Custom Effect Duration In Hours / Days?

[Surge]

Hi,

What is the point - if any - in the ability to set the units of duration of a custom effect/condition to be a number of hours / days? As far as I can tell, there is no mechanic in Fantasy Grounds that makes use of those.

If set to a number of rounds, the duration is automatically set in the Combat Tracker when added, and if set to a number of minutes, the duration is multiplied by 10 and added in the Combat Tracker as a number of rounds. However, if the duration is set to Hours or Day, the duration is just zero, as FG doesn't deal with anything other than rounds. You can't even see the duration to manually track it, once it has been applied to a character. That duration is only visible in the list of custom effects.

Am I missing something?

[Trenloe]

Long duration values are informational only. The values aren't used anywhere.

[Surge]

I thought so, thanks.

The problem is that they can't even be used for that, as the duration - if set to hours or days - does not appear anywhere.

To avoid confusion, I would suggest either removing those options all together, or allowing effects in the CT to be able to display those units of time for informational purposes.

[Willot]

Ive never noticed that before. We do need to keep the day/hour stuff though, but, yes it needs to be shown somewhere.
Ive noticed time keeping is SUPER important in PF2e. Alot of important feats have some sort of time restraint.

I mean Medicine alone...

TREAT WOUNDS
EXPLORATION HEALING MANIPULATE
Requirements You have healer’s tools (page 290).
You spend 10 minutes treating one injured living creature
(targeting yourself, if you so choose). The target is then
temporarily immune to Treat Wounds actions for 1 hour, but
this interval overlaps with the time you spent treating (so a
patient can be treated once per hour, not once per 70 minutes).
The Medicine check DC is usually 15, though the GM might
adjust it based on the circumstances, such as treating a patient
outside in a storm, or treating magically cursed wounds. If you’re
an expert in Medicine, you can instead attempt a DC 20 check
to increase the Hit Points regained by 10; if you’re a master of
Medicine, you can instead attempt a DC 30 check to increase
the Hit Points regained by 30; and if you’re legendary, you can
instead attempt a DC 40 check to increase the Hit Points regained
by 50. The damage dealt on a critical failure remains the same.
If you succeed at your check, you can continue treating the
target to grant additional healing. If you treat them for a total
of 1 hour, double the Hit Points they regain from Treat Wounds.


BATTLE MEDICINE [one-action] FEAT 1
GENERAL HEALING MANIPULATE SKILL
Prerequisites trained in Medicine
You can patch up yourself or an adjacent ally, even in combat.
Attempt a Medicine check with the same DC as for Treat
Wounds and provide the corresponding amount of healing.
As with Treat Wounds, you can attempt checks against
higher DCs if you have the minimum proficiency rank. The
target is then temporarily immune to your Battle Medicine
for 1 day.


CONTINUAL RECOVERY FEAT 2
GENERAL SKILL
Prerequisites expert in Medicine
You zealously monitor a patient’s progress to administer
treatment faster. When you Treat Wounds, your patient
becomes immune for only 10 minutes instead of 1 hour. This
applies ONLY TO YOUR Treat Wounds activities, not any other the
patient receives.

Not to mention Afflictions stages and when to applied them!
Be nice if the stages were effects that can be applied and they pull thier Onset/Expiry times from the time on the calendar (or with manual entry)

Im constantly using the calendar and the PCs on combat tracker are just full of informational effects about when afflictions kick in or things expire.

I feel a more Robust system needs to be created at some time down the track in "FG PF2e ruleset" to keep track of this stuff.

Its one of my few gripes about PF2e; too much Time Management

[Surge]

Ive never noticed that before. We do need to keep the day/hour stuff though, but, yes it needs to be shown somewhere.
Ive noticed time keeping is SUPER important in PF2e. Alot of important feats have some sort of time restraint.


Indeed. I've been using an Excel workbook to try and track passing time through exploration. I have started to write a little Python app for myself to do a better job, but I've only got ideas right now rather than anything to show.

https://i.imgur.com/ly9Yc0u.png

[Willot]

I know it's crazy DMs have to create EXCEL documents to manage time in their PF2e games. (Wouldn't surprise me if in later levels we have to start using Dynamical systems and differential equations to work this stuff out LOL)

[ShadeRaven]

There really would be a lot of use for a good, dynamic time tracker within Fantasy Grounds for Pathfinder 2E. Might be a prime candidate for a good Extension project.

[MaxAstro]

For me I use the Tension Pool system and it's really easy to tie it together to that - every time I add a die to the tension pool, I rule that as ten minutes having passed (assuming normal exploration mode). If an effect has an hour duration, I note down how many dice were in the pool when it was cast and it's removed when the pool gets back to that amount of dice after clearing.

But it would be nice to have something in Fantasy Grounds.

Although before that, I would like a button that just does a "ten minute rest", specifically to automatically refill focus points - because if you keep your sheet in combat mode, refilling focus points after you run out is a bit of a pain.

[tcrossbar]

For me I use the Tension Pool system and it's really easy to tie it together to that - every time I add a die to the tension pool, I rule that as ten minutes having passed (assuming normal exploration mode). If an effect has an hour duration, I note down how many dice were in the pool when it was cast and it's removed when the pool gets back to that amount of dice after clearing.

But it would be nice to have something in Fantasy Grounds.

Although before that, I would like a button that just does a "ten minute rest", specifically to automatically refill focus points - because if you keep your sheet in combat mode, refilling focus points after you run out is a bit of a pain.

There’s a rest button in the combat tracker menu and it lets you select either overnight rest or ten minute refocus, is that what you’re looking for?

[Trenloe]

Although before that, I would like a button that just does a "ten minute rest", specifically to automatically refill focus points - because if you keep your sheet in combat mode, refilling focus points after you run out is a bit of a pain.


There’s a rest button in the combat tracker menu and it lets you select either overnight rest or ten minute refocus, is that what you’re looking for?

The thing is in PF2 there is no generic 10 minute rest. There are various 10 minute exploration mode activities that PCs can carry out, but they are all different. For example, after a fight a healer might treat wounds on a fellow PC, a fighter might repair their shield, and a monk might meditate to regain any spent focus points. These are all 10 minute "exploration" mode activities. If a single PC wanted to refocus, repair and treat wounds, that would take 30 minutes in total.

So, there can't be a generic "10 minute rest" in the CT that triggers a bunch of different exploration mode activity FG effects - because FG can't make assumptions on what each PC is doing in that 10 minutes. So, if you want to refocus, for example, then click on your used focus points field and type 0.

Currently the FG effects system doesn't track any effects beyond a big bunch of rounds. To cater for this, there is a base "Party carries out Encounter mode activities for 10 minutes." option in the combat tracker - all this does is reset the round counter to 1 and reduce any effect duration by 100 rounds.

When I look at redesigning the action system in future I'll look at realistic ways of tracking time based tasks and applying their effects. But that won't be for a while yet.

[MaxAstro]

To better explain the part about how it works now that frustrates me:

When a character sheet is in combat mode and you spend your last focus point, the entire "focus spells" section hides itself away. This means that to restore your focus points, you have to switch out of combat mode just to get at the box to put the points in. This is especially frustrating if you are dealing with a character who is a cleric, or another class that knows all their spells, because switching out of combat mode instantly makes the actions page 4x larger and you have to scroll alllll the way down to find the focus abilities, add the point back, and then switch back to combat mode. This is a bit of a pain when you have four fights in a row and the party is using focus abilities and refocusing after every fight.

For spells, you can use "long rest" to restore them without leaving combat mode, but often focus points are restored without a character taking a long rest.

It would be nice if there was a way to add focus points back to a character without having to switch out of combat mode.

[Trenloe]

Something like this will come when I look at the main action system.

If someone really wants something like this before the action system is expanded, it'll have to be done via an extension.

[Weissrolf]

The Alien RPG module features a small clock (window) within FG, I could use something like this in PF2. I tried keeping time using the calendar, but for clock this is awkward to use.