Quick way to find a creature in the initiative tracker? (for entering wounds, etc.)

[Romidar]

I've gotten pretty practiced at using FG as a VTT in person over the last 6 months. We actually don't really use the rule set - we actually roll physical dice in person and the players track their own hit points.

Parts of FG I use:


Show maps on a TV.
Tokens for the players and monsters (players tell me where I want to move and I move them).
The initiative tracker (I track monster hit points in the tracker and that's where the problem starts - combat gets bogged down as I try to find the right monster to update Wounds in the tracker).



Here's the scenario: an encounter between the players and 12 Goblins that FG numbers as Goblin 1 to Goblin 12.


Player says they attack a specific goblin
Player rolls physical dice for their attack roll and tells me the result
I tell them they hit
Player rolls physical dice and tells me the damage
I look for the right goblin in the initiative tracker to add wounds.


The problem is the time it sometimes take to find the right monster (I should mention I have the setting on to roll each goblin's initiative individually, so that means they are basically in random order in the tracker).

Is there a quicker way to do this than to scroll down the list manually? Double clicking the token doesn't seem to bring up a specific goblin (unless I'm missing an indicator that that is the case).

This is the one annoying issue we have in combat - I had one pretty large combat with goblins, hobgoblins and bugbears and it felt like things got really slow and irritating as I tried to find the right monster a player was attacking. Otherwise, the initiative tracker makes encounters FAR easier than tracking manually.

I'm considering no longer tracking hit points in the initiative tracker and just doing it on paper, but then we lose the ability for the players to see the health bar on the icon which is actually really nice.

Am I missing a shortcut to getting to the monster I want?

[Zacchaeus]

The only way I can think of is using the manual dice roller. You would need target and to make an attack roll against the goblin and when you do so the manual dice pop up will appear. You can then enter the dice rolled by the player and FG will take care of the rest.

[Dr0W]

My answer is same as Zacchaeus, here's how I do it:

First of all I use an extension by Celestian that let's me hold ctrl when I want to turn on the manual dice roller or not. Secondly, I have the player's sheet up to date on FG. Even if they're holding a physical sheet, I have that on FG too.

When I attack the players, I just quickly use the npcs to attack them as usual. They don't neet to keep track of their HP, since FG does it for me.
When players attack, I quickly open their sheet on FG and roll that attack while holding CTRL to enter manual dice mode. Then I ask what number the dice rolled and input it on FG. Sometimes I just do that for damage.

[damned]

Yep - use FG as much as possible - do the targetting and use Manual Dice.

[Romidar]

Thanks for the replies. I was not aware of the manual dice function, this sounds like it would do it though!

[notrealdan]

Here's that extension that was mentioned above:
https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?43751-CoreRPG-based-On-Demand-Manual-Dice-(DM-only)

[notrealdan]

One of my groups plays in-person and we all use FG, but it wasn't always that way. I've always used FG to manage the campaign, but the players have gone from paper sheets, to managing their characters in D&D Beyond, to now using FG fully. What brought them over in the end was seeing the automation at work, specifically for things like area-of-effect spells. They can target several enemies with fireball (or whatever), very quickly see who saved and who didn't, and trust that FG would apply damage properly for all.

[Romidar]

One of my groups plays in-person and we all use FG, but it wasn't always that way. I've always used FG to manage the campaign, but the players have gone from paper sheets, to managing their characters in D&D Beyond, to now using FG fully. What brought them over in the end was seeing the automation at work, specifically for things like area-of-effect spells. They can target several enemies with fireball (or whatever), very quickly see who saved and who didn't, and trust that FG would apply damage properly for all.

Was kind of the opposite for us - we used the rule set and functions in FG for a while but didn’t feel like playing a TTRPG for us. I use it to automate some of my DM tasks - very handy for setting up encounters and such - but the players don’t interact with it anymore. (Half of us are UX Designers which... doesn’t help the feeling of using Fantasy Grounds unfortunately.)

I’d HATE to go back to tracking initiative manually and much prefer digital maps tho.

[Romidar]

I ran a couple of test cases by putting a random weapon on the hot key bar and turning on the manual dice rolling option and this should dramatically streamline things in combat.

Thanks very much for the suggestion!

[niknas]

Was kind of the opposite for us - we used the rule set and functions in FG for a while but didn’t feel like playing a TTRPG for us. I use it to automate some of my DM tasks - very handy for setting up encounters and such - but the players don’t interact with it anymore. (Half of us are UX Designers which... doesn’t help the feeling of using Fantasy Grounds unfortunately.)

I’d HATE to go back to tracking initiative manually and much prefer digital maps tho.

Slighly off-topic, but how do you manage the player interactions for in-person gaming if not in FG? All our players use DNDBeyond and we settled on players doing all their rolls using physical dice and it's up to me as DM to use the manual dice roll input in FG to track HP and effects on NPCs in combat tracker. One player has a PC with FG client connected to the server session and manages map/zoom and token movemement in FG based on the other players input, but they do no targeting nor manage PC HP/effects in FG. That's up to me as a DM. My players aren't UX people per se, but they all work in IT and they too have strong opinions about the FG GUI. Not in a good way, unfortunately.

[Romidar]

Slighly off-topic, but how do you manage the player interactions for in-person gaming if not in FG? All our players use DNDBeyond and we settled on players doing all their rolls using physical dice and it's up to me as DM to use the manual dice roll input in FG to track HP and effects on NPCs in combat tracker. One player has a PC with FG client connected to the server session and manages map/zoom and token movemement in FG based on the other players input, but they do no targeting nor manage PC HP/effects in FG. That's up to me as a DM. My players aren't UX people per se, but they all work in IT and they too have strong opinions about the FG GUI. Not in a good way, unfortunately.

It sounds like you have a similar set up, just a few differences.

We actually play in a conference room - everyone tracks their characters on D&D Beyond but one player (cleric) also keeps everyone’s (player’s) hit points written on a whiteboard too (which is super handy actually).

I have a PC connected to a TV and I extend my display to it - I run two instances of fantasy grounds and put the player instance on the external monitor, which lets me conceal all the DM stuff on my laptop screen.

I do all the FG manipulation - monster hitpoints and conditions, initiative tracking, checking spell AoE, etc. (I use physical dice for monster attacks, damage, etc. just as if we were playing with physical maps and miniatures.) The player tracking everyone’s hitpoints also tracks any conditions and concentration spells on the players for me, though I also note them.

The players tell me where they want to move and I move their tokens on the FG DM screen - usually can just do this from their seat, but sometimes people get up to go look at the TV screen more closely and point to exactly where they want to move.

Really FG gives me a way to share/uncover maps, tokens for the monsters, initiative tracking, easy way to determine ranges, areas of effect, etc. (I’ve bought Monster Manual, Volo’s Guide and Xanathar’s mainly for the tokens).

I also use other physical assets like Monster Cards released by Galeforce 9. I tried using the monster details (attacks, resistances, etc.) in FG but it’s much easier to read them in the causes or in D&D Beyond. Oh - I also like being able to use FG to show the players a picture of the monster though I REALLY wish the name of the monster wasn’t in the darn title bar that they can see....

The only issues I’ve had with this approach have been:

Finding the right monster in a longish initiative list to apply damage as mentioned in this thread.
It’s hard to do impromptu encounters - not impossible, but I really feel like I need to be prepared with maps and tokens or the session bogs down while I try to create one ad hoc. (I try to have some extra maps available just in case.)
Sometimes FG just flakes out - refuses to load a map that it loaded fine before the session is the biggest issue, though I’ve also had just refuse to let me connect through local host a couple times - ruined one session with that one.


One of my players is going to run a one shot so I have a chance to play (forever DM). He is also one of my players in another (Starfinder) campaign and his only real concern is FG. Our Starfinder campaign is completely remote - everyone on video conference - so we used FG’s Starfinder implementation for 3-4 months. The lack of following standard UI principles (e.g., some things implemented as drag and drop should be buttons or drop downs - 101 kind of UI stuff) was so infuriating to everyone that we gave up on it and actually roll physical dice remotely. (It was also an issue that things like healing serums and grenades just don’t work and you have to do them manually anyway.) Of course you have to trust that everyone is being honest, but that has never seemed like an issue for our groups - gameplay sped up dramatically when we switched to “manual” mode.

(Some things in the game are just a mental model issue rather than bad UI per se - understanding how the initiative tracker ties together NPC’s, tokens and maps is just never going to be obvious until it clicks, IMO. After 9 months I still slip and drop a token directly on the map instead of dragging an NPC to the initiative window first.)

I should also say I’m very thankful for the forums - I’ve spent many hours on YouTube videos, FG college, etc. but often the issues are so specific (either to a use case or a rule set) that a quick suggestion here makes a dramatic difference. (We have our next session tonight and I can’t wait to use this manual dice method of applying damage to the monsters! In testing solo it’s greatly address my biggest issue.)

[notrealdan]

It’s hard to do impromptu encounters - not impossible, but I really feel like I need to be prepared with maps and tokens or the session bogs down while I try to create one ad hoc. (I try to have some extra maps available just in case.)


I keep a few generic maps handy: one grassland, one snowy terrain, one dirt road, etc. but my favorite one looks like old parchment paper. The parchment one is most useful, because it can be used anytime and sort of simulates a traditional vinyl battle map. Since the drawing tools are not great in FGC, I just use wet erase markers on the screen (I have a thin sheet of plexiglass on top of the TV I use for maps). And we'll use physical minis sometimes, but most of the time we just use digital tokens in FG. Here's a thread with pics of my TV/table setup, though the map shown there is from a module:
https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?48934-My-Gaming-Table

The drawing tools should be vastly improved in FGU, so you should be able to use a generic map image like that and draw the map out within FGU if you prefer that over markers. It might help with those impromptu combat encounters.