Sharing NPCs with players for Storm Kings Thunder

[Rylan Storm]

Hi all,

After our campaign's summer break (I actually get to play for once - yay!) I'll be running SKT for my party. I notice that the manual talks a lot about how each player gets an NPC to control.

Can anyone give me a synopsis on how this works? Ive tried sharing the NPCs with some players in prep and they can move the token but they cannot use any actions from the combat tracker. Is there anything else I need to do? Am I doing something wrong or do I need a mod etc?

Many thanks

RS

[Neovirtus]

I believe they can't use the actions from the combat tracker, but they can from the NPC sheet. In my experience, players who have never DM'd on Fantasy Grounds before don't realize how to do that, because it is very different from a Character Sheet, so just make sure they know to mouse over the text in the ability description to activate ability rolls. There may be other mechanics for doing this, but this is my experience. There are definitely extensions that streamline the process but I don't have any experience with those.

[Zarestia]

As @lavoiejh said, CT actions are only for the DM.
You could create the NPCs as PCs, that might be easier for your players (that's how I handle an animal companion in my campaign).

[Rylan Storm]

That sounds like it might be a better idea. The NPCs that stick with the characters do so for quite a while. It seems like a pain to have a character sheet constantly open. Sounds like it might be more effort to start but easier on the players.

I didn't realise they could control two players at once.

[MassSailor]

For SKT used the method @lavoiejh detailed and had each of my players control 2 NPCs with no problem. The NPCs were only part of the one battle, so wasn’t worth making PC sheets for me.

Having the players learn how to take actions from the NPC sheet has been handy on occasions an NPC joins up for a time - let’s me offload their movement/combat onto my players. We’re running Chapter 4 now and each session I hand off Harshnag to another player which they get a kick out of.

[LordEntrails]

Some advice when controlling two or more characters;
- Select the active character by picking their portrait in the upper left.
- Give each character you control a different dice color. This helps visually understanding who is active and makes the chat log easier to track.
- Hot keys are set per character, so if character B is active, you will have different hotkey than when Character A is active. Good and bad, you just have to understand this.

[Zacchaeus]

If you look at the SKT story entry 0.01 Conversion notes it tells you there in some detail exactly how to share an NPC with a player and how the player can then use that NPC. If that doesn't cover things enough then there's this video https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?43513-Video-Giving-player-control-of-an-NPC&p=387176#post387176

The only one thing that I'd add to this is that if you are using Unity then you'll need to ensure that Party vision is set to on.