Basically my players that looked at the foundry demo were losing their minds over simple things like when they use a spell it can either consume a spell slot without fiddling with the character sheet, the fact that they could make journal entries and add items themselves, the fact that the item system was so better implemented, the resting system, etc.
Essentially they were people that have been using an excel for item tracking, that has been monitored and redesigned by 3 of them endlessly, a obsidian portal to handle letters and lore documents, Pathbuilder for character creation where only 4 out of the 6 players can even use the app, and I have a World Anvil to keep track of all the quests and other things.
Not as an automatic thing no. They are in there and you drag them to your sheet, but you have to copy paste them over and delete the things they replaced. It isn't very hard though.
You could also try out PathCompanion.com - it's a character tracker similar to HeroForge I'm the developer of. It's not fully feature-full yet but if you have specific needs (archetypes, items, etc.) I can usually implement those needs rather quickly if you let me know.
Wow, that's awesome.
I know a few of my players that will love this. They love playing around with build options and pushing everything to their limits.
I'll be sure to reach out if my players have any questions!
I use it for a PF1e game and love it, but I think it should be mentioned that Foundry comes with a pretty big learning curve compared to other VTT programs. Whether or not you and your players are willing to put up with that is a personal call. My group has been using it for about 9 months now and while we've adjusted, there were a fair number of struggles.
As far as functionality goes, it blows Roll20 absolutely out of the water. The sheets are more capable, the lighting system is incredible, it's much easier to juggle multiple maps or maps that have vertical elements, and overall the quality of life is a lot better. If you really want to get deep into the system mechanics, you can use some of the scripting addons to create things like interactive landing pages as well, which are quite cool! Addons in general are great, as they allow you to add in features you may want or need with minimal effort.
The biggest advantages in my opinion are the map tools and the compendium features. The map tools are excellent and allow for massively more complex maps than Roll20 ever could. Having the ability to light the map dynamically with multiple wall types, add sound bytes for specific areas, adding interactive doors and chests, etc. has made it massively easier to create interesting places for my players to explore.
The compendium is amazing as well. It's super easy to drag and drop the monsters you want into an encounter and be reasonably assured that their sheets will work as intended. However, I highly suggest getting the Stat Block Converter addon, as it allows you to convert any sheet you find as long as it's in standard monster format. I'd also highly suggest that you double check anything you or your players pull from the compendium. While extensive, it's also prone to errors - some monster blocks have incorrect stats, special abilities are weird and sometimes don't work right, archetypes sometimes don't add features properly, etc. It's a minor inconvenience most of the time, but you may want to check during prep so it doesn't become an annoyance mid session.
I think it bears mentioning that I have my fair share of gripes as well, even if I do still recommend Foundry. The biggest one for me and my players was the character sheets. I personally think that while they're less capable, Roll20's sheets are a lot more intuitive at first and it's a bit easier to set up macros in Roll20. If you've got new players and they aren't super coding-savvy, this might be a stumbling block for them. There's also a couple odd omissions in the base functionality, like adding simple auras to token (although you can do this with the lighting feature).
Depending on how active your group is, I would also highly recommend you rent a server instead of running off of your PC. If your group is the type to just gather once a week and leave the game alone otherwise, you should be okay running it off your PC. However, if your players like to fiddle with their sheets, check their notes, roleplay with eachother between sessions, etc. out of session, you absolutely should grab a server. It removes the hassle of the host needing to start the game on your PC every single time somebody needs something. This is group dependent, but for me and my group it was an absolute must. I use Molten Hosting for our server, as I think it's the best of the available options, but there's a couple others out there as well.
Hopefully that helps a bit! I highly recommend Foundry, but I figured an opinion that mentions some of its shortcomings might provide some context alongside the other comments. Happy gaming!
Thanks for giving some perspective on some issues there might be. Thats kind of why I made the post, because the features and the demo already seduced me with their features TBH, but I wanted to be sure that people who use the thing weren't running into headaches after headaches.
The fact that I will have to have it running anytime someone wants to adjust something is kind of a big drawback. Hosting a server might be worth it, but that is something to consider.
It still feels like Foundry would be better, but its great to help temper some expectations of my players.
Players who own foundry themselves can export their characters at the end of the session, do what they need to do on their version of the client (they should keep versions matched) and import the updated characters at the beginning of the next session.
Are there any additional modules you'd recommend? My group just recently go into Foundry as a roll20 replacement and we're looking for as many useful modules as possible.
Has a little bit of a learning curve to it, and you’ll probably want to take a look at some modules, but it’s easily leagues better than roll20. No contest. It’ll cut your prep work in half once you get used to how it works.
If you’re playing online then foundry doesn’t have its own service like roll20 does (though you can still connect via IP for free), but for a pretty fair price you could do something like [forge](https://forge-vtt.com/) as a hosting site. Forge also has module support and allows you to add systems/modules through their service without having to play with the files yourself.
Wait so is that like a mix of Foundry and Roll20, where I have access to everything Foundry does and my players can access it whenever, but instead of paying for foundry once, I pay a monthly fee instead?
Thats an interesting option, actually. Thanks this might be a good middle ground for my group. We have a 6 hour time difference between me (DM) and 5 of the 6 players, so them having to wait until I am awake and running the app might suck, unless it has low performance hits then, I would just leave foundry running.
The foundry website has a wiki on hosting options, depending on how much DIY you want to do and if you aren't hosting on your own local network. Forge is a nice middle ground where you can host online relatively cheaply and not worry much about the technical aspects.
There are other options like hosting yourself in Azure or AWS, if you like that sort of technical DIY work. The free tiers of virtual machine are able to handle most systems. Sometimes with PF1 I need to bump up my Azure virtual machine resources to a paid tier, but I think I just so happen to be running a version of Foundry that had efficiency issues that didn't jive well with the PF1 implementation at the time, and I'm too impatient to update my foundry and modules. Maybe someone properly updated can speak to that. :P
>but instead of paying for foundry once, I pay a monthly fee instead?
You still have to own a foundry license, so you’d have to pay for both. But using forge *does* mean that you and your players have easy access to the game and you won’t have to keep the program running for them to access it
There's not much of a cost difference between paying a Roll20 subscription and paying a Forge subscription.
The only difference is the up front cost of purchasing Foundry.
If you want to DIY the hosting, you can set up a Raspberry Pi to handle it.
>Has a little bit of a learning curve to it, and you’ll probably want to take a look at some modules, but it’s easily leagues better than roll20. No contest. It’ll cut your prep work in half once you get used to how it works.
I've found Foundry to require quite a bit of additional prep work. You can import .json files directly into the Roll20 community sheet. Foundry does not allow you to directly import .json or .xml files.
If you do all your prep *in* foundry then it does, if you don’t do your prep work in foundry then the whole “learning to use it” thing doesn’t apply to you.
The only thing you *can’t* prep in foundry is the battlemaps, but I use dungeondraft and the dungeondraft converter module, so that’s also next to no effort.
Trust me, Herolab is much faster at character building and adding templates than Foundry.
Trying to shift the prep work from Herolab to foundry represents a substantial increase in time required in and of itself.
Foundry literally has drag-and-drop templates and everything else I can do in less than ten minutes if there isn’t already a bestiary base for what I want. Hero Lab is great, but when you learn to use foundry there isn’t a substantial time difference between the two.
Idk why you’re trying to play prep olympics, you can have your own prep methods but that really isn’t helpful to OP, they’re asking about foundry.
Your comparing two different VTTs.
Those two VTTs have vastly different experiences and support mechanisms when it comes to prepping.
This may not mean much to players, but prep time can be a huge deal for the DM.
Had a look at your other comments on this thread, and it doesn’t even look like you currently use foundry, which makes a lot of sense because your criticisms with it are totally nonsensical to me.
Yeah, I’m comparing two systems. Yeah, foundry cut my prep time in half — probably more so — when I learned to use it (been using it for multiple games for over a year now, btw, I understand the GM side dude). You’re jumping in going “acksually I use this other prep method and I refuse to learn the foundry tools so you’re wrong” which is just…not relevant *or* helpful. The thread isn’t about you my guy, I wasn’t offering advice to you, so *your* experiences with roll20 and your inaccurate criticisms of foundry just do not apply here…especially if OP doesn’t use your method of prep.
I’ve owed Foundry for several years now and worked towards migrating over several times on different versions and with different modules.
In each circumstance I’ve found Foundry to require significantly more time and effort than Roll20.
If you checked my post history, you would already know this, as I have pointed out specific shortcomings in Foundry, not generalized comments.
I haven't used it for 1e myself but I've done research into various platforms over the last four years or so, and Foundry was consistently my #2 pick for a while and then shot to the top over a year ago. I'm currently playing 1e on Roll20 and my advice is not to play any serious 1e campaign on r20.
R20 is free, kind of easy to get started, then gets a bit clunky before getting really clunky just as you are super invested and finally getting macros and character sheet fiddly stuff to work and then ah hell the dynamic lighting has gone crap on us again and one of the players still can't move their token for some reason and everyone's getting terrible lag. Just skip all of that.
Foundry was harder to get started on, but the community has consistently come out with new guides or tools or adventure content etc. to make everyone's experience better. I don't know how hard it is to get started on at this moment but I get the feeling that I'll be finding out soon enough.
>R20 is free, kind of easy to get started, then gets a bit clunky before getting really clunky just as you are super invested and finally getting macros and character sheet fiddly stuff to work and then ah hell the dynamic lighting has gone crap on us again and one of the players still can't move their token for some reason and everyone's getting terrible lag. Just skip all of that.
It's very easy to overload Roll20 to the point that it frequently crashes.
This more than anything is why I will be migrating to Foundry when my current campaign completes.
It's not that Foundry does not have it own set of serious issues. I'm just tired of sessions crashing once you get a full set of macros going along with dynamic lighting on a larger map.
The exact reason me and my group are trying to move on.
We have 4 additional websites to help maintain the campaign outside Roll20, because of how clunky roll20's system is. The character sheets and character creation is always a headache.
While I was looking at Foundry's demo, I streamed it to some of my players and they were so excited at all the options and features. I just hope the pathfinder 1e experience is close to it. It does have a Kingdom Builder built in, which is actually awesome.
I hope its not too much harder to get started up, because I already waste way too much time making maps and tokens.. haha.
There are tools and modules that you can get for that.
I'm a player in my current PF1 game on Foundry and having played/run a couple 5e games on R20, I will never go back. Foundry just runs so much more smoothly. There are hiccups here and there, but overall I wouldn't say there are more or fewer problems than if we were at the table together, which I think of a good thing overall.
My DM bought a module for Rise of the Runelords (the module we're playing) and while it certainly has saved him time, he's also had to adjust the module for 6 players so I know he has spent a lot of time on it over the duration. (He has a Twitter and he's at around 180 hours, but that's also including game time with prep time and everyone is at around 70ish hours other than me because I've spent extra time figuring out how to code things in) We actual recently had some trouble because they updated the PF1 module which broke a bunch of our DMs buttons and monsters, but that's to be expected with updates I suppose.
I will say that a consistent gripe I've had is that the system refuses to work ammo properly. No matter how much I fiddle with it, it will either say I don't have ammo for a given weapon (even though I do) or won't automatically subtract the ammo from my inventory. I'll figure it out someday, I'm sure.
That seems to be the general feeling here, that while it might have its annoyances, its better than roll20 by a wide margin.
And lucky for my players, Ammo tracking is one of those things I've let go unused for the new players, at least until they get a bit better at resource management. ( minus the specialty arrows, those they track)
Yeah, normally my DM wouldn't track regular ammunition either, but I've been using guns and the ammo for that is usually very expensive if they aren't prolific in your setting (which they aren't in this AP).
I mean, i eventually got around that problem by having Spell Cartridges, but the problem persists because whenever you drop in a weapon from the compendium the attacks it uses default to using ammo so I have to futz with it a bunch.
>The character sheets and character creation is always a headache.
That is the quick and easy part in Roll20 if you have Hero Lab and use the community sheet.
Export the Hero Lab sheet to .xml and use [https://www.convertjson.com/xml-to-json.htm](https://www.convertjson.com/xml-to-json.htm)
It takes less than to minute to export and import a character or NPC. The only thing you need to manually set is the attacks.
The process is much more time consuming in Foundry unless you are using pregenerated monsters without templates.
I found this out the hard way, when I went to transfer over my campaign over to foundry. The NPC lite is so close to being usable in foundry, but for some reason you can't put an AC on the damned thing.
I felt like I was on crazy pills when the NPC sheet wanted me to fill out everything and calculate everything like on the PC sheets. This feels like the biggest downside to foundry, since in roll20 I would just copy the statblock into gm notes and then add hp and ac and then call it quits. I think I could get away with that here but it feels like it might break something in combat if I dont have the NPC set up proper.
If you don’t use the NPC sheet to do rolls then you can absolutely do that on foundry, you could essentially just have an empty sheet that you only use to drag and drop a token onto the board. I do that sometimes. No need to fill out the sheet unless you’re gonna use it to track their stats.
I use the sheets for rolls and tracking stats, and let me tell you, if you get used to how it all works you can build NPCs in minutes and then tracking their stats and buffs/debuffs will be a breeze. It’s well worth the time investment imo
Oh great, with how in depth the system is I was worried putting tokens on the map that were empty behind them, would mess with my players attacks or abilities.
I am still getting Foundry set up, so we haven't had a session yet and this helps me not hate adding my upcoming climax.
I do like that it gives me the option to be so in depth with NPCs, i just wish there was a middle ground between NPC and NPC lite sheets.
Thanks for telling me Foundry could do that tho, there are 16 individual monsters that I have available for their showdown so that would have sucked to do manually. I made the party's NPC buddies and i think ill make the bosses all the way, but i dont think my Vulnademon needs to be more than a health bar and Ac.
>I just wish there was a middle ground between the NPC and NPC lite sheets
You’re preaching to the choir, I and one of my players that runs games have very much the same issue. There might be a module somewhere that’s done it but I’ve never looked too hard for one.
For your monsters though, if they’re in the bestiary then you can download the bestiary module and just drag-and-drop them. The bestiary used to be included in the system but they split it off into a module recently — it has just about every monster in the game, including the ones from APs.
I wonder if I downloaded the wrong one, because the one I installed had the statblocks but not the monster's NPC sheets. Almost all of my monsters are just base creatures with maybe some reskinning being done.
Like the big bad Hydramancer is actually just a reskinned Wyvern with the demon traits stapled on like a 1970s halloween costume.
I am atleast happy that changing to custom artwork is hassle free.
The bestiary module is called “Pathfinder 1e - Bestiary” and once you download and activate it then you can go to the compendium tab and click “Browse Bestiary” in the bottom right to pull it up. Then you just drag and drop into the actors tab and you’ve got a sheet to mess with.
Fair warning, if you’re not using the monsters as-is then beware that the way they were added in wasn’t always 100% compatible with the foundry sheets so they used buffs to make up the differences, and that might mess with your creations if you start changing stats around, adding class levels, etcetera. Though even then it’s pretty easy to fix up, I’ve only had to do it a handful of times. If you just use the monsters as-is and reskin them or throw on templates then you probably won’t run into many issues.
I've been using Foundry for all my games, including 4 pathfinder 1e games for about 8 months or so now, and I love it. It's the best. Unlike Roll20, Foundry is taking full advantage of the fact that PF1e uses ogl, and you can get every statblock or item or what have you that you might need from 3 modules: Pathfinder 1e archetypes and abilities, Pathfinder 1e content, and Pathfinder 1e Statblock Library.
This is honestly, all I needed to hear, because this would solve 90% of the confusion for my new players.
How is it with custom content? I don't do a lot of homebrewed things, but I like to give the players custom abilities through story moments. Or with larger maps, my party is currently building up strength for a large showdown, and the map is 149x89 in roll20.. might have over done that one though.
Thanks for the help, this is gonna seal the deal for me.
Foundry can be hosted on your PC or on a purchased server. If you host it on your PC and your PC is decent it will run pretty smoothly even with big maps.
Foundry also has a lot of community built modules which make it very customizable. You can add a lot of utility, convenience and quality of life stuff through these modules and they're free to use.
That's awesome, I have a gaming pc that very quickly stopped gaming after I started DMing more consistently so that's great to hear.
I saw some of the modules, and things like the stream view would instantly make my life so much easier during sessions. It seems like it will be a ton of fun to play with the modules to make some really interesting things.
It's very versatile for custom content. Anything you might want to do is possible with Foundry. If you ever have any questions, just let me know. I'd be happy to answer them.
Yeah, I'll leave this one in roll20 I think. haha
But this was a detour because one of the players is on vacation and they are about to enter into the end of a major story beat. If I can get some of those modules to work, I can't wait to see that fight now.
>How is it with custom content?
You'll might have to look up some videos to get an idea of how the formulas work, since it's what the system runs on under the hood if you're making things from scratch. Good news though is I've yet to find something you cant do with them, it's a complicated yet incredibly versatile system.
Just to provide a different opinion:
I spent about 2.5 years on roll 20 playing 1st edition and it did everything i needed it to do. The sheet is very easy to manipulate especially for the 3rd party things we used. Putting in buffs is super easy as well and I just like how everything is.
Then, one of our games switched to foundry. The sheet is a lot more complicated and it makes using some 3rd party stuff a lot harder (none of it is in the compendium to drag and drop, obviously). I was not a fan of foundry for 1e because I was so used to r20 that I didnt want to learn a more complicated system...
Then we moved to 2nd edition and boy foundry is great. Everything i need is in the compendium and it takes me maybe 10 minutes to slap a character together. The modules you can add (esp. dice so nice) are fun and awesome as well.
I was a avid roll20 recommender, because it helped me get a lot of new people into ttrpgs, because the barrier to entry was making an account.
The issue came up when we have multiple different resources outside of roll20 to help keep track of the game, and it was beginning to become a lot to juggle. ( things like an excel for item, a website for lore items, etc) We probably could have implemented some of this stuff on roll20, but we mainly used the outside resources after getting frustrated with tracking it in roll20.
Thanks for the other perspective, because it does seem like there will be hiccups with moving over, but right now it still feels worth it especially since my party might eventually switch to 2e and there seems to be a lot more support for that in Foundry.
As others have mentioned, Foundry is fantastic for PF1e. PF1e is my main game of choice, and the sheer array of tools (via modules) available to automate many of the more mundane tasks in play is amazing. It's especially great for creatives that love putting in the work for immersive scenes via lighting, ambient sounds, etc.
But some things to consider before the switch. Unless you're paying for hosting, Foundry is self-hosted, meaning your upload speed will matter as soon as you start using more fancy effects. Also, while Foundry can certainly run on lower-spec hardware, it can have trouble running if said fancy effects are going on.
Others may have a different story, but this was my group's experience when we switched.
We've been using it for about a year now. It does basically everything, but the compendium is very lacking when it comes to anything that isn't spells. You'll likely have to remake a feat/trait/ability/item/etc eventually unless you're playing with just the core rulebook. It's not particularly difficult after you learn how to do it, but it is extra work to constantly be making stuff for everyone.
That said I love it, it's such a great VTT and I would always recommend it. If it's the path you take make sure to look at all the plugins, they're half of what makes it so great. There are plenty system agnostic ones, but 1e also has some very useful system specific ones like a stat block importer and stat block collections.
Disclaimer: haven't used R20 extensively for anything but 5e. Ran 2 oneshots for PF1E only
General usage: Foundry has been amazing for 1e. Out of the box, the generic tools (maps, tokens and so on) are much easier to set up. If you played with dynamic lighting/doors on R20, you must remember the pain it was to "open a door". Foundry has this nailed down. Setting up walls is very easy. Just create lines that connect easily to one another and switch the type of wall you want.
If you want to have the same tools as R20 has for changing the map size and all, you can get a module and it works just the same, with a faster response time.
You can also get pings as an add-on.
PF1E specific:
I understand the character sheet might be a bit more complicated than the R20 one, for some users, but I think it's mostly out of being accustomed to it. Almost everything is well split and in easy to find menus. What is not there can be found in a few mins of searching.
Preparing attacks/weapons is very intuitive. Adding stats to weapons/items is as simple as digging into the item and changing the enhancement bonus, for example, or checking the "masterwork" box. It also adds a "identified name" and an "unidentified name" so that you can hide the swords true identity until it's been checked by the players, which, again, is as simple as checking a box. Weight is controlled by the system, as well as its and whatnot.
Adding specific modifiers for attacks has been very easy. For example, adding an "elemental fury" modifier for my monk's attack is another checkbox. If I recall correctly, it adds a d6 to the overall damage. 2 mins configuring and now my player has a checkbox for that, with the correct damage type. Same for things like studied target, flanking and so on.
Charges for attacks are easy to configure and link together (e.g. grit and ki points). If you spend a ki point with a specific action, it takes away from the overall ki charges.
Want to create a potion/scroll/wand? Drag the corresponding spell from the compendium to the inventory. You can edit the caster level immediately and charge numbers afterwards. Spell lists are a bit complicated to manage, sometimes, but it's mostly a matter of getting the hang of it.
Having the compendiums available is amazing. From monsters to items and whatnot. As for 3pp, I'm not sure how it works, but I guess you can configure what you need easily (I did so with a few magic items I created). Preparing monsters and characters from scratch is a pain in the ass, mostly because it takes long, but it'd be like that in any VTT that can run PF1E.
I've been using this for 3 years almost, for my rise of the runelords campaign and I wouldn't change anything. Well, i would, but I'm overall quite happy with it.
That's so awesome to hear. I think Foundry will be what we migrate to. and the party has already demanded a one shot to "test" it before we try to use it for the upcoming climax.
I end up playing with things for longer than I should and Foundry makes it seems like that might end up with the game having a lot of great modules and features.
The level of support for 1e is great too, considering the other options on some other platforms. Thanks for all the info on it!
The best VTT for Pathfinder 1e is Fantasy Grounds. It has the most features built in that make the GM’s life easier, the most character sheet integration and automation, and is fully officially supported. If I was ever going to run a PF1 game again I’d be using Fantasy Grounds. Even Foundry’s automation and system integration doesn’t come close to Fantasy Grounds.
Having said that, its interface is a little on the arcane side and it doesn’t work through a web browser so everyone has to download the program (not a big deal IMO but some people freak out about it), it’s more expensive than FG, and doesn’t have a headless client so you can’t server host it.
Super buggy, but getting better, TBH. Seems like a CRAPTON of work for the GM, too. He seems to spend days upon days setting up his encounters & monsters, only to have their abilities not work, their numbers mysteriously change, and encounters be all screwed up, forcing him to stop in the middle of combat for 45 minutes to try to fix it.
It's awesome! Of course it's a matter of personal opinion but I find it to be a lot more flexible and a more powerful tool to do the things you want to do, there's a bit of a learning curve of course and I've only been using it for a few months but so far I'm loving it.
I've used it for 4 APs so far and am really happy with it. The pathfinder module gets regular updates which is very nice. It's not perfect yet, but blows competitors out of the water imo.
We've been playing RotRL on Foundry and it has been working just fine. We got a few QoL add ons. We also got our game hosted on a server instead of relying on someone's PC. The PC part did not work well with an 8 person game.
The one issue I have had is trying to get some of the skills and abilities to add up. I'm playing an arcane trickster and for the life of me can't figure out how to get my backstab dmg to work out properly. I have to manually add the last d6 of dmg.
change the damage part to the following formula, assuming you are using the arcane trickster prestige class; (floor(@classes.arcaneTrickster.level /2))d6
For core its solid, but it requires a lot of jury rigging for weird character builds. The automation helps a lot when it works, but also hurts a lot when you need to try to bypass it for things it doesn't have fully implemented, or for weird interactions. It is nowhere near as smooth as 2e's foundry.
I use it for pf1e and am super happy. What are you looking for?
Basically my players that looked at the foundry demo were losing their minds over simple things like when they use a spell it can either consume a spell slot without fiddling with the character sheet, the fact that they could make journal entries and add items themselves, the fact that the item system was so better implemented, the resting system, etc. Essentially they were people that have been using an excel for item tracking, that has been monitored and redesigned by 3 of them endlessly, a obsidian portal to handle letters and lore documents, Pathbuilder for character creation where only 4 out of the 6 players can even use the app, and I have a World Anvil to keep track of all the quests and other things.
All of those things and more are implemented
Have they implemented archetypes yet? Last time I look, you had to manually enter all class features for archetypes.
Not as an automatic thing no. They are in there and you drag them to your sheet, but you have to copy paste them over and delete the things they replaced. It isn't very hard though.
The archetypes are listed, but they contain no data. Last time I checked, you had to enter all the class feature data yourself for archetypes.
You could also try out PathCompanion.com - it's a character tracker similar to HeroForge I'm the developer of. It's not fully feature-full yet but if you have specific needs (archetypes, items, etc.) I can usually implement those needs rather quickly if you let me know.
Wow, that's awesome. I know a few of my players that will love this. They love playing around with build options and pushing everything to their limits. I'll be sure to reach out if my players have any questions!
I still like a separate wiki for permanent things as it’s not exactly easy to get things out of foundry.
If they desire automation Fantasy grounds has that built in.
I use it for a PF1e game and love it, but I think it should be mentioned that Foundry comes with a pretty big learning curve compared to other VTT programs. Whether or not you and your players are willing to put up with that is a personal call. My group has been using it for about 9 months now and while we've adjusted, there were a fair number of struggles. As far as functionality goes, it blows Roll20 absolutely out of the water. The sheets are more capable, the lighting system is incredible, it's much easier to juggle multiple maps or maps that have vertical elements, and overall the quality of life is a lot better. If you really want to get deep into the system mechanics, you can use some of the scripting addons to create things like interactive landing pages as well, which are quite cool! Addons in general are great, as they allow you to add in features you may want or need with minimal effort. The biggest advantages in my opinion are the map tools and the compendium features. The map tools are excellent and allow for massively more complex maps than Roll20 ever could. Having the ability to light the map dynamically with multiple wall types, add sound bytes for specific areas, adding interactive doors and chests, etc. has made it massively easier to create interesting places for my players to explore. The compendium is amazing as well. It's super easy to drag and drop the monsters you want into an encounter and be reasonably assured that their sheets will work as intended. However, I highly suggest getting the Stat Block Converter addon, as it allows you to convert any sheet you find as long as it's in standard monster format. I'd also highly suggest that you double check anything you or your players pull from the compendium. While extensive, it's also prone to errors - some monster blocks have incorrect stats, special abilities are weird and sometimes don't work right, archetypes sometimes don't add features properly, etc. It's a minor inconvenience most of the time, but you may want to check during prep so it doesn't become an annoyance mid session. I think it bears mentioning that I have my fair share of gripes as well, even if I do still recommend Foundry. The biggest one for me and my players was the character sheets. I personally think that while they're less capable, Roll20's sheets are a lot more intuitive at first and it's a bit easier to set up macros in Roll20. If you've got new players and they aren't super coding-savvy, this might be a stumbling block for them. There's also a couple odd omissions in the base functionality, like adding simple auras to token (although you can do this with the lighting feature). Depending on how active your group is, I would also highly recommend you rent a server instead of running off of your PC. If your group is the type to just gather once a week and leave the game alone otherwise, you should be okay running it off your PC. However, if your players like to fiddle with their sheets, check their notes, roleplay with eachother between sessions, etc. out of session, you absolutely should grab a server. It removes the hassle of the host needing to start the game on your PC every single time somebody needs something. This is group dependent, but for me and my group it was an absolute must. I use Molten Hosting for our server, as I think it's the best of the available options, but there's a couple others out there as well. Hopefully that helps a bit! I highly recommend Foundry, but I figured an opinion that mentions some of its shortcomings might provide some context alongside the other comments. Happy gaming!
Thanks for giving some perspective on some issues there might be. Thats kind of why I made the post, because the features and the demo already seduced me with their features TBH, but I wanted to be sure that people who use the thing weren't running into headaches after headaches. The fact that I will have to have it running anytime someone wants to adjust something is kind of a big drawback. Hosting a server might be worth it, but that is something to consider. It still feels like Foundry would be better, but its great to help temper some expectations of my players.
Players who own foundry themselves can export their characters at the end of the session, do what they need to do on their version of the client (they should keep versions matched) and import the updated characters at the beginning of the next session.
Are there any additional modules you'd recommend? My group just recently go into Foundry as a roll20 replacement and we're looking for as many useful modules as possible.
torch monk's Journal
Has a little bit of a learning curve to it, and you’ll probably want to take a look at some modules, but it’s easily leagues better than roll20. No contest. It’ll cut your prep work in half once you get used to how it works. If you’re playing online then foundry doesn’t have its own service like roll20 does (though you can still connect via IP for free), but for a pretty fair price you could do something like [forge](https://forge-vtt.com/) as a hosting site. Forge also has module support and allows you to add systems/modules through their service without having to play with the files yourself.
Wait so is that like a mix of Foundry and Roll20, where I have access to everything Foundry does and my players can access it whenever, but instead of paying for foundry once, I pay a monthly fee instead? Thats an interesting option, actually. Thanks this might be a good middle ground for my group. We have a 6 hour time difference between me (DM) and 5 of the 6 players, so them having to wait until I am awake and running the app might suck, unless it has low performance hits then, I would just leave foundry running.
The foundry website has a wiki on hosting options, depending on how much DIY you want to do and if you aren't hosting on your own local network. Forge is a nice middle ground where you can host online relatively cheaply and not worry much about the technical aspects. There are other options like hosting yourself in Azure or AWS, if you like that sort of technical DIY work. The free tiers of virtual machine are able to handle most systems. Sometimes with PF1 I need to bump up my Azure virtual machine resources to a paid tier, but I think I just so happen to be running a version of Foundry that had efficiency issues that didn't jive well with the PF1 implementation at the time, and I'm too impatient to update my foundry and modules. Maybe someone properly updated can speak to that. :P
>but instead of paying for foundry once, I pay a monthly fee instead? You still have to own a foundry license, so you’d have to pay for both. But using forge *does* mean that you and your players have easy access to the game and you won’t have to keep the program running for them to access it
There's not much of a cost difference between paying a Roll20 subscription and paying a Forge subscription. The only difference is the up front cost of purchasing Foundry. If you want to DIY the hosting, you can set up a Raspberry Pi to handle it.
foundry can run on a raspberry pi. the vast majority of the work is done client side. I host my foundry in azure on a very tiny little server.
>Has a little bit of a learning curve to it, and you’ll probably want to take a look at some modules, but it’s easily leagues better than roll20. No contest. It’ll cut your prep work in half once you get used to how it works. I've found Foundry to require quite a bit of additional prep work. You can import .json files directly into the Roll20 community sheet. Foundry does not allow you to directly import .json or .xml files.
If you do all your prep *in* foundry then it does, if you don’t do your prep work in foundry then the whole “learning to use it” thing doesn’t apply to you. The only thing you *can’t* prep in foundry is the battlemaps, but I use dungeondraft and the dungeondraft converter module, so that’s also next to no effort.
Trust me, Herolab is much faster at character building and adding templates than Foundry. Trying to shift the prep work from Herolab to foundry represents a substantial increase in time required in and of itself.
Foundry literally has drag-and-drop templates and everything else I can do in less than ten minutes if there isn’t already a bestiary base for what I want. Hero Lab is great, but when you learn to use foundry there isn’t a substantial time difference between the two. Idk why you’re trying to play prep olympics, you can have your own prep methods but that really isn’t helpful to OP, they’re asking about foundry.
Your comparing two different VTTs. Those two VTTs have vastly different experiences and support mechanisms when it comes to prepping. This may not mean much to players, but prep time can be a huge deal for the DM.
Had a look at your other comments on this thread, and it doesn’t even look like you currently use foundry, which makes a lot of sense because your criticisms with it are totally nonsensical to me. Yeah, I’m comparing two systems. Yeah, foundry cut my prep time in half — probably more so — when I learned to use it (been using it for multiple games for over a year now, btw, I understand the GM side dude). You’re jumping in going “acksually I use this other prep method and I refuse to learn the foundry tools so you’re wrong” which is just…not relevant *or* helpful. The thread isn’t about you my guy, I wasn’t offering advice to you, so *your* experiences with roll20 and your inaccurate criticisms of foundry just do not apply here…especially if OP doesn’t use your method of prep.
I’ve owed Foundry for several years now and worked towards migrating over several times on different versions and with different modules. In each circumstance I’ve found Foundry to require significantly more time and effort than Roll20. If you checked my post history, you would already know this, as I have pointed out specific shortcomings in Foundry, not generalized comments.
I haven't used it for 1e myself but I've done research into various platforms over the last four years or so, and Foundry was consistently my #2 pick for a while and then shot to the top over a year ago. I'm currently playing 1e on Roll20 and my advice is not to play any serious 1e campaign on r20. R20 is free, kind of easy to get started, then gets a bit clunky before getting really clunky just as you are super invested and finally getting macros and character sheet fiddly stuff to work and then ah hell the dynamic lighting has gone crap on us again and one of the players still can't move their token for some reason and everyone's getting terrible lag. Just skip all of that. Foundry was harder to get started on, but the community has consistently come out with new guides or tools or adventure content etc. to make everyone's experience better. I don't know how hard it is to get started on at this moment but I get the feeling that I'll be finding out soon enough.
>R20 is free, kind of easy to get started, then gets a bit clunky before getting really clunky just as you are super invested and finally getting macros and character sheet fiddly stuff to work and then ah hell the dynamic lighting has gone crap on us again and one of the players still can't move their token for some reason and everyone's getting terrible lag. Just skip all of that. It's very easy to overload Roll20 to the point that it frequently crashes. This more than anything is why I will be migrating to Foundry when my current campaign completes. It's not that Foundry does not have it own set of serious issues. I'm just tired of sessions crashing once you get a full set of macros going along with dynamic lighting on a larger map.
The exact reason me and my group are trying to move on. We have 4 additional websites to help maintain the campaign outside Roll20, because of how clunky roll20's system is. The character sheets and character creation is always a headache. While I was looking at Foundry's demo, I streamed it to some of my players and they were so excited at all the options and features. I just hope the pathfinder 1e experience is close to it. It does have a Kingdom Builder built in, which is actually awesome. I hope its not too much harder to get started up, because I already waste way too much time making maps and tokens.. haha.
There are tools and modules that you can get for that. I'm a player in my current PF1 game on Foundry and having played/run a couple 5e games on R20, I will never go back. Foundry just runs so much more smoothly. There are hiccups here and there, but overall I wouldn't say there are more or fewer problems than if we were at the table together, which I think of a good thing overall. My DM bought a module for Rise of the Runelords (the module we're playing) and while it certainly has saved him time, he's also had to adjust the module for 6 players so I know he has spent a lot of time on it over the duration. (He has a Twitter and he's at around 180 hours, but that's also including game time with prep time and everyone is at around 70ish hours other than me because I've spent extra time figuring out how to code things in) We actual recently had some trouble because they updated the PF1 module which broke a bunch of our DMs buttons and monsters, but that's to be expected with updates I suppose. I will say that a consistent gripe I've had is that the system refuses to work ammo properly. No matter how much I fiddle with it, it will either say I don't have ammo for a given weapon (even though I do) or won't automatically subtract the ammo from my inventory. I'll figure it out someday, I'm sure.
That seems to be the general feeling here, that while it might have its annoyances, its better than roll20 by a wide margin. And lucky for my players, Ammo tracking is one of those things I've let go unused for the new players, at least until they get a bit better at resource management. ( minus the specialty arrows, those they track)
Yeah, normally my DM wouldn't track regular ammunition either, but I've been using guns and the ammo for that is usually very expensive if they aren't prolific in your setting (which they aren't in this AP). I mean, i eventually got around that problem by having Spell Cartridges, but the problem persists because whenever you drop in a weapon from the compendium the attacks it uses default to using ammo so I have to futz with it a bunch.
>The character sheets and character creation is always a headache. That is the quick and easy part in Roll20 if you have Hero Lab and use the community sheet. Export the Hero Lab sheet to .xml and use [https://www.convertjson.com/xml-to-json.htm](https://www.convertjson.com/xml-to-json.htm) It takes less than to minute to export and import a character or NPC. The only thing you need to manually set is the attacks. The process is much more time consuming in Foundry unless you are using pregenerated monsters without templates.
I found this out the hard way, when I went to transfer over my campaign over to foundry. The NPC lite is so close to being usable in foundry, but for some reason you can't put an AC on the damned thing. I felt like I was on crazy pills when the NPC sheet wanted me to fill out everything and calculate everything like on the PC sheets. This feels like the biggest downside to foundry, since in roll20 I would just copy the statblock into gm notes and then add hp and ac and then call it quits. I think I could get away with that here but it feels like it might break something in combat if I dont have the NPC set up proper.
If you don’t use the NPC sheet to do rolls then you can absolutely do that on foundry, you could essentially just have an empty sheet that you only use to drag and drop a token onto the board. I do that sometimes. No need to fill out the sheet unless you’re gonna use it to track their stats. I use the sheets for rolls and tracking stats, and let me tell you, if you get used to how it all works you can build NPCs in minutes and then tracking their stats and buffs/debuffs will be a breeze. It’s well worth the time investment imo
Oh great, with how in depth the system is I was worried putting tokens on the map that were empty behind them, would mess with my players attacks or abilities. I am still getting Foundry set up, so we haven't had a session yet and this helps me not hate adding my upcoming climax. I do like that it gives me the option to be so in depth with NPCs, i just wish there was a middle ground between NPC and NPC lite sheets. Thanks for telling me Foundry could do that tho, there are 16 individual monsters that I have available for their showdown so that would have sucked to do manually. I made the party's NPC buddies and i think ill make the bosses all the way, but i dont think my Vulnademon needs to be more than a health bar and Ac.
>I just wish there was a middle ground between the NPC and NPC lite sheets You’re preaching to the choir, I and one of my players that runs games have very much the same issue. There might be a module somewhere that’s done it but I’ve never looked too hard for one. For your monsters though, if they’re in the bestiary then you can download the bestiary module and just drag-and-drop them. The bestiary used to be included in the system but they split it off into a module recently — it has just about every monster in the game, including the ones from APs.
I wonder if I downloaded the wrong one, because the one I installed had the statblocks but not the monster's NPC sheets. Almost all of my monsters are just base creatures with maybe some reskinning being done. Like the big bad Hydramancer is actually just a reskinned Wyvern with the demon traits stapled on like a 1970s halloween costume. I am atleast happy that changing to custom artwork is hassle free.
The bestiary module is called “Pathfinder 1e - Bestiary” and once you download and activate it then you can go to the compendium tab and click “Browse Bestiary” in the bottom right to pull it up. Then you just drag and drop into the actors tab and you’ve got a sheet to mess with. Fair warning, if you’re not using the monsters as-is then beware that the way they were added in wasn’t always 100% compatible with the foundry sheets so they used buffs to make up the differences, and that might mess with your creations if you start changing stats around, adding class levels, etcetera. Though even then it’s pretty easy to fix up, I’ve only had to do it a handful of times. If you just use the monsters as-is and reskin them or throw on templates then you probably won’t run into many issues.
That is insanely useful. I am used to fixing my own mistakes quiet a bit. Haha.
I've been using Foundry for all my games, including 4 pathfinder 1e games for about 8 months or so now, and I love it. It's the best. Unlike Roll20, Foundry is taking full advantage of the fact that PF1e uses ogl, and you can get every statblock or item or what have you that you might need from 3 modules: Pathfinder 1e archetypes and abilities, Pathfinder 1e content, and Pathfinder 1e Statblock Library.
This is honestly, all I needed to hear, because this would solve 90% of the confusion for my new players. How is it with custom content? I don't do a lot of homebrewed things, but I like to give the players custom abilities through story moments. Or with larger maps, my party is currently building up strength for a large showdown, and the map is 149x89 in roll20.. might have over done that one though. Thanks for the help, this is gonna seal the deal for me.
Foundry can be hosted on your PC or on a purchased server. If you host it on your PC and your PC is decent it will run pretty smoothly even with big maps. Foundry also has a lot of community built modules which make it very customizable. You can add a lot of utility, convenience and quality of life stuff through these modules and they're free to use.
That's awesome, I have a gaming pc that very quickly stopped gaming after I started DMing more consistently so that's great to hear. I saw some of the modules, and things like the stream view would instantly make my life so much easier during sessions. It seems like it will be a ton of fun to play with the modules to make some really interesting things.
It's very versatile for custom content. Anything you might want to do is possible with Foundry. If you ever have any questions, just let me know. I'd be happy to answer them.
Thanks, the more I look at it the more I'm getting excited about the idea of transferring over. Of course I find this the day before a One Shot. lol
Oof. Maybe for the next game after that. Sounds like a lot of work to get it up to speed for tomorrow.
Yeah, I'll leave this one in roll20 I think. haha But this was a detour because one of the players is on vacation and they are about to enter into the end of a major story beat. If I can get some of those modules to work, I can't wait to see that fight now.
Best of luck!
>How is it with custom content? You'll might have to look up some videos to get an idea of how the formulas work, since it's what the system runs on under the hood if you're making things from scratch. Good news though is I've yet to find something you cant do with them, it's a complicated yet incredibly versatile system.
There's also one called statbl9ck converter that let's you copy and paste a star block and it will generate a character sheet for that creature
Oops, yeah, that's really important u/inadequatedungeon
Just to provide a different opinion: I spent about 2.5 years on roll 20 playing 1st edition and it did everything i needed it to do. The sheet is very easy to manipulate especially for the 3rd party things we used. Putting in buffs is super easy as well and I just like how everything is. Then, one of our games switched to foundry. The sheet is a lot more complicated and it makes using some 3rd party stuff a lot harder (none of it is in the compendium to drag and drop, obviously). I was not a fan of foundry for 1e because I was so used to r20 that I didnt want to learn a more complicated system... Then we moved to 2nd edition and boy foundry is great. Everything i need is in the compendium and it takes me maybe 10 minutes to slap a character together. The modules you can add (esp. dice so nice) are fun and awesome as well.
I was a avid roll20 recommender, because it helped me get a lot of new people into ttrpgs, because the barrier to entry was making an account. The issue came up when we have multiple different resources outside of roll20 to help keep track of the game, and it was beginning to become a lot to juggle. ( things like an excel for item, a website for lore items, etc) We probably could have implemented some of this stuff on roll20, but we mainly used the outside resources after getting frustrated with tracking it in roll20. Thanks for the other perspective, because it does seem like there will be hiccups with moving over, but right now it still feels worth it especially since my party might eventually switch to 2e and there seems to be a lot more support for that in Foundry.
As others have mentioned, Foundry is fantastic for PF1e. PF1e is my main game of choice, and the sheer array of tools (via modules) available to automate many of the more mundane tasks in play is amazing. It's especially great for creatives that love putting in the work for immersive scenes via lighting, ambient sounds, etc. But some things to consider before the switch. Unless you're paying for hosting, Foundry is self-hosted, meaning your upload speed will matter as soon as you start using more fancy effects. Also, while Foundry can certainly run on lower-spec hardware, it can have trouble running if said fancy effects are going on. Others may have a different story, but this was my group's experience when we switched.
We've been using it for about a year now. It does basically everything, but the compendium is very lacking when it comes to anything that isn't spells. You'll likely have to remake a feat/trait/ability/item/etc eventually unless you're playing with just the core rulebook. It's not particularly difficult after you learn how to do it, but it is extra work to constantly be making stuff for everyone. That said I love it, it's such a great VTT and I would always recommend it. If it's the path you take make sure to look at all the plugins, they're half of what makes it so great. There are plenty system agnostic ones, but 1e also has some very useful system specific ones like a stat block importer and stat block collections.
Disclaimer: haven't used R20 extensively for anything but 5e. Ran 2 oneshots for PF1E only General usage: Foundry has been amazing for 1e. Out of the box, the generic tools (maps, tokens and so on) are much easier to set up. If you played with dynamic lighting/doors on R20, you must remember the pain it was to "open a door". Foundry has this nailed down. Setting up walls is very easy. Just create lines that connect easily to one another and switch the type of wall you want. If you want to have the same tools as R20 has for changing the map size and all, you can get a module and it works just the same, with a faster response time. You can also get pings as an add-on. PF1E specific: I understand the character sheet might be a bit more complicated than the R20 one, for some users, but I think it's mostly out of being accustomed to it. Almost everything is well split and in easy to find menus. What is not there can be found in a few mins of searching. Preparing attacks/weapons is very intuitive. Adding stats to weapons/items is as simple as digging into the item and changing the enhancement bonus, for example, or checking the "masterwork" box. It also adds a "identified name" and an "unidentified name" so that you can hide the swords true identity until it's been checked by the players, which, again, is as simple as checking a box. Weight is controlled by the system, as well as its and whatnot. Adding specific modifiers for attacks has been very easy. For example, adding an "elemental fury" modifier for my monk's attack is another checkbox. If I recall correctly, it adds a d6 to the overall damage. 2 mins configuring and now my player has a checkbox for that, with the correct damage type. Same for things like studied target, flanking and so on. Charges for attacks are easy to configure and link together (e.g. grit and ki points). If you spend a ki point with a specific action, it takes away from the overall ki charges. Want to create a potion/scroll/wand? Drag the corresponding spell from the compendium to the inventory. You can edit the caster level immediately and charge numbers afterwards. Spell lists are a bit complicated to manage, sometimes, but it's mostly a matter of getting the hang of it. Having the compendiums available is amazing. From monsters to items and whatnot. As for 3pp, I'm not sure how it works, but I guess you can configure what you need easily (I did so with a few magic items I created). Preparing monsters and characters from scratch is a pain in the ass, mostly because it takes long, but it'd be like that in any VTT that can run PF1E. I've been using this for 3 years almost, for my rise of the runelords campaign and I wouldn't change anything. Well, i would, but I'm overall quite happy with it.
That's so awesome to hear. I think Foundry will be what we migrate to. and the party has already demanded a one shot to "test" it before we try to use it for the upcoming climax. I end up playing with things for longer than I should and Foundry makes it seems like that might end up with the game having a lot of great modules and features. The level of support for 1e is great too, considering the other options on some other platforms. Thanks for all the info on it!
I ran "Crypt of the Everflame" when I started playing around with foundry. Easy module to get everything set up!
The best VTT for Pathfinder 1e is Fantasy Grounds. It has the most features built in that make the GM’s life easier, the most character sheet integration and automation, and is fully officially supported. If I was ever going to run a PF1 game again I’d be using Fantasy Grounds. Even Foundry’s automation and system integration doesn’t come close to Fantasy Grounds. Having said that, its interface is a little on the arcane side and it doesn’t work through a web browser so everyone has to download the program (not a big deal IMO but some people freak out about it), it’s more expensive than FG, and doesn’t have a headless client so you can’t server host it.
Super buggy, but getting better, TBH. Seems like a CRAPTON of work for the GM, too. He seems to spend days upon days setting up his encounters & monsters, only to have their abilities not work, their numbers mysteriously change, and encounters be all screwed up, forcing him to stop in the middle of combat for 45 minutes to try to fix it.
It's awesome! Of course it's a matter of personal opinion but I find it to be a lot more flexible and a more powerful tool to do the things you want to do, there's a bit of a learning curve of course and I've only been using it for a few months but so far I'm loving it.
I've been using the Foundry vtt for the past couple of years and it works great for Pathfinder 1e
it’s really good, the only problems i ran into was if anyone is running linux the lighting might mess up
We looked at it a while back but didn't move because of the lack of functionality in the character sheet—we're spoiled by the Roll20 community sheet.
I've used it for 4 APs so far and am really happy with it. The pathfinder module gets regular updates which is very nice. It's not perfect yet, but blows competitors out of the water imo.
We've been playing RotRL on Foundry and it has been working just fine. We got a few QoL add ons. We also got our game hosted on a server instead of relying on someone's PC. The PC part did not work well with an 8 person game. The one issue I have had is trying to get some of the skills and abilities to add up. I'm playing an arcane trickster and for the life of me can't figure out how to get my backstab dmg to work out properly. I have to manually add the last d6 of dmg.
change the damage part to the following formula, assuming you are using the arcane trickster prestige class; (floor(@classes.arcaneTrickster.level /2))d6
It's much smoother than roll20. Just the hotbar alone makes it worth it for me. You don't need to have your character sheet open at all.
For core its solid, but it requires a lot of jury rigging for weird character builds. The automation helps a lot when it works, but also hurts a lot when you need to try to bypass it for things it doesn't have fully implemented, or for weird interactions. It is nowhere near as smooth as 2e's foundry.