PF 2e Spells with saving throws, How do you make them do half damage?

[Minsupa]

Question 1) When you roll a d20 on a monster it says Crit Failure, Failure, Success, Crit Success and then if you drop a damage dice on that monster it doesn't take into account the what kind of success or failure it was. (Just does the 1 dice of damage.)
Question 2) For Spells like Electrical Arc how do you put them into Fantasy grounds to deal *1d4 plus your spell casting ability modifier*
An arc of lightning leaps from one target to another. You
deal electricity damage equal to 1d4 plus your spellcasting
ability modifier.

Question 3) How do you "Heighten a spell" When casting it or is it just something that is not automated?
Question 4) Why isn't there any damage on the spell when I drop it into a character sheet?

I watched https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EkduesBjzc but still am kinda confused

Thanks for the help,
Min

[Trenloe]

1) The saves need to be triggered from the spell, so that FG knows the who triggered the save and what the result was. Then the damage has to be rolled from the actor in the combat tracker that triggered the saving throw - otherwise there is nothing to link the previous save result with the damage roll.

The save needs to be setup as "Half on Success" to enable the basic save damage calculations. Click the magnifying glass to the right of the cast line in the spell to open the details window:



2) If the spell doesn't have a damage entry when it is added to the spell class, then use the right-click menu to add a damage action. Right-click on the spell, select Add Action -> Add Damage. Then click the magnifying glass to the right of the new damage entry in the spell to open the details window.

Drag a d4 to the damage section, change the Mult x Stat (Max) cycler to the casting stat and type electricity in the type field:



3) Heightening is not something that's currently automated. Prepare/allocate the spell to the relevant level (for spells that aren't a cantrip or focus spell) and then manually edit as required. If the spell is a cantrip, manually edit as required as you level up. In the example of the Electric Arc spell, drag a second d4 to the damage action details.

4) The FG code tries to identify the actions that need to be created when a spell is added to the spell class on the actions tab. Paizo doesn't use the same language to describe repeatable effects (damage, heal, save, etc.) and sometimes the ruleset code can't correctly determine the action/s to add to the spell - this is the case with electric arc, where the damage action is not recognized.

The video that you link is from the D&D 5E ruleset. Wizards of the Coast have used a very repeatable wording in their spells and actions, so the 5E ruleset has a good chance of parsing out the spell actions as it looks for standard phrases. Unfortunately, as already mentioned, Paizo don't use repeatable wording for PF2 descriptions.

We have plans to improve things like spell action parsing/allocation, but that is a little down the line at present.

[MaxAstro]

As far as heightening spells goes, there is a 2e extension that adds "spell level" as one of the optional dice multipliers when adding a damage value to a spell. For spells with predictable damage increases, you can use that extension and set the spell to do i.e. 1d6 x spell level damage. Then you can copy it to any spell level and it will work correctly.

For cantrips, set their damage to be based on "odd CLs" instead; that will correctly do one die at level 1, two dice at level 3, etc. Although note that some cantrips (acid splash) don't follow that progression.

[Larsenex]

That is an excellent summation of how to add spells. You might also want to look for Shade Ravens extension ' Drag n Drop' spells. Which I have found immensely helpful.