[Extension] C4: Chilhelm's Chase & Combat Collection

[chillhelm]

Hi all,

I've been gathering a bunch of smaller extensions into one big one, because individually they don't do much, but the combination is imho quite useful. They are all centered around combat and chases, both prepping and running them. I hope you will find some of it useful.
Forge Link: https://forge.fantasygrounds.com/shop/items/439/view
So without further ado, here is a list of features:



Quick Add Buttons NPC and Vehicle records have a button in the bottom left that will add them to the combat tracker. If you hold down [Ctrl] while clicking it, it will add the NPCs to a single group. The same button is on the NPC and Vehicle lists that you can open from the sidebar. quickaddbutton.png
Saved Encounters The combat tracker menu has a new button called "Save Encounter" on the top left. Clicking it creates a new "Saved Encounter". This will save all NPCs, their groupings (if you like grouping NPCs by anything other than type), vehicle crewings, effects, wounds, fatigue, bennies on WC NPCs, Token placements and similar. You can access your saved encounters by going to the "Encounters" list in the sidebar and then clicking the "Saved" button at the top. From that list you can open the saved encounters and add them to the combat tracker with a single button click. Clicking the button again will add another full copy of the saved encounter. This is useful if for example during a combat another group of enemies appears later. I highly recommend only editing saved encounters by adding them to the combat tracker, doing your manipulations and then resaving it. The saved encounter window is only for reviewing them, editing anything there may or may not have the desired effect. saveencounter.png
Vehicle Passenger Lists Besides Drivers/Pilots and Gunners for crew operated weapons, Vehicles can now have regular passengers. You can find a passenger list under the combat tab of the vehicle. Simply drag NPC/PC links onto the word Passenger to assign them as passengers to the vehicle. You can unassign them as passengers by right clicking on their list entry and selecting unassign. This has no side effects, besides enabling passengers to make use of the following two features.
Vehicle Effect Transfer In the options menu, you will find a new entry called "Vehicle Effect to Passengers", which the GM can turn on or off. If it is enabled, all effects applied to the vehicle will also apply to all passengers and crew. Helpful when you need to apply the distracted effect to all passengers of a vehicle, but the vehicle has 10 passengers (like a war ship eg).
Transfer Vehicle Weapons If enabled in the options menu the pilot/driver of a vehicle or the gun crew (if any is assigned) will find an entry for the vehicle weapons in their control directly in their own combat tab. The weapons will only appear there if the vehicle in question is also in the combat tracker and will disappear if a different (N)PC is assigned to the vehicle, the vehicle is removed from combat or the (N)PC is unassigned from the weapon. For GMs the weapons will also appear in the quick attack list in the combat tracker.
Vehicle/Passenger Distance Proxying Besides being the best named feature ever, it can also be turned on or off from the options menu. If it is enabled, distance calculations from and to vehicle pilots, gunners and passengers will not be taken from the token of the attacker to the token of the defender, but instead between their vehicles, if either is in a vehicle (as a passenger, gunner crew or pilot).
Hit Icon Damage Shortcut GMs can double click on the hit icon (the one that says, Miss, Hit or Hit w/ Raise) on a pending attack to instantly roll the damage for the attack. There is currently a small issue with this: If the attack got a raise and damage has been already rolled for the attack, the raise die will not be automatically added. You can however add the raise die like normal by click the +Damage icon next to your modifier box in the bottom left of the screen. (Can be disabled from the options window).
Multi Rolls When selecting multiple (N)PCs on a map (by holding [Shift] and left clicking them or by using the rectangular selection tool), you can drag and drop an attack, power, trait or damage roll from one of the selected (N)PCs onto a target while holding [Ctrl]. This will perform this attack/power/trait/damage roll for each selected (N)PC against that target. If one of the NPCs does not have that attack/power/trait they will simply be skipped. Effects are applied on a per-attacker basis (so if one of them is distracted only they will get the -2 penalty to trait rolls etc.). Two small issues: The modifier box in the bottom left will only apply to the primary attacker (the person from where you dragged the attack). Because once they rolled, that box gets reset and I can't stop that). In the chat, the rolls will all be written as if the original attacker had made them, but in the CT the pending attacks will be displayed correctly. The chat will also correctly list all applicable effects.
Arcane Device Transfer Equipping an Arcane Device (an item that has powers in it's power list) now creates an Arcane Background and the corresponding powers in your charactersheet's power tab. From there you can use them as you would any other Power. The power points of the arcane background are linked to the main power point pool of the arcane device.
Hot Drops If you hold shift while double clicking on an attack roll or dropping an attack roll on a token or combat tracker entry, a pop up menu will open that allows you to select some often used attack modifiers. Only modifiers available to your weapon and character will be displayed (e.g you will not see Sweep or Double Tap unless you have the corresponding edges). Once you have made your modifications to the roll you can click on the big [Roll] button in the middle of the pop up to throw the dice. If you click abort or move the mouse away from the pop up the pop up will close by itself (no changes will be made to your character or weapon if you do this).

Some notes on Hot Drops: Selecting Wild Attack will apply the Wild Attack (and Vulnerable) effect to your character (if you click roll). Selecting Double Tap and Three Round Burst will apply those effects to the weapon, they will remain on the weapon until you manually remove them (either through another Hot Drop or by deleting the effect from the notes section). This is done the your following damage roll with the same weapon will still have the effect applied.

Hot Drops from power activation rolls will list all power modifiers available to that power and compute the power points required to cast it (including shorting, if you so choose).
HotDrops.png

As always bug reports, feature requests and criticism is welcome here. I hope it helps you get a bit more FFF with combats and chases.

Update 10.03.22
Fixed hiticon not doing anything
Add to CT button reappeared
Update 31.07.2023
Added Arcane Device Transfer
Added HotDrops
Update 29.03.2024
Updated for compatibility with FG 4.5.3 and the new SW ruleset.

[Mike Serfass]

Thank you! These are very useful. I'll be playing with them and adding them to my regular games. Our sci-fi game uses vehicles of various types, and these are just the tweaks we need.

[Mike Serfass]

btw, the formatting in your forge text is off. Bold tags are not rendering correctly.

[chillhelm]

Yeah, the punishment for paste copying. I fixed it now.

[Jiminimonka]

Nice one, gonna check these out.

[TomtheBu]

Very nice helper. Thank you very much! I love the "Vehicle/Passenger Distance Proxying" option - it makes vehicle combat much more comfortable.

In my first tests, I also noticed that the "Vehicle Effect Transfer" option works for the whole vehicle crew not just the passengers. On GM Side all is fine, but the player rolls are not affected by the vehicles effects at all e.g. distracted, not even the passengers. Maybe I made somethig wrong, the player piloting rolls were made from the vehicle sheet (vehicle handling applied), the shooting rolls from the vehicle sheet combat tab or character sheet combat tab (same result) and character sheet skills tab for passenger skill or Trait rolls.

[chillhelm]

In my first tests, I also noticed that the "Vehicle Effect Transfer" option works for the whole vehicle crew not just the passengers.

This is intended. I'll update the top post to reflect that.

On GM Side all is fine, but the player rolls are not affected by the vehicles effects at all e.g. distracted, not even the passengers. Maybe I made somethig wrong, the player piloting rolls were made from the vehicle sheet (vehicle handling applied), the shooting rolls from the vehicle sheet combat tab or character sheet combat tab (same result) and character sheet skills tab for passenger skill or Trait rolls.

I fixed this (I think). Updated version is on the forge and in the top post.

[TomtheBu]

Hi Chillhelm, thank you for the fast response. I tested again with the new version of the extension (with distracted as the given effect) on GM and Player Side and there are still some issues regarding the "Vehicle Effect Transfer" Option. I tested with running a second instance of FG and joining campaign to test the player side. There were no players connected.

On GM Side:

Just the vehilcle in CT, all crew is assigned: pilot´s distracted is doubled (distracted, distracted -4), gunner and passenger effect as intended (distracted -2).

Vehicle and all crew in CT and assigned: effect on all crew members as intended (distracted -2). Doesn´t matter if grouped on one action card with the vehicle or not.

Using multi-action (2) effect on all crew members shows distracted -4 and with multi-action (3) it´s even distracted -6. I guess it´s just a matter of how the roll is displayed because there is no seperate multi-action penalty shown but it´s summed in the distracted penalty...


On Player Side:

Just the vehicle in CT, all crew is assigned: Pilot´s distracted -2, the effect on all other crew members is not transferred (no distracted penalty).

Vehicle and all crew in CT and assigned: No distracted penalty on any crew member.


Greetings and thank you again for the great work. Hope this feedback is helpful.

[Mike Serfass]

This brings up the question of how to do vehicles in FGU. I've run into various problems before this extension was available, and found that it works best if no characters are in the CT if they're inside a vehicle. Chase is also strange when doing anything but individual character foot chases. This discussion probably deserves a separate post, but it's related.

[TomtheBu]

I also handled vehicles without the characters in the CT due to some issues concerning range and size of the targets. But with the new C4 extension and the proximity option this problem is solved and also brings a little advantage with it. Now can can have two or more player characters aim at different target vehicles if you have a larger crew of player characters on the guns in a space battle for example.