Foundry VTT - Tips: Using Groups

Grouping the players into a "party" to make XP and wealth distribution easier.

[@szymonledke3066]

Hello, Good video! I started watching your series from the first episode and I can see how you are developing and gaining more self-confidence. I'm happy to learn Foundry VTT with you. Keep it up!

[@clay_golem]

Thanks. It actually makes sense now, which is an improvement from the first video.

[@dcb2000-x6d]

I have noticed that when I award the party no XP is awarded. They are set as Primary XP is showing in the encounter. XP is removed from the encounter when selecting award but it doesn't make it to the party group. If however I manually enter the XP in the encounter and select award, then it populates with the correct XP to the party group. Any thoughts, is this a bug or just happening to me?

[@clay_golem]

Hmmm... That sounds odd. There have been a couple of updates to the DnD game engine since this video, so I suspect that's related. You'll find in the current versions, when you end combat it will try and distribute XP automatically anyway, and I suspect that's the source of conflict.

[@clay_golem]

I should point out that I don't actually use Groups for encounters in my actual games - I use Milestones rather than XP, so this isn't really very useful for my games.

[@dcb2000-x6d]

@@clay_golem Its fine if you manually type the number. I have noticed it's almost as if it isn't a number in the box initially but an image of a number as you can't edit it. But once you type in the box it seems fine.

[@dcb2000-x6d]

@@clay_golem LOL I usually use milestones also, but having seen this video I thought it could be interesting ;0)

[@clay_golem]

I'm running 2 different groups at the moment - 1 using Milestones, the other XP. Guess which one is unbalanced and is the much more dangerous campaign? Even though they're the same adventure serious (Phandelver and Below). It's convinced my that Milestones are better, when setup correctly.

[@johnborba2422]

Is this a module? Where can I find it? When I search "Groups", I get nothing.

[@clay_golem]

This is a core feature of the D&D game engine, and not a mod. If you click on Actors and Create Actor, you can choose if it's a PC, NPC, Vehicle or.... Group.

[@johnborba2422]

@@clay_golem Figured it out! Thank you! Sorry for the confusion on my end.

[@clay_golem]

@@johnborba2422 No worries. Glad you sorted it 😀

[@freakfire74]

Foundry keeps amazing me! Do you know if the DnDB importer updates the xp and gold to their character sheets? Weve joined the patreon that makes it so damage is sent to their digital sheets.

[@clay_golem]

My understanding is that any updated to XP, Gold, Items, Feats etc, should pass back to D&DBeyond, so both stay synced. But I have not tried this! But it's worth looking at.

[@freakfire74]

@@clay_golem I've experimented with it but so far I was unsuccesful. There is an import back to D&DB option but even that didn't seem to work. I will let you know if and when I find out how to make this work because that would make groups and rewards even more fantastic.

[@freakfire74]

I have a feeling the sync will only work for an active character. We use touchscreen with all characters under the login account so I'm not sure this is going to work for us (keeping all the characters synced live). Only for the logged in character. But I've contacted MrPrimate about it and will let it know here when I've gotten an answer (maybe more users here are using Foundry in combination with a local screen).

[@clay_golem]

I've been having a play myself. So you can only sync back to DnDBeyond 1 character at a time (the active one). And it'll take any of those selected options and indeed update on DnDB. But... 1. Doesn't update things like Ability changes. 2. Does not update items, unless they are from the SRD (so no items you've made, or from Gambit's Premade, or Magic Items mod, etc.) Which leaves me thinking... How useful is it? The more non-standard items you collect, the harder it is to keep them Synced. And if you use DnDB to level your character, when you import it again, you'd need to manually override the items/traits/etc. from Chris', Gambit's etc anyway. The more automated we get, the wider that compatibility gap gets.

[@freakfire74]

@@clay_golem Yes, I think you are right. Oh well, we can't have it all. The way stuff works at the moment is already pretty great. Thanks for checking!

[@propmadepostapo]

are the algorithms working ?!, two days ago I was looking for info on this topic on reddit and now this, thanks. Hope you will upload info about v3 version.

[@clay_golem]

I decided not to just go over all the 3.0 updates as some weren't working on release. I rather stick to the actual use of them - just reading the patch notes bores me, and there's a few videos out there already. Was there something specific you were interested in?

[@targas1008]

You could probably create an actor calling it ‚Chapter Story XP‘ with some CR, adding it to the encounter group, and would have your ‚story‘ portion optionally being selectable to distribute at once with the grouped encounter or not, as wanted

[@clay_golem]

Well.... that's a smart move! I'll try that, and see if it works. Sounds totally dooable. Nice.