Question about Animal Companions

[dooSheR]

What is the best way to approach animal companions using Fantasy Grounds? I've read a few ideas, like making an item and linking the NPC companion into the item, although I cannot seem to do this.

Does anyone have any suggestions? Can anyone tell me what the trick is to linking an NPC inside of an item, or linking anything other than an ability or power inside an item?

Any help would be appreciated.

[darrenan]

Not sure how different they are in 4E compared to 3.5/PF (or how different the rulesets are for that matter), but I typically just use a second character sheet for animal companions. Not sure why you would need an item involved at all, they don't go into your inventory after all.

[dooSheR]

Apparently someone used it as an easy work around for the player to have access to their NPC animal companion sheet. I am pretty new to Fantasy Grounds, is it easy for 1 player to control 2 PCs without having to run multiple programs?

[Trenloe]

Yeah, use a second PC for your companion - it's the easiest and most flexible.

It's very easy to switch between the 2 - just double-click the portrait in the top left of the desktop, or even just have 2 character sheets open at once.

[darrenan]

The fun part is when you have your animal companion selected and then type in the chat window. Talking pets FTW!

[Griogre]

LOL, too true. My Druid's wolf did a lot more talking then expected.

[cheechako]

I had been switching character sheets to make my cat's rolls. I just discovered that I can pick my main character, and then set hot-keys from any character I control such as the cat companion. I cannot figure out how to change the hot key's message, though. I'll set hot-keys next session - they will make life so much easier.

[Griogre]

For my Sentinel's wolf, I kept his powers/attacks on my Druid's Character sheet and only had his Defenses and HP on his actual character sheet so the DM could roll against them. IE My druid had an at-will called "Grendel" (the wolf's attack) and a Situational "Faithful Pack Hound" to help avoid most of the switching back and forth.

Hot keys would work fine as well, but it think it's easier to look at the details of a power to make sure the attack/damage values are up to date.

[Trenloe]

I had been switching character sheets to make my cat's rolls. I just discovered that I can pick my main character, and then set hot-keys from any character I control such as the cat companion. I cannot figure out how to change the hot key's message, though. I'll set hot-keys next session - they will make life so much easier.
Hotkeys are great shortcuts. One gotcha - if you update your character sheet, the hotkeys do not update. They aren't linked to the characters sheet, once they've been dropped in the slot they are static.

When you say "change the message" what do you mean? The label in the hotkey slot or the actual underlying roll? If it's the label in the slot just right click on the slot and select "edit label". There are many menus "hidden" but available through a right-click.

[cheechako]

Right - it is important to note that when you drag an action, you drag the action as it is set up at that moment. So anything that changes the action (on the sheet) will not change the hot-key.

And that's why the name - I set up a hot key to roll Perception. I added a +2 modifier to my character sheet and set up a second hot key to also roll Perception, and this one took the modifier. One is named Percep-ALONE and the other is Percep+Alert. If my character and companion are next to each other, they both act as if they had Alertness. So, I can see the names and see which is which. When I use the hot-key, it will add the +2 to the roll or not depending on which hot key I activated. However, the message is always [SKILL] Perception. It would be great if the hot-key sent the given name with the roll. My perception rolls would then be obvious: Alone or Alert.

Another thing I noticed when setting the hot keys: At first, I thought F5 for attack and Shift-F5 for damage. However, holding the shift for that bank of hot keys also is the same as holding shift when rolling damage. When I attached a saving roll to Shift-F5, it works fine. When I attached a damage roll to Shift-F5, it would always roll critical damage. In fact, I am not sure if you can "shift" hot-key damage to critical unless you put the damage in the Shift-bank, and then it is always critical damage.

Edit: Hot keys might update from the character sheet upon loading up the character. In a test game, I set up a Perception hot key, then added +2 misc to the character sheet, and set up a second key with the +2. When I save the campaign, exit, start back up, and then join as a player again, both hot keys now have the current +2 misc mod (which was left on the character sheet). So, hot keys still seem very handy, but they are very, very limited. Also, it seems best to reconfirm that they do what you think they do whenever you load your character.