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lachancery
September 1st, 2015, 14:11
Has anyone written an extension (like town & shop) to keep track of armies stats block (ie. Ultimate Campaign) in Fantasy Grounds?

To the GMs who have run Kingmaker or Wrath of the Reighteous APs in FG: I'd like to hear how you handled it?

Thanks.

dulux-oz
September 1st, 2015, 14:13
Not that I know of - its one of the things I've been playing with but I'm concentrating on getting v4 of Locations out.

darrenan
September 1st, 2015, 18:31
At one point I started doing this, then realized it was unnecessary and could be 'hacked' within FG using the existing NPC stat block. For the army attack, I put in a dummy entry for the attack roll portion, and then the damage is (1d20+OM). For example:

"melee +0 (1d20+7)"

For DV, just use a DR entry with the DV value. Ex: "DR: 10". This can go into either of the SQ or SA fields on the NPC sheet.

You can create effects for most of the Tactics and Strategies. Things that give OM bonuses are translated into "DMG:" effects, things that give DV bonuses are translated into "DR:" effects (I think these stacked ok with the base DV entry above).

You don't really need a map for the mass combat rules, but the CT needs a map, and tokens on the map so typically I would just load up a blank new image with FG and line up the armies in two opposing lines on the map. Just as with normal encounters, it's still necessary to drag NPCs from the CT onto the map to tie everything together and allow this to work.

To do an army attack, just have the attacker target the defender, apply any effects, and then click on the damage portion of the attack (as I said, the attack portion of the line is just dummy data to allow it to parse and highlight correctly).

If you want your players to control specific armies, just drag the army from CT to the player's portrait.

This could be made a little clearer with an extension that adds an Army option checkbox at the bottom and modifies the sheet UI, similar to how traps and vehicles work, when that type is selected, but it's certainly not necessary as long as you can do the translation in your head of which fields are holding which data.

And I would be happy to do a demo of this sometime, if the above info isn't clear enough.

Cheers!

lachancery
September 1st, 2015, 20:14
Your description is pretty clear actually; I had begun thinking how I could use the current NPC entries and Combat Tracker to handle it.

How did you track the unit's morale? As a FG effect?

The Mass Combat in Kingmaker is a war which lasts over multiple months, so I will need to keep track of a few persistent variable information (unit counts, morale).

Thanks for sharing your experience. I'll check the Ultimate Battle third party stuff too.

darrenan
September 1st, 2015, 20:31
Hmm, I don't remember dealing with Morale. Maybe I screwed up on that front... In any case, I would probably just track it manually in one of the unused fields (SQ, SA, Feats, etc.) and also do the morale checks manually. I don't remember Morale Checks coming up very often, if at all. There are a few cases where you make a Morale check in order to perform specific actions (like Withdraw) which I'm sure never came up, either because the players didn't read and understand all the rules, or they just dominated every fight. Because of the imbalanced nature of the system, routs never happened either, armies went straight to defeated.

In Wrath, the mass combat portion only lasts a couple weeks of game time, and there's no associated kingdom so I ignored all the economy/loyalty/stability stuff. It's basically just an incursion to recapture a city with a handful of mass combat encounters along the way.

lachancery
September 1st, 2015, 20:58
Ahhh, I see... In Kingmaker, the players will have to recruit and supply their armies, and their location on the regional map will matter as the opposing nations could move their armies to lay waste to hexes owned by the players' kingdom, siege/capture/sack their cities, calling for Kingdom check rolls. Each nation in this case may prefer to withdraw their armies early. Keeping each mass battle light when played at this scale may yield a more memorable experience. I'll be reading up on it more and mocking some battles to see. Thanks for your insight!