CnC Ruleset update v2.076

[damned]

you wrote in another post:

Not as far as I am aware... I am writing the C&C users manual/Guide.
but it is a long way off finished (actually barely started if I'm honest). I am only working on it when I am stuck in hotels or airports. Probably I should give it some priority, but Life is very busy at the moment.

would you share what you have - even if its just hen scratchings? i wont start this for a couple of weeks at least as im still so new to the whole fg thing but i reckon even if i only doco a few things liek combat tracker it would be a big help to others getting started.

without mbeacom helping out earlier today i would never have seen half the features - make that 3/4 of them!

[damned]

@doc
would you be willing to pass on any notes/tips etc that you might have accumulated?

[Sorcerer]

well apart from not have done much, most of what I have done was written out in long hand, so its not in an easy to send form, but let me have a look and see what I can do.

[damned]

no worries. dont stress. i will do what i can and throw it out to you and doc for review

[damned]

@sorceror and @doc

i just finished my first session as castle keeper
we didnt get too far but the party got out of town, stumbled into an ambush, the wizard got sneak attacked after he showed his hand but the party pulled thru - just.

i have some questions!

setting up the battle scene - my party were in single file following a raiding party of goblins (we think) and they got ambushed by 4 more. three were hidden on side of path while a fourth was further back on the other side and he did not participate in the surprise round or until teh end of 1st round until after the wizard cast a sleep spell.

so i put my party on the map and the three visible goblins i ticked the visible icon. all good. the fourth i didnt tick and i dont THINK he could be seen but im not 100% because the player map seemed to be zoomed in closer and he was off the map then.

The combat tracker is awesome when they drop a weapon on the entity they want to attack - it rolls dice adds modifiers and checks against defenders stats. same with damage - love it - it was fantastic.

BUT how do they target the monsters on the map?

Also how do i handle the surprise round? how do i just give my goblin party a round? i just skipped over the turns for the players?

Is there a way to mark the goblins as dead/unconscious? Is there a way to mark my poor wizard as unconscious (fourth goblin attacked from behind and knocked him out after he cast his spell)?

if you have time and you can understand my questions can you give me some tips?

[dr_venture]

Both players and CK should be able to drop attacks, damage, and Effects (and probably more) onto either the CT or a token on the battlemat. Depending on how far the map is zoomed in, it might be easier to use one or the other, but they both work. When dragging onto the token on the battlemat, you should wait until you see the name of the target pop up so that you know that you're actually over the target.

[dr_venture]

Surprise round - skipping the players works. I probably would have only rolled Inititiatives for the Goblins and left the players INITs at 0, which would have made it a little smoother to get to the goblins (in mind at least), but whatever works for you. Which is the nice thing about FG: it's automated enough to make life much easier, but it's still DM friendly enough so that you can kinda muddle through the game session in FG the same way you would in a P&P game.

Marking players dead/unconscious - yes, there is a very convenient way! Let me make a couple screen shots & I'll be right back

[mbeacom]

I knew there was going to be an ambush, I knew it!

My question from what I've learned so far is that the autohit/damage seems to work even when its not your initiative turn. IS there a way to make it so no one can attack/damage when its not their turn? Not sure if you figured this out after I left or not Damian. Thanks again for running today!

[dr_venture]

You can't prevent players from dragging damage/attack rolls out of turn, but you can change whether or not the results of the rolls are automatically calculated & added to the CT.

In the Options window, Combat tab, there are two options for this issue: "Player attack drops" and "Player damage drops" (and "Player effect drops" if you want your player dropping their own Effects onto targets - more on that in my next post). When they are set to "On" then players are in full control of their attacks and damage rolls, and the results apply immediately. If you set them to "Off"... well, I'm not sure how that works, cuz I'm happy to have players contribute as much as possible to the game. The setting "Report" is very useful, as it notifies everyone that a player is trying to attack or apply damage. The CK can then choose to apply it if it is appropriate to do so.

Personally, I leave attacks set to "On" because who cares if an accidental attack gets made - it doesn't really affect anything other than put a pointless entry into the chat log. Damage is another thing, cause that can accidentally affect somebody's hit points & has to be cleaned up... so I set Damage to "Report". That way when a player rolls damage, as CK I can just drag it onto the target's hit points - easy-peasy.

[dr_venture]

When I first started playing, I wasn't sure what the Modifier windows was really useful for... after all, you can just put modifiers into the little Modifier box at the bottom of the main screen. At some point I realized that there were standard C&C mods that I wasn't remembering, I I went through the rules and found all of the common combat mods & put them in the window... and then it became obvious: it's not only a great way to organize the mods, but it also teaches all the players what the common mods are, gets them involved with applying their own mods, *and* it makes them easy to see in the chat window when they use them - the other small picture I uploaded shows that it's pretty clear which modifiers were added to Thrarfon's attack.

To use a Modifier, you can either drag it onto the Modifiers box under the chat frame, or just double-click on the Modifier in the list. You'll notice that the Modifier box will have a little dot showing that there is a Mod in there - mousing over it will show you at least a little of the text. My Mod names are long enough that you can only see the first 10 chars or so, but I'd rather have the mods describes explicitly. If you are briefer with your mod labels, you'll be able to read them in the Mod box more easily.

Included is a screen shot of my current Modifier window. Ignoring the fact that I've played with the art, you can see that it's all laid out pretty clearly. The little radio button to the far right shares the Mod with the Players if it is checked, which I have done for all of my mods. (The stuff at the bottom is my own generic skill system - I can describe it sometime for anyone that is interested).