Can you increase the default hp of Monsters?

[necrobane84]

I'm new to FG. I'm trying to increase the default hp of a monster from the 5E monster manual but it apparently won't allow me to edit any stats whatsoever. Any info would be appreciated.

[Mask_of_winter]

Have you tried dragging a monster from the library and putting it in your Personalities first? Or clicking on the lock icon to unlock it?

[necrobane84]

Clicking on the lock does nothing, the personalities worked though. Thanks so much!

[etropic]

I think you have to put it on "your side" first. This creates a copy of it in your npc's list. THEN the lock button will unlock and you can do whatever you like.

[Griogre]

Once you have the monster in the combat tracker you can do anything you want to the hps as well.

[crb31]

Isn't there a option on the DM side to increase the hp difficulty automatically- even make it a random die roll?

[ddavison]

Yes, check the preferences to set how the NPC hit points are handled. You can set it to reroll random HP, keep the default/average hp or set it to max hit points.

[Seananigans]

It would be pretty neat to have a double-click roll individually for each monster in the combat tracker for HP and Initiative (similar to party sheet or NPC sheet checks/saves)! The initiative one is definitely at the top of my want list.

[Zacchaeus]

You essentially have that depending on how you set up your preferences in the options tab.

For Initiative you want to have a look at Add: Auto NPC Initiative. This has three possibilities, off, on and group. All of them function when an NPC is first placed on the Combat Tracker. Off means no initiative is rolled, on means it is rolled and group means that the first NPC will roll and all subsequent NPCs will have the same initiative as the first. I suspect that you want this set to on. That way you don't have to go into the menu to make the NPCs initiative roll. If it's set to off or Group then you need to make the roll via the menu. If set to off then each NPC will have a different initiative if set to Group then all the NPCs that are the same will have the same initiative.

For hit points it is as ddavison says. Find the option CT: NPC hit points under the house rules section. There are also three options, Standard, Max and Random. Standard will give each NPC the average hit points as per the Monster Manual. Max will give the maximum hit points possible and Random will roll the dice and come up with a number for each individual NPC.

So by setting initiative to on and hit points to max or random you will get what you want without having to click each individual NPC. Of course as DM you can edit any of these numbers any time you want simply by typing a new value into the initiative box on the Combat Tracker.

You can find more details on all of the options here (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/wiki/index.php/5E_Options).

[Seananigans]

Right, I understand all the functionality. I'm wanting more easy controls. I prefer to pre-add an area's encounters and then simply roll initiative for things they encounter as they encounter them. This keeps the combat tracker sorted functionally for that method. Unfortunately, there's no easy way to roll initiative for monsters that way, because the options have to do with entry into the combat tracker, and the menu is either ALL npcs or nothing. I'd like a button to press to roll a monster's initiative, seems like it'd be pretty easy to implement given how the party sheet and npc sheets work.

Same with monster HP, I'd like an easy way to re-roll a monster's HP. I prefer random, but sometimes I like to mess with them a bit of the entire group ends up on the low end, for instance.


-edit- Alternatively for the initiative thing and re: pre-loading encounters, I've thought a second tab for inactive things in the combat tracker (only visible to DM obviously) would be a fine option for that sort of thing. That might be the sort of thing that'd wait for the Unity build though, whereas the simple roll button (or dbl click) options seem like they'd be an easy quick addition.

[Zacchaeus]

Ah, I see. I suspect that you may be fairly unique in your methodology but you can make a suggestion here (https://fg2app.idea.informer.com/) to have what you'd like to see; this is particularly apposite given that Fantasy Grounds will be moving over to the Unity engine in due course and such are the kind of things that might be looked at afresh.

[Andraax]

Well, you could always just roll a die and drag the result into the creature's Init box.

[Seananigans]

Well, you could always just roll a die and drag the result into the creature's Init box.

Yup, that's basically what I do right now :)

[damned]

if you arent happy with someones init just change the Init by typing in a new value.
rerolling could end up with the same or worse initiative.

[Seananigans]

Hey neat! I just discovered you can roll individual NPC initiative from the combat tracker by dbl-clicking the "Init" value in the Sword-Icon/Action expand section. That really helps a ton!

[Griogre]

There should also be a setting in options where you can have it automatically roll individual initiatives instead of group ones.