Additional Modifiers and Customizability

[Garret W]

I downloaded your module, and I must say, it really enhances what you can do on Foundry. I come from Roll20, and while that website definitely left many, many things to be desired (tokens not moving for my players when I move them on my screen, artwork suddenly disappearing from the map, dynamic lighting not functioning properly, beating-your-head-into-the-wall amounts of lag, etc.), there were some things that the website did well. Some of those good things have already been suggested by some other users (resource boxes that you can get to display any number of things, such as the number of barbarian rages remaining, the amount of HP is currently in your Lay on Hands pool, and the amount of ammunition you have to name a few), but there are a few I have not seen yet, although I may have missed them in the thread. This post will be the first few of several suggestions I have for your module. As the title would suggest, additional modifiers and a greater ability to customize some of the values in the character sheet would be fantastic.

First, I would put forth the suggestion of making global AC modifiers, global attack modifiers and global save modifiers. There’s a fighter in my party that took the Dual Wielder feat, which gives her a bonus to her AC (Kensei Monks get something very similar), and it would be useful for shields as well. I have a cleric in the party of one of the games I run, and he loves to throw out Bless spells. Having the ability to go into the character sheet and toggle the ability to add a value to saves and attack rolls, whether a dice value or a fixed value, would be incredibly helpful. That way, my players wouldn’t have to remember to manually roll a d4 for every time they make an attack or roll a saving throw when the party cleric Blesses them.

Next, I would suggest putting in the ability to apply a global damage modifier. This is very useful for barbarians, so that they don’t have to remember to add rage damage every time they make an attack. There are other situations where a global damage modifier makes sense, but this scenario is the one that immediately springs to mind.

So, the reason for my last suggestion on this post is because one of my players has the “Observant” feat. I’m not seeing a way where I can manually adjust the Passive Perception and Passive Investigation to reflect the +5 that Observant gives you.

If there is a way to do the things that I mentioned that are already built into the module, then please let me know. I’d really appreciate it. I might have missed something that I had meant to discuss earlier in my day, but it’s after 5 in the morning here, so I’m probably not thinking as clearly as I would like. Given that fact, there are probably suggestions that have slipped my mind. I’m going to have to catch some z’s before I write my next suggestion.

I appreciate the time you took to read my message. Here’s hoping that these changes might make the lives of some DM’s a lot easier!

[Kim Mantas]

There should be ways to accomplish most of what you’re looking for, I think. Obsidian uses a system that is more complicated than roll20’s 5e sheet, but also more powerful in most instances.

The first thing you’ll need to be mindful of is changing the item sheet that’s used for many items, like so:

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(You don’t need to change the default sheet if you don’t want to, you can change it on a per-item basis if you prefer).

Once you’ve changed the item sheet, you’re able to configure the items in a way that obsidian understands by clicking ‘Add Effect’, then clicking on the new effect and adding ‘components’ from the tray on the right. Here’s an example of the Lay on Hands pool:

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You can check the wiki for many more examples of configurations for common 5e features and items. Once you’ve set up an item with a resource component like above, it should appear on the character’s sheet. Because we set Lay on Hands as a class ability, it appears under ‘Features & Traits’ > ‘Class Features’.

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A player is then able to drag that Lay on Hands feature to their macro bar at the bottom where the number of uses will be shown (you may need to give the player permissions for script macros):

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There may be some accommodation for the request to have these custom resource counters elsewhere on the sheet, but it’s not a priority right now.

I’ll just address the Observant comment quickly before moving onto global modifiers because they’re a bit more involved. If you click the skill’s bonus number on the sheet, it should open a dialog box allowing you to configure that skill and override its value and add bonuses to its modifier or passive score:

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You can also target these scores using the same system as the global modifiers, but in case you wanted something simpler, it does exist.

The simplest use of global modifiers involves creating a ‘feat’ item, configuring some effects for it, then toggling those effects on and off from the ‘Effects’ tab. For example, the +1 AC from Dual Wielder might be handled like so:

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This was done through adding an effect with ‘Add Effect’, selecting the effect, and then adding a ‘bonus’ and a ‘filter’ component to it. This can then be toggled on and off:

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Rage is similar, but more complicated:

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This shows an example of adding a modifier to a component. Clicking the ‘Filter’ heading of the filter component allows you to select the individual component. The tray will then update to show some additional options. Most components will just have the option to delete them, but some have additional modifiers, like the ‘Uses Ability’ modifier for the filter component, allowing us to configure the rage damage to only apply on melee weapon attack rolls that use strength. If you wanted a simpler configuration, you could leave the filter set to all damage rolls and just toggle the effect on and off as desired.

Bless can also be handled with a simple toggle effect:

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But you can also set up a much more complicated workflow by editing the spell itself:

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Don’t worry too much about the targets and their scaling at the moment, as those aren’t enforced in any way at the moment, they’re just for informational purposes. Setting up the bless effect as an ‘applied effect’ allows the caster to target several tokens before casting. When they click to cast the spell, all targeted tokens will have the bless effect applied to them. You target tokens with the ‘select targets’ tool on the left, or by right-clicking the token and clicking the ‘target’ icon:

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I can recommend my Easy Target module to allow quicker targeting of tokens with alt+click.

You can see that targeting the tokens before casting the spell has then applied the bless effect to them:

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The caster is also indicated to be concentrating on the effect (the white swirl icon). Selecting the caster will show that they have 10 rounds of bless duration remaining in a little duration bubble at the bottom of the screen, above the macro bar:

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Right-clicking and deleting that duration will end the effect for all tokens. You can see the effect on an affected token also by opening their sheet and taking a look at the Effects tab:

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There you can toggle the effect on or off, or delete it entirely from only that token.

I hope this helps with some of the items you mentioned, do let me know if I missed anything, and be sure to check the wiki examples too.

[Garret W]

Resolved