Encounter Builder Helper Extension

[dsaraujo]

Hello Fantasy Grounds community,

I finally took the courage of building my first extension, as I'm trying to help myself into building something that could make the process of adjusting encounters on the fly since my party fluctuates from week to week.

If you want to see what it does, I recorded a video:


https://youtu.be/EnkSihGGTiY

This is my first time writing anything on Lua and using Fantasy Grounds ecosystem, so I appreciate any feedback from the community and other developers. If more people think this is useful, I can add to the Forge. Also, feel free to copy and reuse as you see fit.

Forge Link: https://forge.fantasygrounds.com/shop/items/451/view

History:
0.1 - Initial Release
0.2 - Fix creature level display on pre-existing encounters; fix button read-only status to respect lock; better inheritance of CoreRPG functions;

50888

Thanks,

Edit: There is a (paid) new version of this extension in the Forge if you want to check out, including many other features: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?73170-PFRPG2-GM-Enhancement-extension

[Trenloe]

Thanks for sharing with the community!

One issue - Encounter.ext appears to be an empty ZIP file.

[dsaraujo]

Fixed the file, thanks Trenloe. I did find some code placeholder for something similar in the PFRPG2 package. If this looks good to you, feel free to reuse as much as you need!

[Trenloe]

If this looks good to you, feel free to reuse as much as you need!
Thanks! I might well look into it... :)

[Trenloe]

Fixed the file, thanks Trenloe.
Nearly there... but the whole directory has been included in the ZIP file - FG won't read this as an extension. The extension.xml file must be in the root of the ZIP file for FG to recognize it.

[dsaraujo]

And today I learned about folders being processed before .ext files. And I discovered a bug setting up levels when modifying existing campaigns.

[dsaraujo]

Fixed the file following the directory structure from documentation. Hopefully will work this time. I also found a bug: existing built encounters (custom or from modules) won't have the correct level so it will incorrectly calculate XP. A workaround is to re-add the same monsters and remove them: that will force an update on the levels. I'll fix this for 0.2 (a forced update on load should do the trick).

My goal for 1.0 is to also have a button, similar to Random Encounters, to suggest encounters, that include Hazzards, given a party size, a party level and a goal Threat, using all NPCs available for that GM.

[dsaraujo]

Fixed the bug with 0.2, added Forge link.

[Idward]

I am running my party though the minidungeon AP, and man this has saved me so much time. Thanks for building an auto-calculation!

[Idward]

Dsaraujo, does this work with PFRPG2 GM Enhancements or should I only use one or the other?

[dsaraujo]

If you have the GM Enhancements, it should supersedes (and have more functionality), so feel free to disable this extension. With both you might have weird things like double level fields.

[Idward]

The one thing that the Encounter Builder Helper has that the GM Enhancements does not have is the auto recalculate the combat XP. Could you add that to the upcoming feature list for the GM Enhancements? It is very useful especially for the current module I am running.

[dsaraujo]

GM Enhancements should recalculate XP every time you add/remove an NPC, or change party level or size. I just removed the button to reduce one click. Is it not working for you?

[Idward]

Ah! Ok I see now some auto caculate when I bring up an 'un modifed' one. Some of the ones I caculated before weren't for whatever reason, but did as soon as I reduced the party's level. I guess I just had bad luck opening a few old encounters.

[dsaraujo]

Yeah, my extension only looks (and updates) severity and XP once some value is modified because I don't want to touch pre-existing content (including modules, etc).

[darrenan]

I don't see it auto-updating when using CTRL-scroll to adjust party size and level up or down. You have to type in the field for it to auto-update.

[darrenan]

Also, it doesn't really say in the rules what to do for monsters more than 4 levels below the party level, but it would be nice if it was treated as -4, or maybe 5 XP, rather than zeroing out the XP. Looks like you treat 5 and higher as 200 xp already.

[myyra]

Also, it doesn't really say in the rules what to do for monsters more than 4 levels below the party level, but it would be nice if it was treated as -4, or maybe 5 XP, rather than zeroing out the XP. Looks like you treat 5 and higher as 200 xp already.
"Trivial encounters don’t normally grant any XP, but you might decide to award the same XP as for a minor or moderate accomplishment for a trivial encounter that was important to the story, or for an encounter that became trivial because of the order in which the PCs encountered it in a nonlinear adventure." https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=576

[darrenan]

Got it thanks. They should have at least mentioned that in the encounter building section.

EDIT: That doesn't make sense. In the encounter building section Trivial threat encounters do have an XP budget, and there's nothing in that section that says not to award XP for trivial threat encounters. Whatever.

EDIT2: The extension is currently assuming all Hazards are complex when calculating XP. It should probably check hazards for the Complex trait, and if absent use the XP for simple hazards from p.508, Table 10-8.

[dsaraujo]

I added Hazzard support on the GM Enhancement extensions that supersedes this one. I'm not planning updating this particular extension.

[dsaraujo]

I'm disabling this extension on the Forge since it is creating incompatibilities with PFRPG2 GM Enhancements. If you still want to use it, feel free to manually install the .ext file on the top post. If you are a user of PFRPG2 GM Enhancements, please remove this extension.

[Filthbeard]

This works great. Thank you!