Fantasy Grounds / Foundry - Need Advice for Pathfinder 2E

[Araendal]

Hello Everyone,

I have spent nearly the past month searching online for a good VTT that can achieve some of the things I am looking for in a virtual table top environment. I started out with Demiplane months ago for building my characters, which is something I have used for a while, so naturally, I decided to give Roll20 a go since they recently purchased them. It seems nice and all, but I don't believe it is capable of doing the automation tasks I am looking for (targeting, damaging, attacking, applying conditions, enforcing penalties and movement speeds, etc).

I have used Foundry VTT as a player before for DnD, but Pathfinder is where my heart lies and I am looking to branch out and run a game of my own for some friends. From what I have seen, Foundry is great for running Pathfinder due to the amount of videos I have seen online, but I am having trouble finding much information on Fantasy Grounds, and I want to give it a fair go before I just assume Foundry is the system I want.

I have seen that Fantasy Grounds is great for running campaigns and combat encounters, but what I am not sure about are the following:

1. Does fantasy grounds support spell attack animations? Example: Wizard uses scorching ray to attack 3 targets. Does FG innately (or even with mods/forge modules) support showing a ray of fire shooting out at each of the targets, that in turn will automatically take into the account the characters AC, resistances, conditions, etc. and roll it all out for me? I know Foundry does this because I have used it before, but I want to know if it is in FGU.

2. There seems to be a lot of automation for fantasy grounds, and I like that because most of my group are novices to RPGs in general. However, if I am the GM and I purchase the license as well as the content, will they have access to my purchased content for creating characters in that session?

3. Is there currently functionality to import PDF sheets of already built characters or anything like that so that Fantasy Grounds auto-creates the characters for you, or is all character creation within the FGU platform only?

Any help or pointers are greatly appreciated! Also, if I am missing any great features that really make FGU standout, please holler at me! I am open to listening. I am only reaching out here because I am just having trouble finding the answers to my questions and I want to give FGU a fair go!

Regards,
Araendal

[Trenloe]

Welcome to the FG forums!

Some quick answers:
1) This type of animation isn't available natively in FG. I don't know if an extension can do what you're asking for, maybe another community member can provide some feedback on this.

2) Players have access to the material the GM owns (and allows the players access to) when they are connected to the GM's campaign.

3) There's not a PDF importer, but there is a Pathbuilder importer: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?77652-Forge-item-Pathbuilder-Importer

There's quite a few videos on this channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkVs18Za6i2yuPQ4xyfFLJA Primarily intended for providing functionality updates, they tend to go into the details of specific ruleset aspects.

I'm biased, but some of the great things about PF2 on Fantasy Grounds are (not necessarily unique, but these are strong points): the largest amount of official Paizo material available for any VTT, in depth automation options on the player and NPC side, players and GMs can add their own material through the FG interface, a very supportive community - to name but a few.

I'm sure others will provide their own feedback.

[Araendal]

Hello Trenloe! Thank you very much for the quick and honest feedback. I will definitely do some more research and check out that channel.

Best Regards,
Araendal

[Trenloe]

You're welcome! If you have any specific questions just ask.

[Nyarly Dude]

There is a paid extension that lets you associate tokens (potentially animated ones) with spells, but it's designed with the reverse philosophy in mind. That is, you decide where to place the spell token and use that area to determine the AoE, rather than letting the selected targets determine where the spell token should be. In addition, it was designed to be generic and not PF2e-specific, so the built-in AoE definitions may not perfectly correspond to RAW emanations / bursts / etc. Check out https://forge.fantasygrounds.com/shop/items/149/view and the associated forum thread linked to on that.

FGU will generally support a lot of automation re: conditions, resistances etc -- just not, natively, the adding flashy animations to it.

[Araendal]

Thank you for that information as well, Nyarly Dude.