5E Automation Questions

[Wiganer34]

I am a solo roleplayer looking to make use of fantasy grounds to take care of a lot of game tracking and calculations.

I bought the base program which is working well and have created tables for my solo engine, but notice some character abilities do not work automatically and whilst I understand ability functionality can be programmed this is not a skill I possess.

If I spend the additional cash to buy the core rulebooks for 5e will I get:

1.Full preprogrammed abilities for player handbook characters.
2.Full Random loot tables.
3.Full random encounter tables.

Thanks for reading any help you can give would be appreciated.

[Zacchaeus]

Hi Wiganer, welcome to FG.

For number 1 I have to assume that what you mean is are all of the abilities that a character possess have effects automatically created for them when they are dragged into the character sheet. If that is what you are asking then no they are not. In many cases this is because the abilities don't require an effect and in others it is because such programming isn't really cost effective. However it is easy enough to set up your own effects; there is plenty of guidance on how to do this on the wiki and in these videos.

For two and three the paper versions of the core rulebooks don't have random treasure or encounter tables; so the FG modules don't either. The DMG has all the tables for treasures which you can use to create your own random treasure tables with. See here on how to do that. Random encounters is something that the DM would normally do if they use such things. Again, though they are easy enough to set up and the same link as above will show you how.

If you are looking for many random encounter tables then there are about a thousand of them in Xanathar's Guide to Everything but how much use they would be for your purpose I'm not sure.

[Trenloe]

To expand on Question #1 - you will never get "full" (100%) automation of PC (or NPC) abilities in Fantasy Grounds (and I would say any application that allows Pen-n-Paper RPGs to be played) as there are just too many edge cases and one of the great things about RPGs is that they are not limited by computer coding.

Fantasy Grounds aims for about 80% automation to an actively supported commercial ruleset - some are a little higher than 80%. Beyond this level the return for programming time investment rapidly drops off - and the potential for future supplements breaking existing complex automation increases.

Some additional information on Solo play in this thread: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...-play-using-FG There's a lot of good info in that thread for solo play - look through it all, it takes a while to get to the really good in-depth info...

[Wiganer34]

Thanks for taking the time to help Zacchaeus. You understand my comments correctly.

Its mainly a desire to drag and drop all abilities to the combat tracker and track all character ability uses. It's amazing how frustrating I am finding partial automation compared to tracking everything with pnp! I have a desire to leave it all to the software to deal with making solo play more viable when tired!

I will work through the videos you suggested and see if I can figure out what I need to make my experience smoother (or maybe go and buy rob2e's work if I can't!)

I will also look at picking up xanathar'guide too if that has preset random encounters. Are these customisable by party level?

Though I can really see the value in having everything customised and running smoothly, it's all looking more time-intensive and expensive than I'd hoped when looking at this!?!

[Wiganer34]

Thanks Trenloe I'll go read that thread on solo play. Thank you.

I take the point you are making about the need and diminished returns in full automation in a tools etc like this, I just hadn't really thought about it in that way.

[Nickademus]

Rob2e's work isn't anything more than already exists in the 5E ruleset. He just did the typing for you. It's the ruleset that is missing the ~20% automation due to the reasons that Trenloe mentioned. You will not be able to buy the 'rest of the work'. It is simply not possible.

On the other hand, you don't actually need to use the automation. If you find tracking everything to be less frustrating that figuring out what you can rely on the automation for, then just use the modifier box and the 3D dice to simulate an actual table-top experience.

[Zacchaeus]

The random encounters in Xanathar are by region (arctic, woodlands, coastal, desert etc) and by level (1-4, 5-10, 11-16 and 17-20 usually).

[LordEntrails]

I think I'm a bit confused as to what you mean by "automation". FG can track the use of abilities, spells and consumables. Is that what you are looking for? If so, you just have to setup powers appropriately. Their are various threads on how to setup things like wands with daily charges, weapons with ammo, etc.

Is that what your challenge is or is it something else?

[Wiganer34]

Thanks for replies everyone.

My issue lies primarily in having to setup powers which I was hoping would be programmed into the core books and just missing from the SRD. I am sure a lot of my confusion is due to my lack of experience with the toolset and many of these things are likely to be second nature to veterans. I think I just need to get into learning mode for a while til I pick it all up.

The couple of specific issues I noticed with 'automation' was on a fighter where I can't find a way to make Fighting Style work on the combat tracker and other abilities (Second Wind and Action Surge) don't appear on the actions tab automatically. The latter point I was able to sort out, but I had hoped would just be configured automatically when I dragged the class onto the character sheet. I am sure there are many other examples of abilities that have to be tweaked to make work properly which I just hoped could be resolved by throwing money at the toolset.

My goal is to run a solo campaign with a party of 4 characters and I was hoping that the combat tracker and automated abilities would take much of the effort out of running a bigger party. This is not something that I have been able to do with pen and paper as its too laborious. From my limited experience FG does seem to be easier than pen and paper for solo play but I was finding that I missed a few things as I relied on the automation to do too much for me. Despite my initial frustrations, I have so far managed to get a party of 2 up to level three in FG and it has been really good fun aside from the issue with auto-abilities and the need to put in a lot of effort into creating tables etc. Having to tweak abilities on each character to make sure their effects are working seems like more hard work to me, particularly at higher levels, but then I am new to the toolset and don't have a brain wired for this sort of thing!

I really appreciate the effort this community has put into trying to help me already and I am sure there are plenty more great guides out there which will help me learn the ropes....

[LordEntrails]

Ok, makes sense to me now.

Yea, so most actions won't be created automatically. Their is the "Complete xxx" packages for all the 5E stuff that have the actions (those that can be automated) in character sheets you can get from the posts. Their are also the Effects packages on the DMsGuild from Rob that have all these too. Or you can follow the videos from Mr Z or the Wiki page that has them. Agreed it would be nice if they were automatically created, but not all of them can be, and as has been discussed, trying to automate the creation of everything this was has issues of its own.

I think once you get the actions and effects down, you will find out that you indeed will be able to do solo play with FG much easier than any other system I know of.

Have you checked into the Discord channel or possible even better FG College? FGC does mentoring type classes for free. Those I've never taken one of their classes, I hear the folks over there are pretty awesome.