Arrix
October 2nd, 2018, 21:18
Hello everyone, I hope you have a great day and thank you for reading this.
I had my eye on Fantasy Grounds for a while now, but the high entry price held me off from buying. I forgot about it and then - a few years later - I saw the current offer on steam. Well, now I'm seriously considering getting the ultimate edition since I have payed more already for the Roll20 subscription.
But before that I have a few questions I couldn't answer after playing around with the demo version. I apologize if those questions have already been answered.
A bit about me and my group: We mainly play a system called Exalted 3rd Edition that is using a modified version of the storyteller system (World of Darkness). While I am a bit sad that there is no official Fantasy Grounds module for Exalted (that would haven been an instant buy) there isn't one for Roll20 and I'm used to doing/importing/writing/homebrewing all the stuff myself. For now we are waiting for the next release in the Exalted line and are playing DnD 5e in the meantime. This post isn't about the DnD part though, but about the possible customization I could pull of given enough time and committment. I wanted to learn coding for a while now and learning while making a future campaign more enjoyable sounds fun.
So here am I asking questions.
1. In what ways is this better than Roll20 and in which is it worse? I'm not exactly asking for a feature comparison - already found one - but more for reasons why you guys stick with Fantasy Grounds over Roll20 or other things.
2. Can Fantasy Grounds count dice/successes? If so how?
Background: The system rolls x D10's (where the actual amount is depending on Attributes, Abillities, used Skills and other modifiers) with a target number of 7 (in some cases this can change) against a difficulty of y. Every die that comes up as 7 or higher (variable) counts as a success while every die that shows a 10 counts as two successes (this is also variable as some skills lower the crit threshold). Rerolls and exploding dice can also happen. Having no success and at least one 1 counts as a bodge. A player needs at least y successes on a check to pass.
I would be happy to get the basic mechanic done in a timely fashion. I.e. letting the player roll x dice and then the counting of successes. More elaborate mechanics would be cool as well, but are not exactly needed. A fast way of rolling several dice of the same type with a variable TN with a variable crit threshold and counting the successes (with output into the chat) is probably the single most important thing. In combat one can potentially roll up to 30+ D10's. Counting that takes time which I would like to reduce as much as possible. On Roll20 that works well except for the crits and anything more elaborate, which we still do manually with repeated rolls and doing math. Is there a way to automate this more in FG?
3. I saw that there is a shared folder for tokens. I imagine they are shared across projects. Can I do something similiar with homebrew stuff? Like custom skills/features/creatures/magical items?
4. Can the character sheet be modified in a way that tracks and updates ressources the player use?
The system has a health track (getting wounded gives penalties), willpower and something like mana (called motes) as ressources that can be spend on various stuff. Things like the mana also regenerate a fixed amount in combat and outside of combat time at a different pace. Is something like this possible:
Player P gets attacked - P decides to enforce her defense with 5 motes (she clicks the skills, says she wants use it for 5 motes, the amount spent is deducted from her current motepool) - Attacker still manages to pass her defense value and hits - P gets wounded for 4 damage (sheet registers damage taken and checks for penalties) - she takes a -1 success penalty on further rolls (every roll from the sheet automates the penalty deduction) - P is angry - P goes all out on her attack - pays 30 motes and 3 willpower on 7 different attack skills combined into one attack (sheet registers this) - Attacker and the mountain behind him go poof
5. Can the combat tracker be modified to include more ressources? Can the automatic update on the initiative order be disabled? Can the automatic update be set to only update on the end of the turn?
In Exalted Initiative is a moving, not a static value. That means the character acting first with 22 initiative can be hit and drop to 2 initiative within the same round. If that happens after he acted the turn order becomes very misleading. Combat in Exalted is complex and having no visual indication of who already acted makes it worse.
In Roll20 I made a Round Counter Object in the Initiative Tracker that was always at the bottom. Everyone that took a turn already was positioned after it. At the end of the turn I would just sort by the new initiative values.
6. Is it possible for attacks to affect initiative? This is probably one of the more complicated issues.
Initiative in Exalted does not work like in any other game I know of. At the start of an encounter it has the same function as in DnD. You roll Initative, note it down and the character with the highest value goes first. Now things are starting to get interesting. Every actor decides between using two types of attack. A withering attack or a decisive attack. A withering attack does not attack the enemies health track, but their Initiative. If an actor hits with the attack the enemy suffers Initiative damage according to the successses rolled on the damage roll of the attack. Imagine Wuxia style fight in which they trade a lot of blows without hurting each other but struggling to get in a better position where they are able to deal the finishing blow. The next time the actor acts he can decide to use his accumulated Initiative to use a decisive attack. This type of attack uses the current Initiative of the attacker to determine the damage pool his attack - if successfull - has. He also automaticaly resets to 3 Initiative if the attack hits. The damage done on this roll is directly applied to the health track of the target.
We were doing all of this manually (well mainly I as the Storyteller) on Roll20. Any way to make this Initiative managing quicker would be a huge boon.
7. Can FG keep track of cooldowns?
Like a skill that can only be used every 3 rounds. Or an affliction that only lasts for 3 rounds and then disappears.
8. Can the hotbar be expanded?
In Roll20 every player used around 20+ macros on a regular basis. Most of those were for dice pools ranging from 5 to 25 dice including counting of the successes and sorting of dice so that the tens are right at the top of the roll.
9. Is it possible to have more than one defense value? Exalted makes a distinction between dodging and parrying.
10. Is there support for damage reduction? There are ways in Exalted to reduce damage from withering and decisive attacks in various ways, passive and active.
11. Is it possible to outright set the damage of an attack to 0 if the damage dice (not the rolled damage - just the rolled dice) are under a certain value of the defender?
Example: P gets hit again but now she has a shiny new armor. It has a Hardness value of 4. The attacker hits her with only 3 damage dice. The attack technically still hits but bounces off of her armor without any harm done (well except on hit effects).
I ask this because this Hardness value is notorious for getting forgotten. In our games it rarely comes up and if it does, nobody remembers they had Hardness in the first place. Fitting this into FGs attack resolution would be nice.
12. Is it possible to create Interfaces or tabs on the character sheet for complex subsystems? Exalted has quite a few subsystems. And a few very complex ones as well.
The crafting system for an example consists of several different types of projects, project tiers and "inspiration" points gained from projects that are also required for higher tier projects. It's a bit convuleted and requires to keep track of a) 4 different types of projects, b) 3 different types of "crafting points" rewarded for completing projects, c) crafting slots to simulate the capacity to work on more than one project at any given time (higher tier projects take more focus than several simple ones), d) number of attempts and rolled successes for any project that is currently worked on and e) time required and time spent on completing the project.
13. I mentioned I wish to learn coding - and I'm certain that realizing everything the system needs is quite a lot of coding - but I have no clue how much work that is. I do know basics in Python and C but I have never done something more complex than a simple calculator. I imagine it is a lot of work, which is not deal breaker since I have still a lot of time left before we start our next Exalted game. Can somebody who knows about coding in Lua give a very rough estimate of the size of a project like this within the context of FG?
14. If I get into coding for FG what else would I need to learn in addition to Lua?
15. I read a bit about the Unity version of FG and that it should include a more complex dice rolling system. Is waiting the smart option for me?
If I committ to buying FG I would go with the lifetime Ultimate version. This is not a cheap option for me but it would still be cheaper than the subscription on roll20 if FG proves to be adaptable enough.
Again, thank you for reading!
I had my eye on Fantasy Grounds for a while now, but the high entry price held me off from buying. I forgot about it and then - a few years later - I saw the current offer on steam. Well, now I'm seriously considering getting the ultimate edition since I have payed more already for the Roll20 subscription.
But before that I have a few questions I couldn't answer after playing around with the demo version. I apologize if those questions have already been answered.
A bit about me and my group: We mainly play a system called Exalted 3rd Edition that is using a modified version of the storyteller system (World of Darkness). While I am a bit sad that there is no official Fantasy Grounds module for Exalted (that would haven been an instant buy) there isn't one for Roll20 and I'm used to doing/importing/writing/homebrewing all the stuff myself. For now we are waiting for the next release in the Exalted line and are playing DnD 5e in the meantime. This post isn't about the DnD part though, but about the possible customization I could pull of given enough time and committment. I wanted to learn coding for a while now and learning while making a future campaign more enjoyable sounds fun.
So here am I asking questions.
1. In what ways is this better than Roll20 and in which is it worse? I'm not exactly asking for a feature comparison - already found one - but more for reasons why you guys stick with Fantasy Grounds over Roll20 or other things.
2. Can Fantasy Grounds count dice/successes? If so how?
Background: The system rolls x D10's (where the actual amount is depending on Attributes, Abillities, used Skills and other modifiers) with a target number of 7 (in some cases this can change) against a difficulty of y. Every die that comes up as 7 or higher (variable) counts as a success while every die that shows a 10 counts as two successes (this is also variable as some skills lower the crit threshold). Rerolls and exploding dice can also happen. Having no success and at least one 1 counts as a bodge. A player needs at least y successes on a check to pass.
I would be happy to get the basic mechanic done in a timely fashion. I.e. letting the player roll x dice and then the counting of successes. More elaborate mechanics would be cool as well, but are not exactly needed. A fast way of rolling several dice of the same type with a variable TN with a variable crit threshold and counting the successes (with output into the chat) is probably the single most important thing. In combat one can potentially roll up to 30+ D10's. Counting that takes time which I would like to reduce as much as possible. On Roll20 that works well except for the crits and anything more elaborate, which we still do manually with repeated rolls and doing math. Is there a way to automate this more in FG?
3. I saw that there is a shared folder for tokens. I imagine they are shared across projects. Can I do something similiar with homebrew stuff? Like custom skills/features/creatures/magical items?
4. Can the character sheet be modified in a way that tracks and updates ressources the player use?
The system has a health track (getting wounded gives penalties), willpower and something like mana (called motes) as ressources that can be spend on various stuff. Things like the mana also regenerate a fixed amount in combat and outside of combat time at a different pace. Is something like this possible:
Player P gets attacked - P decides to enforce her defense with 5 motes (she clicks the skills, says she wants use it for 5 motes, the amount spent is deducted from her current motepool) - Attacker still manages to pass her defense value and hits - P gets wounded for 4 damage (sheet registers damage taken and checks for penalties) - she takes a -1 success penalty on further rolls (every roll from the sheet automates the penalty deduction) - P is angry - P goes all out on her attack - pays 30 motes and 3 willpower on 7 different attack skills combined into one attack (sheet registers this) - Attacker and the mountain behind him go poof
5. Can the combat tracker be modified to include more ressources? Can the automatic update on the initiative order be disabled? Can the automatic update be set to only update on the end of the turn?
In Exalted Initiative is a moving, not a static value. That means the character acting first with 22 initiative can be hit and drop to 2 initiative within the same round. If that happens after he acted the turn order becomes very misleading. Combat in Exalted is complex and having no visual indication of who already acted makes it worse.
In Roll20 I made a Round Counter Object in the Initiative Tracker that was always at the bottom. Everyone that took a turn already was positioned after it. At the end of the turn I would just sort by the new initiative values.
6. Is it possible for attacks to affect initiative? This is probably one of the more complicated issues.
Initiative in Exalted does not work like in any other game I know of. At the start of an encounter it has the same function as in DnD. You roll Initative, note it down and the character with the highest value goes first. Now things are starting to get interesting. Every actor decides between using two types of attack. A withering attack or a decisive attack. A withering attack does not attack the enemies health track, but their Initiative. If an actor hits with the attack the enemy suffers Initiative damage according to the successses rolled on the damage roll of the attack. Imagine Wuxia style fight in which they trade a lot of blows without hurting each other but struggling to get in a better position where they are able to deal the finishing blow. The next time the actor acts he can decide to use his accumulated Initiative to use a decisive attack. This type of attack uses the current Initiative of the attacker to determine the damage pool his attack - if successfull - has. He also automaticaly resets to 3 Initiative if the attack hits. The damage done on this roll is directly applied to the health track of the target.
We were doing all of this manually (well mainly I as the Storyteller) on Roll20. Any way to make this Initiative managing quicker would be a huge boon.
7. Can FG keep track of cooldowns?
Like a skill that can only be used every 3 rounds. Or an affliction that only lasts for 3 rounds and then disappears.
8. Can the hotbar be expanded?
In Roll20 every player used around 20+ macros on a regular basis. Most of those were for dice pools ranging from 5 to 25 dice including counting of the successes and sorting of dice so that the tens are right at the top of the roll.
9. Is it possible to have more than one defense value? Exalted makes a distinction between dodging and parrying.
10. Is there support for damage reduction? There are ways in Exalted to reduce damage from withering and decisive attacks in various ways, passive and active.
11. Is it possible to outright set the damage of an attack to 0 if the damage dice (not the rolled damage - just the rolled dice) are under a certain value of the defender?
Example: P gets hit again but now she has a shiny new armor. It has a Hardness value of 4. The attacker hits her with only 3 damage dice. The attack technically still hits but bounces off of her armor without any harm done (well except on hit effects).
I ask this because this Hardness value is notorious for getting forgotten. In our games it rarely comes up and if it does, nobody remembers they had Hardness in the first place. Fitting this into FGs attack resolution would be nice.
12. Is it possible to create Interfaces or tabs on the character sheet for complex subsystems? Exalted has quite a few subsystems. And a few very complex ones as well.
The crafting system for an example consists of several different types of projects, project tiers and "inspiration" points gained from projects that are also required for higher tier projects. It's a bit convuleted and requires to keep track of a) 4 different types of projects, b) 3 different types of "crafting points" rewarded for completing projects, c) crafting slots to simulate the capacity to work on more than one project at any given time (higher tier projects take more focus than several simple ones), d) number of attempts and rolled successes for any project that is currently worked on and e) time required and time spent on completing the project.
13. I mentioned I wish to learn coding - and I'm certain that realizing everything the system needs is quite a lot of coding - but I have no clue how much work that is. I do know basics in Python and C but I have never done something more complex than a simple calculator. I imagine it is a lot of work, which is not deal breaker since I have still a lot of time left before we start our next Exalted game. Can somebody who knows about coding in Lua give a very rough estimate of the size of a project like this within the context of FG?
14. If I get into coding for FG what else would I need to learn in addition to Lua?
15. I read a bit about the Unity version of FG and that it should include a more complex dice rolling system. Is waiting the smart option for me?
If I committ to buying FG I would go with the lifetime Ultimate version. This is not a cheap option for me but it would still be cheaper than the subscription on roll20 if FG proves to be adaptable enough.
Again, thank you for reading!