NPCs with Reroll Effect (Great Weapon Fighting)

[Aaron]

Heya,

I'm currently creating an NPC with the Great Weapon Fighting feat. I am wanting to know if there's a syntax I can use in the NPC sheet which will automatically parse the REROLL 2 into its damage rolls when placing the creature into the combat tracker. I've not found any monster in the MM with this feat, and I've tried experimenting with various wording of traits, and attempted to add the reroll straight into the damage sentence, but with no luck.

Is such a thing possible?

Thanks for the help, and have fun.

[Moon Wizard]

No. The code for parsing NPC powers was written to handle the current MM creatures, so there won't be anything combination of words that will trigger this option. It will need to be handled at the table by the GM.

Regards,
JPG

[spite]

If you are really desperate for it, you can make the npc as a pc instead, then you can use the action like anything else. Of course if its an npc you want more than one of, it becomes an issue.

[Aaron]

Thankyou Moon Wizard for the clarification, and thankyou Spite for the alternative idea.

[Varsuuk]

Assuming Spite's idea works in general (not sure if FG treats "Characters" in any way that might cause an issue) - then it appears, superficially at least, that Devs might be able to make this work better by what may be a minor set of enhancement workarounds:

Copy the codebase for "Character Selection", cause the display to be populated from a different source (ie: Character-like Monsters/NPCs/Masterminds in campaigns ;))

The game treats them as "Characters" to achieve the things the OP and others would want.

Players will never see them on the list of characters to choose.

DM won't have to dig between players and NPCs either.

If it was possible to do extra work, could make it like a Token's UI where if you move the xml to a subdir or something, it automatically creates an icon for that folder. The icons could be a generic icon (no need to get fancy) with mouse-over showing directory name.

Management could be done by the DM by using Character Selection->create new->save to XML->save in new directory.

The ability to handle subfolders would be helpful for long-term villains (who may cross modules) as well as categorizing "standard modified Monsters" into possible categories for easy selection.

[Trenloe]

PCs as NPCs... It's an idea that been floated around a few times. The big issue is that the data structure in FG for a PC is vastly different to that of a NPC in 5E. Very, very different. So much so that PCs in the combat tracker have a lot less GM functionality than NPCs - just open the attacks entry in the combat tracker for a complex NPC to see what's available.

Yes, you could just copy the PC code and use this as a detailed NPC (still losing all of the NPC combat tracker functionality), but this would still be a lot of coding effort (sorry, but it's not minor - certainly not in terms of ongoing support/maintenance over time) for something that can pretty much be used now: create a PC, GM logs in as a player and takes control of the (n)PC so that players can't see it in the character selection screen. So, perhaps a simpler route would be to add a GM right-click option to the Character Selection screen to allow the GM to "take control" of those characters and hide them from the players.

Either way, I'd recommend adding your feature request to the FG wishlist here: https://fg2app.idea.informer.com/

[Trenloe]

So, perhaps a simpler route would be to add a GM right-click option to the Character Selection screen to allow the GM to "take control" of those characters and hide them from the players.
Such as via this extension I've just made: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?28728-GM-PC-Ownership-Extension

[Varsuuk]

Gotcha Trenloe. Btw, the little extension you did addresses the important parts of DMs creating DM "Characters"

I brought up the code reuse because of the GUI elements not exchanging PC/NPC code. I meant that you already can do this by logging in local host but so that 1) don't have to deal with players viewing (which you made an easier solution for) and 2) if the "extended" idea of storing characters in hierarchical way (which I understand COULD be a lot, dunno the code base or even how pre exported characters exist as yet) you could make it easier for a DM to find his "special someone" if he uses this idea a lot and ends up with 57 GM characters.

So the "reuse" I meant is to take all the code supporting the original character select UI and letting it work on a different character data source (the GM character data source) etc.

But as I said, your extension seems enough to float my boat.


On an only tangential ally related point... In order to knock another 15-17 mics off our client FIX input to our server, I took the work I did on the Trading system to FiX session "dispatcher" treading/queue-service model and was able to "invert it" to use for the post fix engine to trading system parsing/validation. I finished the min 3 message types needed for our perf tester but got sidetracked onto a new functionality release that needs rush treatment. So, I have blue-bytes and am dying to see if this roll of the dice gives a comparable improvement. It's not wasted work in any event because it is required in order to service a new custom third party engine we will be evaluating later this month. We didn't write our own and used a "popular" one as a "temporary thing" for "first releases" (that was March 2012...)

It went with nearly no hitches (except a forgotten &) which would have surprised me hadn't I spent so much time finding the right abstractions to use which worked in reverse (although I admit not intending it to do so)

[lousilver]

Fantasy Ground NPCs allow for non-standard dice rolls under actions. So a greatsword could be standard 2d6, or it can be 1d11+1. Extend this to two-handed weapon fighting style and it becomes 1d7+5. To clarify, reroll 1-2 shifts the damage range of a greatsword from 2-12 (2d6), to 6-12. To account for rolling a 1 (on what is now a single die), the bonus should be 5 (5+1=6, the minimum damage), so that makes the roll 12-5=1d7. Any additional modifiers, such as strength, would increase the +5 bonus. alternately you could use 2d4+4.

Another example is a (versatile) spear used two-handed, for 1d8. No need to modify the default damage, but with two-handed fighting style, with a damage ranged of 3-8, it becomes 2 (3-1) + (8-2) 1d6, i.e. 1d6+2.

Where this trick fails is on criticals, because you've effectively removed the bonus from the extra damage. For example, a greatsword crit goes from 2d6 to 4d6, or 4-24 damage. With "reroll 1-2", the damage range on that crit becomes 12-24. However, with no reroll and using the trick above, the damage becomes either 2d7+5 (7-19) or 4d4+4 (8-20). For the spear, whose crit damage should have a range of 6-16, using the trick above is 4-14, which is still more than the non-crit range of 3-8.

[Varsuuk]

Fantasy Ground NPCs allow for non-standard dice rolls under actions. So a greatsword could be standard 2d6, or it can be 1d11+1. Extend this to two-handed weapon fighting style and it becomes 1d7+5. To clarify, reroll 1-2 shifts the damage range of a greatsword from 2-12 (2d6), to 6-12. To account for rolling a 1 (on what is now a single die), the bonus should be 5 (5+1=6, the minimum damage), so that makes the roll 12-5=1d7. Any additional modifiers, such as strength, would increase the +5 bonus. alternately you could use 2d4+4. … snipped other examples


Great weapon feat doesn’t work that way so simply changing the roll results in a skewed (to players benefit) bell curve. I used the feat on my first character and I kept 1s and 2s regularly as luck would flee me ;)

This behaviors needs to take into account that the range remains the same, it’s just the bell curve shifts in the player’s benefit (though not as much as a straight 3 min per dice.)

https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/general-discussion/45316-why-the-great-weapon-fighting-style-is-a-bad

[lousilver]

Hmm. I didn't realize it was a one-time reroll, and I just confirmed fantasy grounds is programmed that way by setting up a weapon and rolling until the final result had 1s and 2s in it after a reroll. But i'm not sure why you wouldn't reroll, worst case a 2 becomes a 1, but 1s can't get worse. I think i might still (sometimes) program my NPCs as described, just to retain the option for some variation. Not like the players will know.

[Varsuuk]

I ALWAYS rerolled even if it was two 2s ;) I mean, that’s why I got the feat! Hehe