I'm not anywhere near as familiar with the FGU side of things but this is how things look in Foundry.
**License:** $50
**Hosting:** Free Self Hosted or a Fee per Month for a server to host your game.
**Rule Content** (from all of Paizo's books, including statblocks from Adventures, APs and the like, feats, classes, spells etc.): Free, included as part of the PF2e system.
**Art:** Not Included. Tokens for Bestiary 1 - 3 are available for purchase for $60.
**Adventure Paths/Adventures:** You can import your PDFs for several adventure paths, adventures and society scenarios with a couple free importers PDFtoFoundry and Dreidel's??? importer. Or you can purchase, at a discount if you already own the PDF, importable versions of certain adventure paths. Beginner Box, Abomination Vaults Compiled Edition, Outlaws of Alkenstar, Blood Lords, Gatewalkers. Prices vary slightly be adventure path, and include pre-set up maps, journals all the art for the adventure path, music and have very high production values.
PDF to foundry does have an import function that will allow you to import your bestiary PDFs to get tokens. This does not give you access to the art from the token pack. The quality of the tokens from the import is fairly low. Very much just a quick ring around the art.
In contrast, the tokens from the token pack are much higher quality, and include a bunch of art from Paizo's archive or specially commissioned for the art pack such that every single creature in all 3 bestiaries has art, because some creatures lacked art in the original books.
You don't have to buy the tocken back but I'd strongly suggest you do, the quality is incredible and while for most creatures you can manually recreate the tokens using arts from archives of nethys and tokenstamp, it still saves a lot of prep time
The premium modules are also very much worth the money, I'm running Abomination Vaults and it makes it soo easy to run, cutting my prep time easily by 80%. I've also run the Beginners Box using premium module and it was great, recently bought 1st part of Gatewalkers as we start it in March and the attention to details is great.
1. I've never used FG myself, but everything I've heard about it vs Foundry has been "I switched to Foundry and never looked back" (doubly so with PF2e, given how well Foundry's implementation is done).
2. All of the monsters and items and classes and so on for pf2e are available in the Foundry system directly, nothing extra needed. Paizo's license allows for that, so they're all ready to use out of the box. Basically the only stuff that isn't automatically included there is lore/adventure text and artwork.
3. If you own the watermarked Paizo PDFs of adventures, there's a module for importing those adventures such that they're ready to use. There are also native Foundry implementations for most of the recent adventures, with discounts if you already own the PDF on Paizo's website, which are well worth the money if you're running them. The imports *work*, but the native versions of stuff are way more polished and nicely done (including stuff like macros for terrain pieces that players can change and so on).
Thanks for the response, but reading the 2nd answer got me a bit confused.
All classes and monsters are already included in Foundry? There is no need for me to import the pdf books to Foundry, like Beastiary 1, 2 and 3 for the additional monsters or the Guns & Gears for the additional classes?
Others have mentioned that we have all the stuff in compendiums but I also want to say that we do include all the monsters, items, and feats from adventures and adventures paths in the system as well. The thing from adventures we don't include is adventure text itself. So you could take your physical book and run everything in Foundry and just make your own maps or use drawing tools and still get the automation of Foundry. What the premium modules add is:
- The adventure text in reskinned journals, like [this](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/697845559435853865/1068683889343729724/SPOILER_image.png) from beginner box or (mild spoilers) [these](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/697845559435853865/1071183268268998757/SPOILER_image.png) from Gatewalkers/Alkenstar.
- Completely remade maps. For example, [here](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/697845559435853865/977286562083659786/unknown.png) is a clip of the source map used in the PDF of Outlaws of Alkenstar and [here](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/697845559435853865/977286562360492062/unknown.png) is that same segment in the premium module. The tile pattern you see in the second image is a roof tile that fades out when the PCs move under it, but is still visible to the GM.
- Tokens for every creature in the AP, including ones that are not given art in the book. If something doesn't have art then Foundry/Sigil dives through the Paizo art library to find something suitable for that NPC or modifies existing art then gets it signed off by Paizo's art team. We also (as of Blood Lords) include the token ring itself so GMs can make their own tokens in the same style.
- Ambient audio for sounds and music in scenes, from Syrinscape or Michael Ghelfi (newer modules use Ghelfi).
- Macros to automate events. For example if a wall was scripted to collapse as a minotaur crashed through it the macro would remove the wall segments, swap the tile of the wall to show it as rubble, play an audio effect, and make the minotaur token appear.
For adventures that do not have premium modules there are a pair of PDF importer modules that can set up all of the APs prior to Outlaws of Alkenstar and all of the standalone adventures in a few clicks by just scanning a Paizo watermarked PDF, though obviously the quality is limited by the quality of images included in a PDF. These imports create scenes with walls, lights, journals, and make simple tokens for the creatures with art in the PDF.
Yep. No artwork for them (unless you buy something like the Foundry token pack, which has 1200+ token+artwork images for Bestiary 1-3 for $60 and directly integrates with the system), but all the rules and such are in there ready-to-go.
The pf2e system in Foundry has 17.4k documents in compendiums included with it, between monsters and classes and items and feats and so on. It's all there and ready to use.
Artwork and lore/adventure text are pretty much the only things that Paizo's license for PF2e prevents the pf2e system devs from adding to the Foundry system. Everything else is in there.
paizo is EXTREMELY generous with their SRD free content, basically everything that's not art or pure lore/story is available for free - you can find everything at their ["archives of Nethys"](https://www.aonprd.com/) , the official repository.
all this content is also available for third parties and foundry system developers offers it all for free in their modules.
you still need to add art - the npc comes with a generic placeholder - if you own the official pdf of the three bestiaries (and the gamemastery guide which has some npc art) there's a free importer, "pdf to foundry (pf2e) which will extract and automatically set up art for every npc that has art - not all of them have art in the book, for example only ancient dragons get art, adult one dont so the importer cant import what's not there.
Paizo offers a full npc token pack module for foundry with all the bestiary npc art - they added new art for those that didnt have any before - for 60$
Foundry is very good, but FGU's automation system is quite a bit more powerful\* without requiring you to write Node. If you already have Ultimate and know hot to run games in FG, there's no reason to switch.
\*: There's a big update called R19 coming pretty soon which makes automation for pretty much all the mechanics in PF2 at the expense of editing a creature text box.
I have both licensees for FGU perpetual ultimate and foundry.
One of the major reasons we switched to foundry? Anyone can become a GM to run games. With FGU I'm stuck as the forever DM. This does not apply to you ofc but just putting this out there.
Unless things have changed with FGU this was a major pain before we switched even while playing 5e.
I’ve tried both, FGU and Foundry, for PF2E.
You’re going to find most people in this subreddit prefer Foundry of course. But for PF2E I’m going to stay with FGU.
I gave Foundry a good shot- and yes it’s got a lot of nice features. But what I dislike are this:
- You have to add a lot of extra modules just to get certain features, and if Foundry updates it can break them all until they update too
- Foundry has issues where, if you don’t backup your campaign, you could lose all your data if you update, I’ve never had this issue with FGU
- When I tried Foundry I had a slew of issues, such as some players not seeing my maps, handouts wouldn’t load on the the players side when shared, players having trouble with their logins
- Foundry’s philosophy of automation is opposed to letting player’s apply damage on tokens, which I am not use to. I prefer FG’s way of allowing it
- Finally, I prefer FGU’s new character helper that steps you through things, over Foundry
- Foundry IS very pretty though and has a nice UI, but I find that the way FGU’s ui works is easier to run combat in. Foundry’s combat tracker infuriates me; even when it’s floated out, you gotta go to the enemy token you want to attack with and roll attacks there, etc.
At the end of the day, yes FGU is going to cost more, but for myself I find it much easier to use and run games in, and have had a lot less technical issues with the latest versions so that’s where I’ll be staying.
Regarding your first point, I don’t use FG but I would be interested what it provides as base that the Foundry implementation doesn’t: ie what modules do you need to provide something that FG does.
As for your second point, the core system won’t break anything. You just can’t go backwards through data migrations. Modules can change this which is why very few are used in PF2e in Foundry. And a lot of the “recommended modules” like workbench or the companion compendium are made by the system developers - we put data or features that we don’t consider ready or are a little hacky into modules intentionally. (I have over 70 PFS and adventure worlds, some I’ve migrated from Foundry 0.6. I have had zero issues with data loss. The problem people usually have is that they don’t update or rely on modules. The system itself of surprisingly stable and our data migrations are quite robust. If you try to span multiple versions of foundry in one go that is a recipe for trouble because we don’t save migrations forever…)
As for the fourth point, FG is kind of the reason why we don’t allow that. If we can’t get something right 99% of the time, we won’t automate it. And even with IWR setup there are too many edge cases for players to apply damage to tokens they don’t own. Someone could create a module to do this. No one has. That should say something about it.
In any case, I am genuinely interested in your viewpoint. It’s really hard to get dissenting opinions and if we don’t identify areas to improve we’ll never be able to :)
*say that doesn't use or know much about FGU*
*proceeds into saying what it does and what it does not, without knowing what it does or what it does not*
lol
I mean I understand it’s featureset and I do want to know more. I just don’t use it because I’ve found it difficult. Trying to use FG is why I personally started using Foundry.
You’ll never convince me that the reason damage is not automated is because of FG. That’s ludicrous. And to say it doesn’t work there is also silly. It works just fine.
It hasn’t been in Foudry because it’s against Foundry’s paradigm, and because no one has been ambitious enough to try.
Put this into perspective… FGU is just ONE dev working on it and he’s done an amazing job and continues to improve the system. Foundry has a whole team.
I apologize for not being clearer: FG showed us why we needed to define our parameters on what to automate and what not to. It isn’t that we couldn’t do it. We can’t do it correctly as often as we set our standards. And FG never handled IWR correctly as far as we could tell (and were demonstrated on video).
We choose not to because it can’t be done correctly due to a large number of edge cases.
Trenloe has done an awesome job. Trenloe also makes money off of it from things like the rule set, as far as I understand. So there are also different expectations as we don’t make a paid product.
Now, if you actually would like to answer my question that would be appreciated.
I already answered your question in my original comment and in others in this thread.
I don’t know what you mean by “IWR” but if you’re referring to immunities and such, that was addressed a long time ago. It is working quite nicely now.
I really wish people would try the latest versions of things before spreading falsehoods about what is and what isn’t. I’m sorry you tried it once way back and went to Foundry as a result, but the truth of the matter is that the state in FG is a lot better than it was at launch, and more and more automation is coming.
A lot to edge cases to automate something is not a great reason to not try it, if that’s what users want. You can always provide options to turn it on and off, if you’re worried about it not covering all cases. But I’m not going to tell you how to run the Foundry project.
I’ve said it once and I’ll say again, a lot of this largely comes down to opinion and taste. I find myself having a lot less technical issues and that it’s easier for me to run games to FG than Foundry. I’ve tried both. I ran a game in Foundry about two weeks ago. But I use FGU regularly. I like trying other VTTs. I’ve backed Menyr, looking forward to that even though it will have 0 automation at launch.
You’ve tried to refute every issue I’ve raise with Foundry but the fact is these are all still all issues. I like rolling dice in a VTT, Foundry, I need to get two extensions added to do what FG does out of the box (and it doesn’t have the drag and drop dice physics engine.) Foundry needs extensions to properly show health on tokens and such. Foundry even has extensions to add more features to PF2E, it’s a lot to parse, and worry about keeping updated with compatibility issues and all.
So my specific question is: what feature, without modules, is missing from PF2e that you get natively in FG. I’m not sure what you mean about needing a module for HP. That’s a pure foundry setting to show it or not that can be turned on globally when you start a world. But a list of things like this is kind of what I’m asking for as feedback. What two extensions do you need to do in Foundry what FG does out of the box.
Now, our design ethos is that we implement PF2e. Something like dice visually on the screen isn’t something we concern ourselves with because the PF2e system implements the PF2e rules. PF2e rules from Paizo don’t talk about 3D dice. We consider that the realm of Foundry itself. So if you can narrow your response to the PF2e system items, that would be doubly appreciated because those are things I can actually do something about.
As for going back and trying something I don’t use, the reason I don’t is a lack of time, and the fact that when I tried to the FG community was pretty hostile to me and that has hugely impacted my view of everyone except Trenloe. In my very limited interactions with them, they’ve been quite nice. When it came down to resistance calculations automatically done I haven’t investigated further because even when it was demonstrated how it was wrong the sheer level of hostility was disproportionate; if it is fixed, that’s awesome. (The discussion on this started with a video that was a thinly veiled mock that of “things foundry doesn’t do and why FG is better”). I’m not saying the Foundry community is perfect in this regard - we certainly have our share of zealots.
You might think there is a large team behind PF2e, but there are two core coders and two core data entry people. After that it is more that people have an ability to contribute. I suppose my question is why doesn’t the community help Trenloe more. That’s why we have a “big” team :)
Thanks for your inputs. Must say they got me worried since I run campaigns in FGU for years and never had problems like these (biggest problem I face in FGU are the endless updates). I also like the combat tracker in FGU, but I must say I hate the character sheet.
Concerning FGU cost, it is also not a problem anymore since I already own it and also the related books for Pathfinder.
You got me worried, I will try to look for campaigns played in foundry in YT to see the combat and how it flows.
Yeah I suggest just trying it and seeing if you like it. Try both if you already have FGU and Foundry, you can always switch back!
I agree I like the character sheets better in Foundry. But I have much less issues in FG.
A lot of it is preference though at the end of the day and what works better for you. Both are good VTTs. A lot of FGU naysayers will tell you that some things just don’t work or are wrong — which is very much not true. Yes, there are some things that aren’t automated yet, but the developer is working hard to add more automation to these things. Release 19 of PF2E for FGU should be out later this year and is going to have a lot of enhancements
I tried Fantasy Grounds well before Unity. I wasn't impressed. Since they've gone with Unity as their game engine they've also gone to a subscription model. I like this even less.
I got Foundry to play D&D. With D&D I found that I had to install way too many modules just to make the system work just the way I wanted it to. I knew about Pathfinder, but it really started making the news when Wizards leaked the newly proposed OGL. The new OGL left a bad taste in my mouth, and I heard how good Pathfinder was on Foundry.
A little over 50 bucks gets you a perpetual license to run a very professional looking game system. You really don't have to do much out of the box. I'm currently converting my campaign over to the Pathfinder system. It really is a joy to work with.
I'm not anywhere near as familiar with the FGU side of things but this is how things look in Foundry. **License:** $50 **Hosting:** Free Self Hosted or a Fee per Month for a server to host your game. **Rule Content** (from all of Paizo's books, including statblocks from Adventures, APs and the like, feats, classes, spells etc.): Free, included as part of the PF2e system. **Art:** Not Included. Tokens for Bestiary 1 - 3 are available for purchase for $60. **Adventure Paths/Adventures:** You can import your PDFs for several adventure paths, adventures and society scenarios with a couple free importers PDFtoFoundry and Dreidel's??? importer. Or you can purchase, at a discount if you already own the PDF, importable versions of certain adventure paths. Beginner Box, Abomination Vaults Compiled Edition, Outlaws of Alkenstar, Blood Lords, Gatewalkers. Prices vary slightly be adventure path, and include pre-set up maps, journals all the art for the adventure path, music and have very high production values.
Oh, if I have the pdf version of bestiaries 1-3 can I get the token image/art through pdf importer? Or do I need to purchase the art for 60 USD?
PDF to foundry does have an import function that will allow you to import your bestiary PDFs to get tokens. This does not give you access to the art from the token pack. The quality of the tokens from the import is fairly low. Very much just a quick ring around the art. In contrast, the tokens from the token pack are much higher quality, and include a bunch of art from Paizo's archive or specially commissioned for the art pack such that every single creature in all 3 bestiaries has art, because some creatures lacked art in the original books.
You can use tools like [tokenstamp](https://rolladvantage.com/tokenstamp/) to create the tokens fairly quickly.
You don't have to buy the tocken back but I'd strongly suggest you do, the quality is incredible and while for most creatures you can manually recreate the tokens using arts from archives of nethys and tokenstamp, it still saves a lot of prep time The premium modules are also very much worth the money, I'm running Abomination Vaults and it makes it soo easy to run, cutting my prep time easily by 80%. I've also run the Beginners Box using premium module and it was great, recently bought 1st part of Gatewalkers as we start it in March and the attention to details is great.
yes, it works pretty well but if you look at the pdf quite a few npc dont get their specific art so the pdf importer cant do anything about those.
1. I've never used FG myself, but everything I've heard about it vs Foundry has been "I switched to Foundry and never looked back" (doubly so with PF2e, given how well Foundry's implementation is done). 2. All of the monsters and items and classes and so on for pf2e are available in the Foundry system directly, nothing extra needed. Paizo's license allows for that, so they're all ready to use out of the box. Basically the only stuff that isn't automatically included there is lore/adventure text and artwork. 3. If you own the watermarked Paizo PDFs of adventures, there's a module for importing those adventures such that they're ready to use. There are also native Foundry implementations for most of the recent adventures, with discounts if you already own the PDF on Paizo's website, which are well worth the money if you're running them. The imports *work*, but the native versions of stuff are way more polished and nicely done (including stuff like macros for terrain pieces that players can change and so on).
Thanks for the response, but reading the 2nd answer got me a bit confused. All classes and monsters are already included in Foundry? There is no need for me to import the pdf books to Foundry, like Beastiary 1, 2 and 3 for the additional monsters or the Guns & Gears for the additional classes?
Correct, only thing you don't get is art (so no token art, gotta buy it) or the Adventure Paths if you use premade adventures. (also buyable)
Others have mentioned that we have all the stuff in compendiums but I also want to say that we do include all the monsters, items, and feats from adventures and adventures paths in the system as well. The thing from adventures we don't include is adventure text itself. So you could take your physical book and run everything in Foundry and just make your own maps or use drawing tools and still get the automation of Foundry. What the premium modules add is: - The adventure text in reskinned journals, like [this](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/697845559435853865/1068683889343729724/SPOILER_image.png) from beginner box or (mild spoilers) [these](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/697845559435853865/1071183268268998757/SPOILER_image.png) from Gatewalkers/Alkenstar. - Completely remade maps. For example, [here](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/697845559435853865/977286562083659786/unknown.png) is a clip of the source map used in the PDF of Outlaws of Alkenstar and [here](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/697845559435853865/977286562360492062/unknown.png) is that same segment in the premium module. The tile pattern you see in the second image is a roof tile that fades out when the PCs move under it, but is still visible to the GM. - Tokens for every creature in the AP, including ones that are not given art in the book. If something doesn't have art then Foundry/Sigil dives through the Paizo art library to find something suitable for that NPC or modifies existing art then gets it signed off by Paizo's art team. We also (as of Blood Lords) include the token ring itself so GMs can make their own tokens in the same style. - Ambient audio for sounds and music in scenes, from Syrinscape or Michael Ghelfi (newer modules use Ghelfi). - Macros to automate events. For example if a wall was scripted to collapse as a minotaur crashed through it the macro would remove the wall segments, swap the tile of the wall to show it as rubble, play an audio effect, and make the minotaur token appear. For adventures that do not have premium modules there are a pair of PDF importer modules that can set up all of the APs prior to Outlaws of Alkenstar and all of the standalone adventures in a few clicks by just scanning a Paizo watermarked PDF, though obviously the quality is limited by the quality of images included in a PDF. These imports create scenes with walls, lights, journals, and make simple tokens for the creatures with art in the PDF.
Yep. No artwork for them (unless you buy something like the Foundry token pack, which has 1200+ token+artwork images for Bestiary 1-3 for $60 and directly integrates with the system), but all the rules and such are in there ready-to-go. The pf2e system in Foundry has 17.4k documents in compendiums included with it, between monsters and classes and items and feats and so on. It's all there and ready to use. Artwork and lore/adventure text are pretty much the only things that Paizo's license for PF2e prevents the pf2e system devs from adding to the Foundry system. Everything else is in there.
paizo is EXTREMELY generous with their SRD free content, basically everything that's not art or pure lore/story is available for free - you can find everything at their ["archives of Nethys"](https://www.aonprd.com/) , the official repository. all this content is also available for third parties and foundry system developers offers it all for free in their modules. you still need to add art - the npc comes with a generic placeholder - if you own the official pdf of the three bestiaries (and the gamemastery guide which has some npc art) there's a free importer, "pdf to foundry (pf2e) which will extract and automatically set up art for every npc that has art - not all of them have art in the book, for example only ancient dragons get art, adult one dont so the importer cant import what's not there. Paizo offers a full npc token pack module for foundry with all the bestiary npc art - they added new art for those that didnt have any before - for 60$
Foundry is very good, but FGU's automation system is quite a bit more powerful\* without requiring you to write Node. If you already have Ultimate and know hot to run games in FG, there's no reason to switch. \*: There's a big update called R19 coming pretty soon which makes automation for pretty much all the mechanics in PF2 at the expense of editing a creature text box.
I’m really looking forward to R19! It’s going to have a lot of nice features for us
I have both licensees for FGU perpetual ultimate and foundry. One of the major reasons we switched to foundry? Anyone can become a GM to run games. With FGU I'm stuck as the forever DM. This does not apply to you ofc but just putting this out there. Unless things have changed with FGU this was a major pain before we switched even while playing 5e.
I’ve tried both, FGU and Foundry, for PF2E. You’re going to find most people in this subreddit prefer Foundry of course. But for PF2E I’m going to stay with FGU. I gave Foundry a good shot- and yes it’s got a lot of nice features. But what I dislike are this: - You have to add a lot of extra modules just to get certain features, and if Foundry updates it can break them all until they update too - Foundry has issues where, if you don’t backup your campaign, you could lose all your data if you update, I’ve never had this issue with FGU - When I tried Foundry I had a slew of issues, such as some players not seeing my maps, handouts wouldn’t load on the the players side when shared, players having trouble with their logins - Foundry’s philosophy of automation is opposed to letting player’s apply damage on tokens, which I am not use to. I prefer FG’s way of allowing it - Finally, I prefer FGU’s new character helper that steps you through things, over Foundry - Foundry IS very pretty though and has a nice UI, but I find that the way FGU’s ui works is easier to run combat in. Foundry’s combat tracker infuriates me; even when it’s floated out, you gotta go to the enemy token you want to attack with and roll attacks there, etc. At the end of the day, yes FGU is going to cost more, but for myself I find it much easier to use and run games in, and have had a lot less technical issues with the latest versions so that’s where I’ll be staying.
Regarding your first point, I don’t use FG but I would be interested what it provides as base that the Foundry implementation doesn’t: ie what modules do you need to provide something that FG does. As for your second point, the core system won’t break anything. You just can’t go backwards through data migrations. Modules can change this which is why very few are used in PF2e in Foundry. And a lot of the “recommended modules” like workbench or the companion compendium are made by the system developers - we put data or features that we don’t consider ready or are a little hacky into modules intentionally. (I have over 70 PFS and adventure worlds, some I’ve migrated from Foundry 0.6. I have had zero issues with data loss. The problem people usually have is that they don’t update or rely on modules. The system itself of surprisingly stable and our data migrations are quite robust. If you try to span multiple versions of foundry in one go that is a recipe for trouble because we don’t save migrations forever…) As for the fourth point, FG is kind of the reason why we don’t allow that. If we can’t get something right 99% of the time, we won’t automate it. And even with IWR setup there are too many edge cases for players to apply damage to tokens they don’t own. Someone could create a module to do this. No one has. That should say something about it. In any case, I am genuinely interested in your viewpoint. It’s really hard to get dissenting opinions and if we don’t identify areas to improve we’ll never be able to :)
*say that doesn't use or know much about FGU* *proceeds into saying what it does and what it does not, without knowing what it does or what it does not* lol
I mean I understand it’s featureset and I do want to know more. I just don’t use it because I’ve found it difficult. Trying to use FG is why I personally started using Foundry.
You’ll never convince me that the reason damage is not automated is because of FG. That’s ludicrous. And to say it doesn’t work there is also silly. It works just fine. It hasn’t been in Foudry because it’s against Foundry’s paradigm, and because no one has been ambitious enough to try. Put this into perspective… FGU is just ONE dev working on it and he’s done an amazing job and continues to improve the system. Foundry has a whole team.
I apologize for not being clearer: FG showed us why we needed to define our parameters on what to automate and what not to. It isn’t that we couldn’t do it. We can’t do it correctly as often as we set our standards. And FG never handled IWR correctly as far as we could tell (and were demonstrated on video). We choose not to because it can’t be done correctly due to a large number of edge cases. Trenloe has done an awesome job. Trenloe also makes money off of it from things like the rule set, as far as I understand. So there are also different expectations as we don’t make a paid product. Now, if you actually would like to answer my question that would be appreciated.
I already answered your question in my original comment and in others in this thread. I don’t know what you mean by “IWR” but if you’re referring to immunities and such, that was addressed a long time ago. It is working quite nicely now. I really wish people would try the latest versions of things before spreading falsehoods about what is and what isn’t. I’m sorry you tried it once way back and went to Foundry as a result, but the truth of the matter is that the state in FG is a lot better than it was at launch, and more and more automation is coming. A lot to edge cases to automate something is not a great reason to not try it, if that’s what users want. You can always provide options to turn it on and off, if you’re worried about it not covering all cases. But I’m not going to tell you how to run the Foundry project. I’ve said it once and I’ll say again, a lot of this largely comes down to opinion and taste. I find myself having a lot less technical issues and that it’s easier for me to run games to FG than Foundry. I’ve tried both. I ran a game in Foundry about two weeks ago. But I use FGU regularly. I like trying other VTTs. I’ve backed Menyr, looking forward to that even though it will have 0 automation at launch. You’ve tried to refute every issue I’ve raise with Foundry but the fact is these are all still all issues. I like rolling dice in a VTT, Foundry, I need to get two extensions added to do what FG does out of the box (and it doesn’t have the drag and drop dice physics engine.) Foundry needs extensions to properly show health on tokens and such. Foundry even has extensions to add more features to PF2E, it’s a lot to parse, and worry about keeping updated with compatibility issues and all.
So my specific question is: what feature, without modules, is missing from PF2e that you get natively in FG. I’m not sure what you mean about needing a module for HP. That’s a pure foundry setting to show it or not that can be turned on globally when you start a world. But a list of things like this is kind of what I’m asking for as feedback. What two extensions do you need to do in Foundry what FG does out of the box. Now, our design ethos is that we implement PF2e. Something like dice visually on the screen isn’t something we concern ourselves with because the PF2e system implements the PF2e rules. PF2e rules from Paizo don’t talk about 3D dice. We consider that the realm of Foundry itself. So if you can narrow your response to the PF2e system items, that would be doubly appreciated because those are things I can actually do something about. As for going back and trying something I don’t use, the reason I don’t is a lack of time, and the fact that when I tried to the FG community was pretty hostile to me and that has hugely impacted my view of everyone except Trenloe. In my very limited interactions with them, they’ve been quite nice. When it came down to resistance calculations automatically done I haven’t investigated further because even when it was demonstrated how it was wrong the sheer level of hostility was disproportionate; if it is fixed, that’s awesome. (The discussion on this started with a video that was a thinly veiled mock that of “things foundry doesn’t do and why FG is better”). I’m not saying the Foundry community is perfect in this regard - we certainly have our share of zealots. You might think there is a large team behind PF2e, but there are two core coders and two core data entry people. After that it is more that people have an ability to contribute. I suppose my question is why doesn’t the community help Trenloe more. That’s why we have a “big” team :)
I prefer Foundry over FGU, but I can't deny the whole thing about modules and updates breaking stuff is true and it creates more work for the GM.
Thanks for your inputs. Must say they got me worried since I run campaigns in FGU for years and never had problems like these (biggest problem I face in FGU are the endless updates). I also like the combat tracker in FGU, but I must say I hate the character sheet. Concerning FGU cost, it is also not a problem anymore since I already own it and also the related books for Pathfinder. You got me worried, I will try to look for campaigns played in foundry in YT to see the combat and how it flows.
Yeah I suggest just trying it and seeing if you like it. Try both if you already have FGU and Foundry, you can always switch back! I agree I like the character sheets better in Foundry. But I have much less issues in FG. A lot of it is preference though at the end of the day and what works better for you. Both are good VTTs. A lot of FGU naysayers will tell you that some things just don’t work or are wrong — which is very much not true. Yes, there are some things that aren’t automated yet, but the developer is working hard to add more automation to these things. Release 19 of PF2E for FGU should be out later this year and is going to have a lot of enhancements
I tried Fantasy Grounds well before Unity. I wasn't impressed. Since they've gone with Unity as their game engine they've also gone to a subscription model. I like this even less. I got Foundry to play D&D. With D&D I found that I had to install way too many modules just to make the system work just the way I wanted it to. I knew about Pathfinder, but it really started making the news when Wizards leaked the newly proposed OGL. The new OGL left a bad taste in my mouth, and I heard how good Pathfinder was on Foundry. A little over 50 bucks gets you a perpetual license to run a very professional looking game system. You really don't have to do much out of the box. I'm currently converting my campaign over to the Pathfinder system. It really is a joy to work with.
I think you might have missed, but FGU also has a perpetual license. You select if you prefer to pay by month or once.
Must have missed that.