Newb - Inputting Own Personalities

[camelon75]

Hi just purchased a full copy of FG and think it rocks Especially the dice

Going to use it for the Paizo Pathfinder campaign cause my local group have started to move away and we can still play using this programme.

I manage last night after installing to work out how to set up and input maps, tokens story elements in both note form and decriptive text boxes and altered a goblins stats and weapons to the Piazo Pathfinder defaults but then I tried to create a brand new personality for the Goblin Warchanter who is a level 1 bard and I cannot enter stats or saves, went back and tried to alter the basic goblin again but cannot edit these element either am I missing something?

I have searched these forums and cannot find a guide to creating new personalities which I find strange as these would be required in any home brew campaign I would think.

Can someone shed any light on this?

p.s I have no programming skills so require a basic solution cheers

[Griogre]

Basically the monsters in the libary book modules are static and unchangeable to prevent you from accidently altering them. From your description it sounds like you are trying to alter the goblin in the libary module.

What you want to do is first drag and drop and goblin into the personality book and *then* alter the copy of the goblin. You would open the library to where you see the list of monsters and find the goblins (note that is a searchable list). Next open the personality book, it is probably blank. Then drag and drop a goblin on the personality list and it should appear. The goblin in the list is now a copy of the base goblin and you can now edit it however you want.

To recap first make a copy of the goblin from the d20 monsters module by drag and dropping it into the personality book and then modifiy the goblin. You always want to work on monsters after you have made a copy of them in personalities.

Edit: By the way it is usually easier to modifiy a monster this way than build it from scratch. However, you can press the new button once you have the personality book open and it will create a new, blank personality. This may be easier for some NPCs.

[Astinus]

I had no idea you could drag and drop into Personalities. I've been re-doing my monsters from scratch (also DMing Pathfinder). Doh!

And I'm surprised Griogre didn't mention his post, here (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showpost.php?p=50528&postcount=12), on how to format attacks and damage for Personalities. Then you can throw the dice right from the personality entry or the combat tracker. That will be helpful when it comes to your Goblin Warchanter, and many, many others.

[DNH]

FG2 is very much a drag-and-drop environment and you can achieve most things this way. One good example is dropping things (images, story entries) on the player portraits at the top. Useful for sending items only to specific players and not all of them.

What is perhaps best about creating your own monsters as personalities is that you can then assign a token to them. I don't think this is possible with the base module ones, although you might be able to break in and hack it somehow.

[Astinus]

If I drop a magic item onto another player's portrait, the item box with title appears, but no description. Is that because players aren't supposed to have access to that module, or is it because I'm doing something wrong?

Also, am I correct in assuming there is no way for players to link a magic item to their character sheet? Once they've learned about an item, I'd prefer them to have the info, rather than have me re-explain it.

[camelon75]

okay dragged a goblin into personalities and attached a token altered afew weapons on the profile and the base to hit mods. done all this last night but

and here is what I was looking for

When I want to alter the actual stats of the goblin dropped into personalities it wont let me change str or dex from the existing values do i need to edit them somewhere else ?

for that matter how do i enter new stats for a npc in personalities as it just lets me lift a big old 0 out of the box and ignores anything I drop into the stat box?

or do i need to always start with a existing profile ie human dwarf elf etc and then alter but that would mean ever one having the same racial stats no biggy but not how i want them!

will experiment again tonight

and thanks for all the reesponses always nice to see an active community respond to a novice.:D


Well found out that the as usual the obvious is the answer I just click on the box and then input the value, guess I was so used to dragging I forgot to go back to basics however it might help if the boxes were highlighted when you select them rather than remaining the same.

back to typing in all the npcs for burnt offering then...

[DNH]

If I drop a magic item onto another player's portrait, the item box with title appears, but no description. Is that because players aren't supposed to have access to that module, or is it because I'm doing something wrong?

If you look at the "shared" tab of the item, there are two fields: at-a-glance, and identified. The players will be able to see the former at any time, but only the latter once they have identified it (and you tick the checkbox).


Also, am I correct in assuming there is no way for players to link a magic item to their character sheet? Once they've learned about an item, I'd prefer them to have the info, rather than have me re-explain it.

To the best of my knowledge, no. This is a rather major drawback imo, and I am hoping someone can provide a solution.

[Astinus]

If you look at the "shared" tab of the item, there are two fields: at-a-glance, and identified. The players will be able to see the former at any time, but only the latter once they have identified it (and you tick the checkbox).

Ahh. Thanks for the tip.



To the best of my knowledge, no. This is a rather major drawback imo, and I am hoping someone can provide a solution.

Yeah, it's a drawback. To be able to drag an item onto the character sheet, or even to the notes, would really help. The same for story entries would also be great.

I suppose a work around is for the player to create their own Note for the item, and then copy and paste the information in, from the item that the GM shares.

[Griogre]

Players would need to make a note of the item. However, players can't cut and paste from the item I don't think, they can't from a storybook entry. There is no real way out of telling the player to type the note. Honestly, I never use the item book because I see no benefit to using it. I just put treasure in the area description in the storybook entry. If I did not use voice I might be more inclined to use the item book for speed over typing, but as it is I just tell them they found a magical whatever and when they identify it I tell them what it is – its much faster than messing with the item book.

As a general rule in FG, players can not access DM only modules/books. If you really want to allow access to magic items you would need to make a client library module similar to the basic rule and spell ones.

[Astinus]

That makes sense. I tested it and a player can copy and paste from a shared item, but it's painful: after you highlight the text you have to keep the left mouse button held down (otherwise you lose the highlight) and at the same time you have to press ctrl+c. But as you say, it's probably easier to tell them the item, considering the GM has to type out the "shared" field for the item anyway.

It's a shame. It'd be nice to share an item or story entry that the players could then copy onto a note, or link to their character sheet. It's the sort of real table feature the FGII usually does so well.

[Griogre]

The better copy in paste feature was new to FG2. I think it likely it will get better going forward.

[DNH]

It just seems to me that it is a job half-done. What is the point (as Griogre points out) of the Items book if you can't "hand over" an item?

[richvalle]

I think copy and paste from items works if you hightlight the text, do cntrl-c, go to notes and cntrl-v into it.

My players have copied and pasted the text from magic items into their notes section with no major issues.

Re changing Personalities stats: Using the mouse wheel up and down also works (I think... can't test right now).

rv

[Griogre]

The rolling the mouse wheel does change numbers too, on the stats and saves.

I was just messing around with the items and yes you can cut and paste text you can highlight. I found I could highlight text in the item boxes on the shared tab. Sadly I can't find a way to highlight text in the Storybook entries.

The highlight then cut and paste is a good thing for the original poster. This means you can cut and paste some parts of personality entries to other personalities. Specifically you can cut and paste everything but fields used by the parser on the combat and other tabs (Attacks & skills). You can also cut and paste text from the main tab but you have to be in edit mode before you can highlight the text to copy it. By the way, you can paste *into* the attack and skill boxes, you just can't copy from them.

The highlight copy and paste was a great tip from richvalle and one I wish I had known about sooner. :p

By the way rich, I'm going to be getting my strawberry leaves soon, too - I see, only a few hundred posts to go... I though for sure by now you would be a Crown Prince. You've been slacking... ;)

[richvalle]

Hah! :)

Yeah, I slowed down there for a while. I thought you might catch up with me. Most the questions are now answered before I can get to them!

I'll just be the old troll living under the bridge. :)


rv

[camelon75]

The highlight then cut and paste is a good thing for the original poster. ... Specifically you can cut and paste everything but fields used by the parser on the combat and other tabs (Attacks & skills). ... By the way, you can paste *into* the attack and skill boxes, you just can't copy from them.



Yeah work that out by copying and pasting most of the stuff on the pathfinder creature entries from the PDF of the adventure worked a treat and only needed me to replace the numbers for the bonuses some how they don't paste or maybe they don't copy.

But most stuff I got the hang of now and will be working towards making the first adventure Burnt offering playable with battle maps and stuff in a couple of days time

Just need to get my players to purchase licenses

Happy days

[Griogre]

PDFs are very nice for cut and pasting. :) I perfer PDF modules for preparing for online games. It was nice that Piazo gives free PDFs to pathfinder subscribers.

I wouldn't sweat you players. If the people you normally play with won't all come of to scratch, I can almost garentee people will be very eager to sign up for the pathfinder game. Most of the adventure paths are very popular as long as you run them at a time where many people are available.