Preparing for Battle - best pratice?

Hello guys!

After almost botching my first battle with FG this week-end, I'd like to ask the more experienced GMs: What is the best way to prepare a battle?

Obviously you want to have a map prepared (either a really neat one to scale or at least one you handdraw in FG). Secondly you have to know the opposition your players are going to face.

You combine these in an encounter, where you can preplace your bogies and set their visibility.

When the time comes, you pull those into the combat tracker, plus the PCs. What about allies? For example, I have a half-squad regular troopers that can join my PCs in battle. And of course I want the players to run these. One thing I have found is to drag the character on the Allies field the of the character sheet, but I don't want to permanently assign them to a player.

Rather I'd like pull a character on to the Group icon of the Combat Tracker. This implies I also have to drag the relevant NPC sheet onto the characters symbol for him to see the stats. Correct?

Is there a better way to set up a combat in SW?

How do you set up tokens for the PCs apart from them using their automatic ones from the character sheet?

Anything else you find useful, that I may have missed?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by AstaSyneri

Hello guys!

After almost botching my first battle with FG this week-end, I'd like to ask the more experienced GMs: What is the best way to prepare a battle?

Obviously you want to have a map prepared (either a really neat one to scale or at least one you handdraw in FG). Secondly you have to know the opposition your players are going to face.

You combine these in an encounter, where you can preplace your bogies and set their visibility.

When the time comes, you pull those into the combat tracker, plus the PCs. What about allies? For example, I have a half-squad regular troopers that can join my PCs in battle. And of course I want the players to run these. One thing I have found is to drag the character on the Allies field the of the character sheet, but I don't want to permanently assign them to a player.

Rather I'd like pull a character on to the Group icon of the Combat Tracker. This implies I also have to drag the relevant NPC sheet onto the characters symbol for him to see the stats. Correct?

Is there a better way to set up a combat in SW?

How do you set up tokens for the PCs apart from them using their automatic ones from the character sheet?

Anything else you find useful, that I may have missed?

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Everything seems to be ok here. There are few things you could do differently, but it's only matter of how do you like it yourself.

Few answers:

• Host or player can prepare PC token by dragging one into the PC portrait. This will permanentely assing the token, and whenever PC is apply to CT it will be using that token instead of the PC potrait. You can always change the token to reflect changes. To check what token is assigned to PC, open the PC sheet and hold ALT down. The portrait picture on the sheet will dissapear and the selected token is displayed there. To completely reset the token selection hold ALT down and middle-mouse click on the token. Basically you need to assign PC token only once in your campaign.
• You can quickly apply all PCs into combat tracker by doing this: As Host you can see small "Menu-button" on the tracker's bottom side, right click on it and select "Add all PCs" -- Boom! All PCs are added to CT, no need to sweat!
• Personally I prefer to use permanently assigned allies, aka I have applied them into PC sheets before. There are few reasons why: You can automatically apply them into CT by right clicking on the same "Menu-button" and selecting "Add all allies".
• If you're using Enhanced Combat Tracker extension you have several thing to speed-up your setup:
• If you prefer not to have pre-assigned PC allies, drag the given ally ONCE/ONE TIME into combat tracker, hold down ALT and start clicking on the "Group icon", each click will create new similar NPC/ally within the first one. Click as many times you need.
• If you want to assign freshly created NPC allies into PCs group in the tracker (so that they have the same initiative and it's easier to track which player should control next ally), do this: simply DRAG the given NPC/ally entry from CT (from the gray link icon on the right side) and drop it to PCs "group icon", boom! The given CT entry is moved to be within PCs group. Without the extension this action will create new entry to CT, but with the extension, existing entry is moved to different group.
• There are even more benefits to use pre-assigned NPCs with the extension: If you have assigned the allies and applied them into the CT, the "END TURN" and "ON HOLD" buttons will be displayed for player who is controlling the current ally. These buttons make it much faster for deciding if player hs finished their turn or not.
• I am still trying to make you try the pre-assigned allies idea with a prepartion method: When battle is about to start, ask if players would like to use the allies, if they do, quick as host drag-and-drop NPC allies into character sheet's allylist. When ready, click the "Add all allies" option. Much faster and you will get all ally features. After the battle as host go and remove all the previously assigned ally NPCs from the sheets.

These ones came to my mind quickly, I might continue later or if you have some specific questions.

I would suggest running a mock battle via combat tracker on one machine, ideally with two monitors. That's how I did it to get the feel of the combat tracker. To do this, start FG as normal. Start your campaign. Drag the window to monitor 1. Open FG again. Click "Join Game" and then enter a name such as "test player" and localhost. Put the FG screen on monitor 2. On Monitor 1 (the GM monitor) NOTE: I suggest downloading the free Eye of Kilquato as this has players, maps, and NPC ready to go, but you can use one of your own adventures as well. Now, start things off! I like getting the min character sheet open on the player screen (2) since you can double-click on traits and damage. This is also a good way to get a "what I see" "What they see" feel as well. I learned a bunch this way, such as delete NPC from tracker not map as this is a one setup clean-up. If you delete the token, then you need to delete the combat entry as well. It also gives you a chance to just try the right-click menu options to see what happens. If you don't have two monitors but have a PC and a laptop, this works too but is NOT locahost, use the GM server alais.

Having a look at available free adventure modules (or some of the less expensive ones) and then running test encounters as heyhogan suggests is a very good way of getting an idea of the system and how adventures can be laid out in Fantasy Grounds.

FG comes with 2 example adventures - A Tale of Dinor for both 3.5e and 4e (this should have been installed as part of your FG install, if not download it from here under Demo Version -> Example Campaigns: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/downloads/

Also, the "Well Met in Kith'takharos" 3.5e module should have been installed when you install FG. Open a new 3.5e campaign and enable this module - then you will see additional tabs in Story, Images and Map, NPCs, etc.. Open the first green "Well Met im Kith'takharos Main" tab in the "Story" list to start exploring the module. The Kith'takharos setting is available for free download from White Haired Man: https://www.whitehairedman.com/kithtakharos

While these free modules/campaigns can give you a lot of useful ideas of how to set up an adventure in FG (and gives you a ready to run game), the AdventureaWeek scenarios that have just recently been released take advantage of a lot of the recent 3.5e/PFRPG ruleset developments, Id' recommend them: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/store...18&y=11&sort=1 Oh, and the cartography in these scenarios is awesome!