D&D 5E Fantasy Grounds and others (newbie opinion seeking)

[knasser]

I'm staring a 5e campaign - haven't run D&D since 3.5. I don't have a lot of prep time generally plus with being new to the rules I'm looking around for tools to help me. I found Fantasy Grounds from the links on the WotC site and it looks pretty impressive. But it also seems geared towards online play and we will be doing tabletop. So my first question is does anyone use it here as an aide to actual tabletop play and how much do you find it helps with that? Or are there any alternatives I might have missed (very possible) that would fit the bill? Primarily I want to be able to quickly build encounters and have the stats there at my fingertips along with an ability to track combats, initiative, et al.

I guess the other concern is the sheer cost of the data packs for it. It seems very high one-off costs for something that I have to also pay a subscription to also actually access that content (if I'm reading it rightly?). I get that it pretty much contains all of the actual book but I can't actually read it as a book so I would seem to end up having to buy both book and the data pack? If it were a combo pack or something for a little extra that would make sense, but it seems to be pay twice for the same content is that right?

Anyway, any and all suggestions welcome. Apologies as this probably gets asked periodically.

 

[LordEntrails]

Hey [MENTION=65151]knasser[/MENTION],

First, yes it aids in playing face-to-face. Myself and others use FG regular for F2F games. If you search their forums, you will find several threads with more examples and such on using FG at the tabletop. In short, my players love it (for 5E) as it speeds up combat, provides access to the PHB in a searchable database type format, and takes care of combat tracking.

Next, I find it shortens prep time a great deal, and lets me create more content than I otherwise would. Though FG is the only VTT I'm competent in, I have heard from many others who have used both FG and Roll20 that from a DM perspective, FG is much better for the DM especially in terms of prep time.

Cost you have a bit mixed up. There are two categories of cost, one for the application and one for the DLC (Player's Handbook, adventures, etc). For the application, you can either purchase a subscription OR a permanent license. Each of these you can purchase a Full or an Ultimate license. The difference is that a Full allows you to play in any game or host others with a Full license. With an Ultimate, you can play in any game and players can play in games you host and they don't need any license (they can install the free demo).

As for the DLC, all of this is optional. You can play 5E without any of it. A Full or Ultimate license both include all of the game mechanics (for 5E plus a host of other game systems), the Basic Rules and the 5E SRD. It's easy for you or your players to add things from other sources you have (such as a hardcopy of the SCAG, or from these forums). But, you can also choose to buy the DLC so you don't have to enter it. This is how I generally do it, I don't buy hardcopy anymore (I don't have any 5E hardcovers) I just buy it all on FG instead.

So, cost is simple; you can get a Full subscription for $4/month or $39 for a one-time license. Ultimates are $10/month or $149. You can also buy a 4 pack of Full licenses on Steam for the price of 3. Then you can buy the DLC as you want and need. I create a lot of my own adventures so I've purchased the PHB, DMG & MM on FG. Note, if you are a completionist and want to buy everything 5E on FG, you can get a 25% bundle discount (and you get the discount on all new WotC 5E releases, which usually get released at the same time as other preferred stores).

Do note, if you go the subscription route, you will need to keep the subscription current if you want to access your DLC. But if you buy the one-time license, then you don't have to worry about that. (But the subscription is useful if you are not sure, so is the free 30 day trial.)

As for buying both the hardcover and the FG conversion. No need. I never have (as I said). It is a little bit different than reading a PDF, but you can still read it all. Also, the next version (3.2) which is already in public beta and should be released to live/production in the next few weeks has some new reference formatting which you might like even more as it is more like a PDF than the current linked environment.

You can read a bit more about it in the review I wrote some time ago, plus what others have said as well; http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?386930-Fantasy-Grounds&p=6750807&viewfull=1#post6750807

 

[Jester David]

What do you want out of a tool/app?

I know there's a 5e version of HeroLabs: http://www.wolflair.com/index.php?context=hero_lab
Its just the SRD but other content was added by fans.
That has a character builder, monster builder, and encounter builder.
But it doesn't include any of the adventures.

 

[GuardianLurker]

I primarily use FG for my live, F2F, tabletop 5e game where I'm the GM. One of my players got sold on it for his 3.x game. One thing that I can confirm is that FG *really, really* rewards the time you put into learning how to work with it. Go to their forums/wiki and follow the excellent tutorials. They'll help *LOTS*.

Keep in mind that you don't have to go all-in at once.

When I first started, all I did was use it to keep track of initiatives/AC/HP and project a map. My players had no copies of FG, and rolled dice manually, and I input the results.

Then I started using full (stock, unmodified) monster stats and using my copy of FG to actually run the battles. At this point, I was essentially paper-free as a GM. My players still had paper characters and rolled dice.

Then I pulled my players character sheets in, and encouraged my players to get the free copy.

I continued on taking little steps; now I'm writing and customizing adventures, creating new monsters and magic items, and basically doing everything I used to do as a GM in FG. Each step has gone over fairly well with the players. To the point now where I've had players semi-complain about missing having to roll physical dice, but immediately following that up with "but I don't want to give up the auto-targeting and book-keeping automation" of FG.

I must admit that I still don't *quite* have the effects down, but it's fairly easy to drop the correct conditions on by hand, and that solves most of the problems.

 

[jimmifett]

I use FG both in person and online. The initiative tracker is great and I like how it can autoroll NPC Hitpoints for me. The pins are great for linking back to story, I like to keep my story in FG.

Pricing comes in 2 flavors. Pricey-seeming one-time buy, or monthly subscription.
I went with one-time buy for platform and content. It was only a week or two worth of lunch money at work, so I packed lunch and saved the money for FG.

 

[knasser]

Hi. Thanks to everyone for all the replies. I went away for a little while to research and play around with the free and demo versions of FG and Herolab respectively.

To those who asked what I wanted from software tools, well it's basically anything that streamlines my job as GM in F2F gaming. In particular, being able to spin up encounters quickly though everything else is a plus. Herolab is interesting. The interface is a bit clunkier than FG (imo) and it certainly doesn't do as much in terms of combat management. On the other hand one of the main things that I thought would be a problem with it was that it seemed to only have the SRD content. And then thanks to a poster in this thread I discovered the community pack which seems to have the lot! So Herolab suddenly becomes a very cost-effective option. I can buy the books and still have a tool that lets me create encounters through rapid drag-and-drop. Having a paperless way of tracking damage to NPCs and monsters is a bonus on top of that. Herolab is a strong contender therefore.

HOWEVER, Fantasy Grounds is very impressive. It does a lot! I could certainly see that being useful. I'm still stuck on two things with it though. The first is that I do not want to pay for the content twice - that's a sticking point for me. Books or FG packs, but not both. The second is that if I do buy the "books" in digital form, I don't want to have to pay to access them in perpetuity. That means subscription model is out for me. Still, the one time price isn't too bad - it's mainly the first that I'm wary of. I guess I could just buy everything digitally if it's got all the text in it.

Two questions - I found that you can export PCs you've built in Herolab to Fantasy Grounds. Can you export entire encounters from the encounter builder? That would make buying Herolab and FG together a really good combination as I'd be able to use the Community Pack stuff for Herolab as a source of FG. Secondly, you can create your own creatures in FG, yes? So I could just type in monsters from the Monster Manual as needed, if I really wanted to, yes?

Again, thanks for all the help!

 

[LordEntrails]

...

HOWEVER, Fantasy Grounds is very impressive. It does a lot! I could certainly see that being useful. I'm still stuck on two things with it though. The first is that I do not want to pay for the content twice - that's a sticking point for me. Books or FG packs, but not both. The second is that if I do buy the "books" in digital form, I don't want to have to pay to access them in perpetuity. That means subscription model is out for me. Still, the one time price isn't too bad - it's mainly the first that I'm wary of. I guess I could just buy everything digitally if it's got all the text in it.

If you already have the content as a physical book, you can check out the FG 5E forums on the Par5E tool which talks about how to get your content into your own FG reference modules.

Two questions - I found that you can export PCs you've built in Herolab to Fantasy Grounds. Can you export entire encounters from the encounter builder? That would make buying Herolab and FG together a really good combination as I'd be able to use the Community Pack stuff for Herolab as a source of FG. Secondly, you can create your own creatures in FG, yes? So I could just type in monsters from the Monster Manual as needed, if I really wanted to, yes?

Again, thanks for all the help!

On the Herolab encounters, don't know.

On creating your NPC's, absolutely. You can do this through the interface (just go to your NPC list, hit the Edit (brown pencil) icon, Add new and off you go. Or again you can do it using Par5E or another community tool in development.

 

[cmad1977]

I don't know if it would serve, but I've used Roll20 in f2f games and it worked well.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[knasser]

If you already have the content as a physical book, you can check out the FG 5E forums on the Par5E tool which talks about how to get your content into your own FG reference modules.


On the Herolab encounters, don't know. On creating your NPC's, absolutely. You can do this through the interface (just go to your NPC list, hit the Edit (brown pencil) icon, Add new and off you go. Or again you can do it using Par5E or another community tool in development.

Thanks but it's specifically encounters I'm asking about. The reason being that it would let me use the Community pack for Herolab to build my encounters and then I could run them in FG. For Par5E I had not heard of this. Having looked it up, it seems to be a set of macros for taking text you have cut and pasted from PDFs into a text editor and then gone through adding mark up so that it can pick out the elements like Backgrounds, et al. Sorry - I got as far in the video as where he was searching and replacing line endings in a text editor and just said "No." I'm looking for tools to save me time. I appreciate the suggestions but that is way more technical investment than I care for. What I basically want to know before I spend a lot of money on Herolab is if you can export Encounters you have built to FG. I can't tell with the Demo because that part is disabled in it.

 

[LordEntrails]

Thanks but it's specifically encounters I'm asking about. The reason being that it would let me use the Community pack for Herolab to build my encounters and then I could run them in FG. .... ... What I basically want to know before I spend a lot of money on Herolab is if you can export Encounters you have built to FG. I can't tell with the Demo because that part is disabled in it.

No problem. Sorry I can't answer about HL encounters. I've never used it. I imagine if you post or their forums or the FG forums someone who uses both can answer.