What VTT to use?

[Hlynrian]

I use a Mac. I own licenses to Fantasy Grounds and D20Pro, I also am a subscriber to Roll20. I have used Roll20 to play a lot of games, but not Pathfinder. What I'm interested in is picking the better VTT for playing Pathfinder. The problem with Roll20 is the lag (for the GM) can be atrocious when running games with detailed character sheets, specially if you are trying to load all the NPCs into a the game for a module, and there are not great options for working around that.

D20Pro has a seamless character import process. Kudo's to them for character import, but their map support is weird, and I don't care for the implementation.

I WANT to run games on Fantasy Grounds because I like the way it looks and feels though I'd rather have dynamic lighting I can do without for now. Time is critical to me, so please tell me I've overlooked how to import characters from Hero Lab to Fantasy Grounds given that I use a Mac?

[LordEntrails]

Yes, I'm pretty sure you can import PF characters from HL into FG (I know you can do it for 5E characters). I don't do it, so can't give you instructions, but you should be able to find threads here or on the HL forums on how to do it.

Someone will probably be along shortly to point you to the right info.

I have not used Roll20, other than trying to evaluate it some years ago. I hear from many people that prep time in FG is MUCH less than in Roll20.

If you want to see some compairisons between the VTT's:
https://www.fantasygrounds.com/filelibrary/VTTComparison.pdf
https://battlegroundsgames.com/vtt-comparison-chart/

[Zacchaeus]

Whilst you can import Pathfinder characters into FG from HeroLab I don't know that the importer works on a Mac. I think the problem is that the utility which converts the XML output from HeroLab into something that FG recognises only runs natively in Windows. However I don't know for sure; I'm only repeating things that I am aware of from answering support questions on Discord where the user couln't get the utility to run.

[Trenloe]

The FG character converter is a Windows application that needs .Net libraries. You can get it running on a Mac using WINE (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_(software)) libraries but it usually requires a little bit of tweaking to work.

[Nylanfs]

Somebody could write a custom xml export file for HL like they did for PCGen. Then you would just export to an xml from HL and import into FG.

[dberkompas]

I wrote a custom output for D&D 5E that can likely be repurposed should anyone care to try.
(Tested on both Mac & PC)

https://forums.wolflair.com/showthread.php?t=60176


Dave

Here's a hint to get you started.

5E: abilities/ability
PF: attributes/attribute

[Hlynrian]

Thanks for the tips everyone. I think what I'll do is just not worry about playing Pathfinder on Fantasy Grounds. They've announced 2nd edition, which means I'll likely just stop buying Pathfinder products until that gets sorted out and move to something else, Savage Worlds! I like how Fantasy Grounds implements Savage Worlds.

I'd love to be able to program my own solutions to issues but my skills aren't there for that. Good gaming!

[Hlynrian]

Green Ronin's Advanced Bestiary NPC import feature is Awesome!!! Saves the day.