4e: Maptool, The Macro Template, And You!

This is mostly for my 4e group, but hopefully anyone new to using Veggiesama's campaign template will find this helpful.

As we have (almost) solved the dark mystery of Jorden and progressed to level 2, this is a good time to spice up the maptool system, using Veggiesama's campaign template to give our characters a little more flair and make the experience more complete and user-friendly.

THINGS YOU WILL NEED:

• Maptool version 1.3.55 (found here - we're using an older version in our game, so everyone will have to download this new version)
• TokenTool (found here)
• Veggiesama's campaign template (found here - that's a direct download link)
• Your complete character sheet

Download and unzip Maptool. When you open the folder, here's what you'll see:



Click on 'MapToolLauncher'. That brings up a window that looks like this:



Max Mem is the maximum amount of memory your computer will allocate to Maptool. I have 2 gigs, so I feel comfortable setting that value to 512 or 768 to ensure that I don't lag or chug once I get in-game. Min Mem is something that you can leave alone. Stack Size is very important, you want to set that to 4. If you run into stack overflow errors in-game when you try to run macros, setting it to 6 or 8 may even be necessary. We'll leave it at 4 for now. Click 'OK'.

You'll see a blank field. This isn't what we want at all! Go to 'File' and select 'Open Campaign', then navigate to the location of the Veg2.1_Framework.cmpgn that you downloaded earlier. Click 'Open'.



Note: your bars will probably be different from the ones in this screenshot. PCs generally only need Selection, Chat, and Initiative, but that's up to you.

Ahhhh, that's better. You'll notice a few things immediately: most importantly, the template for the NPC / Monster on the top left, and the template for the Player Character on the top right. On the bottom, we have a sample NPC, and a sample PC. We can ignore those.

Click on and mouse over the Player Character token, and you'll see this:

Pretty swanky. On the mouseover at the bottom left, it displays HP, Defenses, Passive Insight and perception, and other facts about that character. We'll set those up in a second. On the right, you'll see a list of powers and other macros that apply to the character. This is where you'll see all of the things you can do in combat, as well as all of the commands you'll use to set up this particular character. Before we do anything else, do a ctrl+c and a ctrl+v to make a copy of the token somewhere else on the map. Then, click on 'Character sheet'.


This is where we're going to put in the information about our character. Mine is a 1st-level Warforged Bard named Clarkson, and I have the information all ready to go, so let's do that.


That's better. I do the same thing for my defenses, taking special care to note the Armor and Shield bonuses right at the top, and only adding my Class and Enhancement bonuses for Will Defense: Warforged Mind is +1, and Bards get another +1.


I do the same thing again for my skills - DO NOT add your ability modifiers. The only thing you add are +5 for training, and any feat or class bonuses. As a Bard, Clarkson gets +1 to all untrained skill checks, so that goes in there. Armor Check Penalty is calculated automatically down at the bottom, so don't include that either.