New to FG, I have a few questions!

[Kulis]

Hello all,

I am new to fg, long time dm and player. I have read quite a few guides/tutorials, so I have a pretty good understanding of FG thus far. I have run one game through it and it was a huge hit with my group.

Question #1. A lot of my NPCs, both friendly and hostile use character classes/stats. The current milestone bad guy for my group is a lvl 15 Necromancer. I don't want players to be able to see him show up in the pc list, or at a minimum hide his level and their ability to open his character sheet. I also have a lvl 14 life priest as an ally that appears from time to time, same thing. I don't want them to be able to see his lvlor look at his character sheet. Any thoughts or suggestions on how to hide characters in the PC window from my players.

Question #2. In the video guides I have seen for 5E for character creation they just create a level one character. When I created my lvl 15 Necromancer (Wizard) it didn't prompt me for a school of specialization. Is there another way to level up a character through fg where class milestones are automatically applied? Do we just have to manually apply them?

Question #3. This relates to question #2. If I have a level 10 Evocation Wizard, is their a way that fg automatically adds in the damage from Empowered Evocation or do I need to set up an effect for it?

Question #4. Is there a way to activate Rage on a barbarian without creating a general effect that everyone can see? (my effects table is starting to get a lot of added effects in it lol)

Thanks in advance for taking time to help a noob!

Kulis

[damned]

Heya and welcome Kulis.

Launch a second instand of Fantasy Grounds and choose Join Game - use a different username and choose localhost for the Host Address.
Then choose any/all NPCs that you dont want the PCs to see (or even know about). You only need to do this once per NPC.

Use Drag and Drop for ALL 5e PC creation. If you want her to be Level 15 drag the class on 15 times and answer any questions along the way. Then go thru and check your spell slots. Or do it manually - its pretty straight forward either way.

Probably an Effect but Ill let someone who actually knows the answer to this one chime in...

As your classes increase in level you will get a bit of Effect overload... there isnt really any way around this... except for a TPK and go back to level 1 PCs :)

[Kulis]

Dammed,

Thanks for the answers! #1 was especially helpful! I now have another question (see where this is going lol, more answers more questions!)

I answered my own question!

Kulis

[Kulis]

BTW Dammned,

I will give my PCs the TPK option if they just can't handle all of the effects and have them start over at level 1. I am sure that will be hugely popular lol!

Kulis

[damned]

Hey Kulis you will find plenty of answers from the community here so dont be shy :)

When you add NPCs to the Combat Tracker they are by default not visible. There is a little eye icon beside their name that can be toggled on and off to make the NPCs visible/invisible. This does NOT work with NPCs that are actually setup as PCs. Is that what you are looking for?

[Zacchaeus]

Kulis; you might want to have a browse through the character creation (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/wiki/index.php/5E_Character_Sheet) guide in the wiki here. You should also have a look at the effects guide (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/wiki/index.php/5E_Effects) also in the wiki and perhaps also the NPC sheet (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/wiki/index.php/5E_NPC_Sheet) guide.

As damned says above to create a higher level PC use drag and drop to add in the number of levels required. I'd suggest that you pause at each level and deal with the additional things which get added in and then delete these where necessary from the Abilities tab. For example every 4th level you get an ability increase - at level 4 deal with that increase and then delete the item from abilities and when you next get to level 8 a new item will appear prompting you to add in some more ability scores. If you didn't delete the first one it won't show and you might then get confused by the number of ability increases you actually have (that's assuming you understand what I just said of course). Also don't delete stuff that are permanently on the character like 'Spellcasting' or 'Barbarian Rage'; so that you can reference these later.

FG won't automatically add in the Evocation Empowerment so you'll have to go through each evocation spell and add in the additional damage manually I'm afraid.

As for Rage create the effect on the Barbarian; not as a general effect. Indeed almost every effect you create should be on the individual PC rather than set up as a general effect. You usually won't need that many general effects at all; depending on your campaign I suppose.

As regards the plethora of effects what I'd suggest is that you take a few weeks off from your current campaign and get yourself the Lost Mines of Phandelver and play through that with your group from 1st level. This way you are eased into the general use of FG and character creation and effects and well .. everything else really. Then with the increased confidence that you will have gained from running that you can go back to your 15th level campaign. :)

[JohnD]

Tpk! Tpk! Tpk!

[Zacchaeus]

Tpk! Tpk! Tpk!

What?

[Morgentaler]

What?

TPK: Total Party Kill

[JohnD]

Sorry, inner voice escaped.

[Kulis]

Zacchaeus,

Thanks for your response. I didn't even notice the text guides. I had only gone through some of the video guides. That Character Creation Guide is very well written and has answered some questions I have. I am going to play with it some more until I hit a wall on something!

Kulis

[Kulis]

Ok I now know how and can add individual effects for each character as needed. That really cleaned up my Effects window lol! Feel free to share any other guides that may come in handy!

Kulis

[Zacchaeus]

There's a couple of posts sticked above that you might find useful like the 5e Effects examples and TASAgents one on Advanced Fantasy Grounds Usage. There's some more videos by this chap (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDLvZzXFxdJCBSl6J-202IA) and this other chap (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-pNvUFwsrAHTtuQna02FEA) that might also be worth a look if you haven't seen them already.