Preparing Encounters and Random Encounters
These instructions walk a GM through the process of building a combat Encounter step-by-step.
Thanks to community developer, damned, for the original write-up.
Preparing Encounters
Create monsters in the NPCs list, or use Library module containing monsters as shown in the screenshot below.
Open Encounters list from the Sidebar button, and create a new Encounter record.
Drag desired NPCs to the Encounter window and choose the number of each NPC in this encounter.
Assign tokens to Encounter NPCs from token box if not already assigned.
Open a map record from Images list.
If a grid is not set on the image, add a grid by right-clicking menu option, select the Layers button, then click Set Grid. You can then draw a box for a grid square. Use the toolbar Grid buttons to make adjustments. Also see Working with Images as the GM | Grid Mode for more informaton.
Drag and drop Encounter onto map record. (Hold CTRL while dragging, or enable image shortcuts first by Right click map and choose Layers -> Enable Shortcuts)
Drag and drop Placement tokens from Encounter NPC list onto Map record. The token in the Encounter will be replaced by a checkmark to show that the token has been placed on the map.
Close Encounter record. (Placement tokens will be removed from map.)
Use During Play
Open the Map and click the Shortcut Pin (press CTRL if pin is not visible) to open the Encounter record.
Click the Add to Tracker button (lower left of window), or drag and drop Encounter link onto combat tracker. The Encounter NPCs will automatically be added to the combat tracker, and any pre-placed tokens will be placed on the map.
Alternate Use
Drag and drop encounter link from Encounters campaign list (available via button in NPCs/Personalities campaign list) onto Combat Tracker window
Drag and drop encounter link previously added to a Story record.
Random Encounters
To create a new random encounter, click on the Random button at the top of the Encounters list.
Name the encounter as normal and drag in whatever NPCs are to appear in the encounter from either the NPC list or from the resource being used.
In the box which appears to the left of the NPCs under the # column, enter a dice expression or drag-and-drop dice from the dice pool.
Dice expressions can be
ndn
,ndn+n
,ndn-n
orndn+nd
n. So1d6
,2d8+4
,1d10-1
and1d4 + 1d6
, respectively, are all supported.
NOTE: The encounter cannot yet be used as-is. The encounter will need to be generated before use as shown below.
To generate the encounter, click on the Generate button at the bottom of the new encounter window. This will generate the encounter with the number of NPCs and also calculate the CR and XP of the encounter if this is appropriate.
This will generate the encounter with the number of NPCs and also calculate the CR and XP of the encounter if this is appropriate.
Set the base Random # on the # of players in your Party Sheet?
It is often helpful to have a fixed set of enemies per player. If you wanted to have 3 goblins for each player in the party, you could use the following syntax: 3*$PC
Note that this requires that you have player characters added to the Party Sheet. If you have 5 players in your campaign, it will automatically add 3 x 5 = 15 goblins to the encounter. If you want a random # to appear for each player, then you can combine this with earlier random syntax. For example, 1d4*$PC would create 1 to 4 for each party member.
For more information about the Party Sheet, see the following links for reference:
CoreRPG Party Sheet: CoreRPG Party Sheet
D&D 5e Party Sheet: 5E Party Sheet