New to Fantasy Grounds, Some Basic Questions for Running an AP

Hi, everyone!

I've been running campaigns with MapTool for quite a while. However, building everything myself has become a huge pain (especially since Paizo's digital maps, as I'm sure people know, do not have reliable grids). I'm considering switching to Fantasy Grounds, but I'm a bit confused and not sure how much it is going to cost me or what I need to buy.

I know that at a minimum, I need to buy the Ultimate subscription and the individuals modules for the books from the AP. What I can't figure out is how much of the Pathfinder rules are included in FG by default and what I would need to rebuy. Do I need to buy the CRB? If I have a player who is a Spiritualist do I need to buy Occult Adventures?

Also, I use a fair number of house rules - how much freedom does Fantasy Grounds allow for tweaking the ruleset?

Thanks for any help. :)

The Pathfinder ruleset (interactive character sheets, dice rolling, and lots of automation based on the Pathfinder rules) is included by default, along with data from the Core Rulebook. There are also many free, community-made data modules (see a thread containing many of them here) that include data from supplemental books (like Occult Adventures). You can always easily add data yourself, if you can't find what you want already available.

The ease of tweaking the ruleset really depends on what you want to do. Adding new spells, feats, magic items, etc, is easy. Changing from rolling 1d20 to rolling 3d6 for skill checks is harder, and will require you to have some understanding of programming (you can see a thread Trenloe started about this here.) Of course, you can always just roll 3d6 (like you would in a face-to-face game) and work out the outcome yourself - it's the integration with the existing automation that's harder.

Also note that you can import characters from PCGen into FG pretty seamlessly (spell casters will need to setup their prepared spells I believe).

Thanks, that's good info.

Is there a benefit to purchasing the various rulebooks through Fantasy Grounds?

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Originally Posted by MaxAstro

Thanks, that's good info.

Is there a benefit to purchasing the various rulebooks through Fantasy Grounds?

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Yes, drag and drop and all your players can access the resources while connected to your game.

You can always type in everything manually and setup your own actions and effects etc. But by having the books, some/most of that is automated.

Plus, as mentioned, if you share a players guide with your players, they can all access it simultaneously while connected to your game.

Though written specifically for 5E, this post will give you some of the pro's and con's (though 5E has more automation that PF); https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...eed-to-play-5e

Some info here: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...Fantasygrounds

The default Pathfinder rules are pretty good. I helped update them to add drag-and-drop functionality. But the official Core Rulebook and Advanced Player's Guide are well worth investing in. If you have a player playing a single rare class that is only found in one book, you might just as well create the class directly in Fantasy Grounds rather than buying a whole module. It's not that hard to do, really.