Creating or uploading characters without purchasing any source modules

[Zippo Wintermoon]

Hi all,

First off this is my 1st post here, I apologise if it's in the wrong place. I did have a quick look for a similar topic, but was unable to find anything or simply missed it. If I am mistaken, could a mod please move this to the correct thread, thank you.

A reasonable group of my friends have all decided it would be fun to make our own Adventurers Guild, a place where I, as the DM would post many small (1-3 session) "quests" that they could accept from a Job Board.

They have all created characters on D&D Beyond linked to an account that has access to several source books.

I wanted to run this on FGU, and was wondering, can I build their chars on FGU without buying those source books? I imagine several of them have at least something from outside of core rules.
I also assume it would be easier to create all of their characters and save them so I can just drop a few at a time into campaigns, instead of having to create 4-5 each time.

Thanks in advance for any feed back.

John

[ScriedRaven]

Yes, however you will need create the classes/races yourself. It's not too hard, but if you do too many at a time it can get annoying

Alternatively (https://ai6k.com/dndbeyond/)

[Milmoor]

You could use the Rob2e coding bundle, more info here: https://www.dmsguild.com/product/280094/Fantasy-Grounds-5E-Coding-BUNDLE

[Griogre]

Hi Zippo and welcome to the boards.

The character sheets in FG can be filled in with anything you want just like a paper sheet. If you don't have the FG reference material you will simply need to type it all in by hand. D&D 5E which does have a free subset of rules available that comes with FG. So no you don't have to buy any character books.

If you are running a game that is not a pre-build module you can also enter all the monsters you need for your adventure by hand but likewise, for D&D 5E there is a subset of monsters available for free that comes with FG.

[GavinRuneblade]

If you are running a game that is not a pre-build module you can also enter all the monsters you need for your adventure by hand but likewise, for D&D 5E there is a subset of monsters available for free that comes with FG.
Yes, the SRD, it has the base classes, one of the subclasses for each, and a lot of the monsters. I think all the spells or nearly all anyway. This is the best place to start.

Then on top of that there are a pretty good set of free and paywhat you want options on the DMsGuild too.

[LordEntrails]

Note that their is a tool to convert DDB character sheets to FG. So you won't have to manually re-create the sheets in FG.
https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?41885-Character-Converter-for-D-amp-D-Beyond

[Zippo Wintermoon]

Thank you all for the help and advice.

[SirMotte]

Careful with the converter tool though, it sometimes does strange things, always double check the results. For Monster stats, take a look at the Engineer Suite (https://www.masq.net/). With it you can easily import monster statblocks.

[Zippo Wintermoon]

Excellent, all based covered then. :)

[Xorn]

The old tutorials I did for FG actually show putting characters and feats and spells in with no library modules. Same for monsters and such. Link in my signature. (The desktop theme is older because the video is old, but the method has not changed.)

[Zippo Wintermoon]

I will have a look at those today if I can, I tried to create some monsters using the NPC engineer but having some trouble importing them to FGU so hopefully the tutorials will hold the missing key.

[Trenloe]

I will have a look at those today if I can, I tried to create some monsters using the NPC engineer but having some trouble importing them to FGU so hopefully the tutorials will hold the missing key.
FGU doesn’t recognise the way NOC engineer zips the .mod file - a .mod file is just a .zip file renamed. Just re-zip it and it’ll work.