Feature questions for a potential buyer

[graphil]

Currently I run v3.5 table top games but I'm very intrigued by FG2. However before committing to buy it I would like to know whether the following things are possible with it.

1. I've got various house rule in the campaign such as different base HD for core classes, extra feats and spells, different class skills. Is it possible to implement all of these in the software?

2. My players each run 2 characters. Is this supported if they have a single copy of the lite version each?

3. Sometimes we have to fudge rolls to stop something campaign ending happening. I.e. instead of having that 20 rolled you've changed it to a 1. Is this possible?

4. Is there a feature to XP track and notify players when they go up levels? i.e. They have an encounter and kill a load of CR2's. Will the software track what has been killed and allocate XP accordingly?

thx in advance. G

[ddavison]

The level of automation can always be scaled back as needed. For the most part, FG2 does very little "rules enforcement", so pretty much everything you listed below can be done. The feats on the character sheet are the ones that you've keyed in (for custom ones) or drag-and-dropped onto the character sheet from the SRD library module. If you wanted to get fancy with it, you could build a custom library module with all your house rules and then share that with the connected players.

2. Players can run multiple characters from one Lite license. They select the "active" character which changes the voice used within the chat window for emotes, spoken text, etc.

3. You can choose to hide the DM rolls and just share the result with the players. They may see you rolling multiple shadow dice if you re-rolled anything. Otherwise, you can modify the result and share that with the players.

4. Again, FG doesn't enforce the character leveling portion of the game. It simply allows the players to level up their characters when and however the GM and Players want. The character sheets within FG provide a place to track XP, just like in an in-person game.

[graphil]

Thx for the answers. Just to clarify what I mean with 4.
Lets say you have a party of 4 1st levels and they kill a CR2 creature. Does the tool tell you they have earned 150xp each and can drag the earned XP on their character to increase their current amount?

[PoisonAlchemist]

No, it does not. If I am not mistaken part of the reason it does not is that the XP required to level A. Varies with fast/medium/slow XP progression, as well as ad-hoc adjustments and B. Is WotC intellectual property. Aside from that there are online tools that can calculate 5xCR3=99999 XP, but nothing in fantasy grounds.

There is, however, a section called encounters which will tally up the total CR for the group of monsters, and automagically put them all on the combat tracker with tokens and everything.

[Trenloe]

No, it does not. If I am not mistaken part of the reason it does not is that the XP required to level A. Varies with fast/medium/slow XP progression, as well as ad-hoc adjustments and B. Is WotC intellectual property. Aside from that there are online tools that can calculate 5xCR3=99999 XP, but nothing in fantasy grounds.
I don't think either of these reasons are valid - certainly not B, as XP and levels are shown in the SRD and therefore can be used as part of the OGL.

I'd say the reason automatic tracking and allocation of XP isn't there in Fantasy Grounds is because it hasn't been implemented yet.

I've been toying with the idea of creating an extension for the 3.5E ruleset (with Pathfinder bias) that does some calculations for CR and total XP in the encounter section - so the GM can fine tune encounters by increasing or reducing the number of creatures in the encounter and it would show the encounter CR and total XP. I haven't done it yet though and, it isn't really what graphil is asking for - but is a start... :)

[Zeus]

I'd agree with Trenloe. The functionality hasn't materialised yet due to other development priorities rather than its not being doable.

There's been a similar request recently for 4E encounters to auto-total XP for NPCs. And that one's on my task list.

The 4E Partysheet extension also implements a feature that enables DM's to distribute XP (based upon successful completion of encounters) to all party members and provides XP tracking for all players. So the functionality can be ported to 3.5E quite straightforwardly, albeit with slight tweaks to the rule mechanics to accommodate 3.5E's way of doing XP.

[graphil]

Sounds good. Just for information I've built all this in an excel spreadsheet to help at the moment.
The monsters are in an initiative tracker just like FR2 has and it includes what CR each is. When they are marked as killed they go into the XP tracker.
The XP tracker is a grid for each party member (including friendly NPCs that fight with them). It is a table that has each level, their current XP and XP to next level.
So at the end of the encounter you can hit the apply XP button to distribute to the party.
In addition it has stats for the following which is what I think Trenloe is talking about:
Party Level 3.17
Encounter Level 3.00
Resources Expended 38%
Success/Survival Rate 81%