Campaign going online

[Lore]

We play a base 2nd edition campaign with some house rules that has been running since 1995.

We have a few questions about Fantasy Grounds to make sure it will match our play style. There are 7 of us so we would be investing a good deal of money and want to make sure we can customize Fantasy Grounds to meet our needs.

Here are our specific questions:

1) Can we make stats, AC, HP, Thaco, level, etc. blind to the characters. All our characters are blind to these elements and only the DM knows the exact values. Our characters have an impression of how strong they are for instance (average strength, very strong, etc) but does not know the exact value.

2) We use a AC/AR system where armor absorbs damage rather then makes you harder to hit, whereas dex, shields and magical modifiers make you more difficult to strike. Can Fantasy Grounds be modified to do this?

For example: Borka hits an Ogre with a sword that does 1d8+2(specialization) +1 strength +2 magical bonus. The Ogre wears armor that absorbs 2 points of damage.

The result looks like 5+2+1+2-2= 8 to the DM but to the player if should look something like "Your swords pierces your enemies armor drawing blood"

or simply you hit with no damage value shown, and the DM will fill in the descriptive.

Likewise when a player gets hit, He/she should not know how much damage they have taken or how many hit points total or remaining.

Can this be done using Fantasy Grounds?? And if so how hard/easy would it be to modify?

Thanks,

Lore

[Hamish]

Lore,

There are 2 possible ways to deal with your requirements, I guess.
Firstly, you can create a custom ruleset that includes all the things you describe. I think they should all be possible to achieve, but it will be a lot of work. I am not a guru (yet) though, so maybe it's easier than it sounds.
The second option is to create a custom ruleset that hides pretty much everything for the players. So just create a character sheet that only shows them what you want them to see, and that's it. Of course, this has a downside as well: It means that the GM would do the rest of the work manually, keep track of all the modifiers and make all dice rolls, and that may slow down gameplay.

Hope this helps...

[Lore]

Thanks for the help. What if the DM did as you said and created a character sheet for the players that showed nothing as far as stats but then ran the players in combat as NPC's.. would that work?

Lore

[Hamish]

Yes, I'm sure that would work. That would probably be the easiest solution. I don't know if you'd be able to fit all information about your PCs in the default NPC template though, so maybe a modification of that would be useful to do too.

[Griogre]

I agree with Hamish Set the PC's up as NPC personalities. For an Modified 2nd Edition you would probably be fine. Then just have the players log in and use blank character sheets with their names on it for the tokens and chat and if you let the players roll, their dice rolls.