.
Effect: EFFECT TEXT.
Target: TARGET DETAILS
Attack: ATTACK DETAILS.
Hit: HIT DETAILS.

One-handed Weapon Talent Fighter Feature
DESCRIPTION OF POWER HERE.

Depending on how detailed you want to get, you can also pull out the more general class feature descriptions (e.g., Channel Divinity for Clerics has a high level description that describes what Channel Divinity is and then has the specific Channel Divinity power options). To differentiate these higher level descriptions from the actual powers, I put the titles of the higher levels in caps so that they stand out when they appear in the powers lists in your library. However, because these aren't the powers you'll use during combat, adding them to your list just adds another level of completeness to your data in case you're interested in something like that.

PM me if you need clarification.

mattcolville
November 25th, 2010, 19:36
I have a question about the data scraped from the compendium.

I have scraped and added PHBI+ to FG, but when I go in to create a character none of the class features, like the fighters weapon specialization in two handed or sword and shield are in my library?

The racial abilities like dragonborn fury are in there, so am i just getting a bad scrape or is that data not accessible in the compendium scrape?

When I open my parsed version of the PHB1, I see three Fighter Class Abilities under "Powers - Fighter Exploits."

Combat Challenge
Combat Superiority
Fighter Weapon Talent

If that's what you're looking for and, as the poster above me indicated, PM me and I'll send you my PHB parse.

Th0rh4mm3r
November 26th, 2010, 08:40
I remember that there were some powers that did not get scraped the last time I parsed from the DDI compendium. The most notable ones were the class features, and I think that these stopped being scraped about the time Essentials came out. I suspect that this occurs because class features are now buried within the class descriptions in the DDI and do not appear in the powers descriptions (e.g., do a search on combat agility, and nothing comes up in the powers option of the search). Tenian can probably confirm this.

What I did was to go through each class description in the compendium and cut-and-paste all class features into the powers file that is created by the scraper and then parse the file with this additional information in it. Doing this didn't take that much time--maybe an hour or so. I used two general formats for these class features (shown below with fake data). I typically add these descriptions to the Abilities tab (and not to the Powers tab) of the character sheet in FGII.

Combat Agility Fighter Feature
FLAVOR TEXT.
FREQUENCY ? KEYWORDS
ACTION RANGE
Trigger: TRIGGER TEXT.
Effect: EFFECT TEXT.
Target: TARGET DETAILS
Attack: ATTACK DETAILS.
Hit: HIT DETAILS.

One-handed Weapon Talent Fighter Feature
DESCRIPTION OF POWER HERE.

Depending on how detailed you want to get, you can also pull out the more general class feature descriptions (e.g., Channel Divinity for Clerics has a high level description that describes what Channel Divinity is and then has the specific Channel Divinity power options). To differentiate these higher level descriptions from the actual powers, I put the titles of the higher levels in caps so that they stand out when they appear in the powers lists in your library. However, because these aren't the powers you'll use during combat, adding them to your list just adds another level of completeness to your data in case you're interested in something like that.

PM me if you need clarification.

Hhhmmm thanks for the info. I should be able to create a class feature library module and just put the class features for all the books in there right? That way when I do a full scrape again in the future I wont have to re-enter the abilities?

I assume I would need a class file in addition to the powers file to do that?

Fot5
November 26th, 2010, 14:16
Yes, you would need a class file, but I think that you could use the same one that you use for each source book, or just compile the information (eliminating redundancies) across all source books you are parsing. Instead of creating a different module for class features, I added them to the front end of the powers file for each source, commenting where they began and where they ended. That way, the next time I do a scrape, I can just copy and paste that text into the newly scraped powers file. If you don't know about it, you should check out the catalog feature of the parser. It will compile all of the powers in your modules folder into a single list, so players don't have to know which source book the file came from every time they want to find a power.

Swampsurfer
November 26th, 2010, 22:30
Me too! I'm a noob to FG2. I've played a little D&D 4e, but would very much appreciate anyone's time who is willing to jump in Ventrillo and talk me through some of this parseing and such so that I might set up my FG2 install to play. I have the Lite version. Thanks in advance.

Fot5
November 27th, 2010, 16:45
I'm not familiar with the Lite version, but I don't think that the parser is going to be of much use to you with that version. The parser is going to be most useful to those who have a full version license because it allows you to pull data from the compendium and to create modules that can be used as a GM during a game. If you are a player, the GM who is hosting your game will share the data with you while you are connected to the host's server. I'd be happy to host a quick walk through of how FGII works as a player if you want (PM me, if you're interested), but the parser is a stand alone program. Perhaps someone should make an introductory video, like those created by Xorn, for the parser. I would, but I don't have anything like Camtasia for creating demo videos.

Griogre
November 28th, 2010, 04:23
The PH and Splats are worth parsing for lites because those are client modules and can be used by all versions of FG.