Active Effect

Needs Improvement

This page is out of date. It reflects Active Effects as they were originally implemented, rather than how they operate in modern versions of the SR5 system and modern versions of Foundry. Most of the information is still valid, but use with care.

This article was last edited Wednesday, December 27, 2023 by Mr. Johnson.

Helpful Modules

The Autocomplete Inline Properties module is highly recommended. It integrates directly with the Active Effect editor window, and eases identifying data fields and their corresponding values. It helps greatly with traversal of the data structures.

Character Actor Sheet Effects Tab (SR5 v0.17.1, FVTT v11.315)

Action Item Effect Tab (SR5 v0.16.1, FVTT v11.315)

Active Effects allow you to change Actor values dynamically with easily toggleable options. You can add an Active Effect to an Actor by either:

• creating it directly on the Character's Effects Tab
• creating an item with an Active Effect, set to transfer to the Actor, and giving it to an Actor, adding the effect in the process.

What modes to use?

The SR5 system implements an extended version of the Active Effects as they're used in other systems like DnD5e. For most use cases these modes should be used:

• Modify (Whenever you modify a value that's on your sheet)
• Add (Whenever you want to manually hard add something, might conflict with the system value calculation on some fields (.value))
• Overwrite (Whenever you don't like the systems calculation)

Modify

This custom mode of the system allows to either add a modifier to a value or add directly to it if a modifier can't be applied. If the value choosen contains a .mod field the system will automatically add you're effect to the calculation overview that's shown when hovering over some values (try attributes).

It doesn't matter if a general value as a whole or any of it's fields are choosen (such as .value, .base, .mod or .temp); the Modify mode will always behave the same and not override whatever field is defined.

Should you provide a value without a .mod field the modify mode it will fall back to using the Add mode.

example Active Effect attribute keys:

• system.attributes.body
• system.skills.active.arcana
• system.limits.physical

Override

The override mode has been heavily modified from other systems and supports the same value type as the modify mode (must contain a mod field). The override mode will keep the targeted value as is but override it's calculation by what's defined as it's effect value. It will also be visible in the calculation overview of a value, where it will show the actual total crossed out and the override value as the new total. No values are changed by this. Should you define multiple override effects on the same value, only the last on applied will take effect.

Other Modes

The default modes FoundryVTT provides for it's Active Effects are kept as is. For explanation on how they work, others on YouTube and other plattforms have provided great tutorials.

Actor Data Structure

If you can't find what you're looking for, check if a global modifier for it exists. Some values contain temp fields, that can be modified by Active Effects.

• system.attributes.<attributeName> contains all attributes.
• system.skills.active.<skillName> contains all active skills. Custom skills will be shown with a random ID. To see the actual custom name of the skill traverse into it and read it's name field.
• system.limits.<limitName> contains all limits.
• system.modifiers contains all global modifiers and can be directly modified.

Success Test Pools

As of SR5 v0.14.1, only skill pools can be modified, while specific test categories (social tests, matrix tests, ...) can't.