Creatures on the map but not on the tracker

[greyhoundgames]

Coming from roll 20, this is something that is very helpful, and so far I have not figured out how to do it. I can drag a token in by itself but then its not connected to its monster and would have to be replaced with actual monsters when it wanted to fight.

I always pre-populated all the monsters on my entire map, and then just added them to the turn tracker as they got involved in combat. Is there no way to do this? Perhaps the monsters move around, or i want to stage them as the players are moving in reaction to noises the players make etc.

[Callum]

The way you do this in FG is by using Encounters, which you can find via a button at the top of the NPC window. You drag the NPC records and tokens into a new Encounter, then drag the tokens onto the map (from the Encounter). When you close the Encounter window, the tokens vanish from the map. But when you open it during play, and click on the arrow button, FG puts all the tokens onto the map at once, in the places you specified. They start off not visible to the players, so you can move them around if necessary - or just reveal them all!

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/wiki/index.php/Encounters

[greyhoundgames]

That worked great. Thanks! P.S some of the guys come in on the turn tracker with 3.1 in a white bubble above their mini icon. What does that mean?

[Callum]

The number is how much the token has been scaled on the map. If you have a grid on the map, tokens will be automatically scaled to the right size. You can adjust the scaling by hovering over the token on the Combat Tracker and rolling your mouse wheel up or down.

[darrenan]

P.S. You don't need to drag monsters from the Encounters window to the tracker. There's a little button at the bottom of the encounter window that puts everything into the tracker with one click. Also, to get everything working correctly, you should never drag tokens onto the map from anywhere except the combat tracker, that is what links everything together.

Summary:
1. Encounter -> Combat Tracker
2. Combat Tracker -> Map
3. Profit!

[darrenan]

And one other thing. You don't strictly need to use encounters i.e. it is ok to drag monsters directly from the NPCs window, or a library entry, into the tracker. The real important part, as I said above, is to always drag tokens to the map from the combat tracker, that is really crucial.

[Trenloe]

Summary:
1. Encounter -> Combat Tracker
2. Combat Tracker -> Map
3. Profit!
If you pre-placed the tokens onto the map while creating the encounter entry (drag each token from the encounter to the map - placed tokens show a check mark) then step 1 does 2 things: automatically puts the right number of creatures in the combat tracker (if you have auto initiative enable it will roll the init too) *and* will automatically put the tokens on the map in the locations where they were pre-placed during encounter creation.

See damned's video on "setting up encounters" here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsgd1zJLdiKUrEd85Dqr6UcaaLvD7YlJd It's for the Castles & Crusades ruleset, but the process is exactly the same in other rulesets.

More info here: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/wiki/index.php/Encounters

[Moon Wizard]

As darrenan mentioned, you don't need to use Encounters, they are just another tool for prep.

You can also associate token to tracker by:
* Create tracker entry (drag and drop NPC link, or right click on tracker and select Create)
* Drag token into tracker token field
* Drag token from tracker entry to map

Or:
* Create tracker entry
* Drag token onto map
* Drag token from map to tracker entry

This can also be done later to change a token on the fly. Drag new token to existing tracker entry, and it will replace on map.

Finally, you can drag the faction markers on bottom of tracker to map to add all tokens of a specific faction. (i.e. Party, Enemies)

Cheers,
JPG

[damned]

You might also have a situation where you have several encounters that might occur in close succession - say in an alley way or in a dungeon setting where the noise of the first encounter or other actions attracts the attention of the next encounter and brings them forward into the current encounter. This is another place where pre-prepped encounters really show their value.

You populate Encounter 1: Street Thugs and the negotiations break down and combat ensues. After 2 rounds...
You populate Encounter 2: Street Urchins and the 2 kids tasked with keeping an eye on the Alley run for help. After 4 more rounds...
You populate Encounter 3: Crossbows! 4 more thugs advance on the party from the shadows of the alley - crossbows pointed! If no resolution in 4 more rounds...
You populate Encounter 4: City Guard and a patrol of 6 watchmen move into the mouth of the Alley behind our heroes...

Each time this happens you can just Click to Add to Combat Tracker each time. Everyone will appear (hidden) where they were initially supposed to but they will be all be prepped in Combat Tracker etc and their positions can be adjusted on the map before revealing. It really keeps the flow of the action happening at a nice pace.

[greyhoundgames]

Right, the only thing that seems to be a problem is the situation described in the last post. If you want them all to be active for your reference and possible position adjustment, it will be one cluttered turn tracker. And so you will be skipping turns a lot and trying to find the right active guys. A section in the tracker like a holding area where you can dump guys who are not to be included in the mainlist would help with this.

[Griogre]

Generally, I've found if they aren't active it's best not to put them on the tracker and if they are on the tracker the best way to determine who is active and who isn't is by toggling the hide or show NPC.

For scenarios where you want reinforcements to arrive after so many rounds, but don't really know what the positioning is going to be, usually you want to use the same type of monsters already on the combat tracker for the earlier rounds. In those cases you can just grab the monster link at the right side of the tracker and drag and drop it on the tracker. They will give you another NPC of the same type not on the map. When the monster's turn comes up just drop its token onto the map where it should be.

[greyhoundgames]

Yeah, that's a pretty good solution.

[damned]

Right, the only thing that seems to be a problem is the situation described in the last post. If you want them all to be active for your reference and possible position adjustment, it will be one cluttered turn tracker. And so you will be skipping turns a lot and trying to find the right active guys. A section in the tracker like a holding area where you can dump guys who are not to be included in the mainlist would help with this.

On the contrary. If you set these up as Encounters - they will not be in the CT until you tell them to go into the CT by clicking the one magic button: Add to Combat Tracker Thats the magic of Encounters. You do the prep before hand and then when you need the adversaries you just click that button to stick them in the tracker and on the map and make sure all tokens are there and all links are working.

If you delete dead combatants out of the CT and you only add the encounter when you need it, there should be no unnecessary clutter :)

You can even bump up or down the Encounter strength before you click that button - however if you change it up (eg from 4 crossbows to 6) the additional tokens cant auto place themselves on the map - they will place themselves in the CT though. Additionally you could add the Crossbowmen encounter and then (either straight away or the following round) add it again - this will auto place all 8 tokens correctly.

[greyhoundgames]

This isn't what I was getting at. I wanted to have everybody in the turn tracker but hidden so that I could move them around the battle map before they were really part of the battle. Basically staging them while other combatants are active. However some good options have been presented and this doesnt happen all that often so I think this issue is settled.

[damned]

can i sneak one last response in?

if you are not auto rolling initiative every turn then setting the "not yet active" combatants to "0" initiative they will go to bottom of list and will get skipped in each cycle until you give them an intiative.... maybe that might work in the way you are describing?

[greyhoundgames]

This sounds like another good solution. Good work.