# Obsidian - Encounter Builder ![[images/Obsidian-Encounter-Builder.webp]] [Watch on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55kNaduWwVs) · 22:12 · Josh Plunkett · 2023-08-14 > Written from the video's full English captions (en-orig automatic captions via yt-dlp, iOS player client, after the default client hit a 429). Chapter times come from the description. Supporting tutorials and community links are on [obsidianttrpgtutorials.com](https://obsidianttrpgtutorials.com). ## Outline ### 00:00 Intro - Welcome back to Obsidian for tabletop RPGs. This is another look at **Initiative Tracker**, covering a feature he hasn't shown before. - Many people don't know that Initiative Tracker includes a fully working **Encounter Builder**. It's hard to find unless you know where to look. ### 00:34 If You Are New - Brand-new users should stop here and start with the tutorials on **obsidianttrpgtutorials.com**: Plugin Tutorials → TTRPG plugins → the **Initiative Tracker** and **Fantasy Statblocks** videos. - Those videos cover the basics. He recommends using Statblocks and Initiative Tracker together. This video goes straight to the advanced features. - Prerequisites: Initiative Tracker and Fantasy Statblocks installed and enabled, with monsters loaded into Statblocks. ### 01:26 Creating an Encounter - Starting point: a basic adventure note (**1.0A. On the Beaten Path**) already has an inline encounter block. It calculates a **Trivial** difficulty and launches into the Initiative Tracker sidebar, where you can click through statblocks and run combat. - Goal: build a **balanced** encounter for the party. - Step 1: Settings → Community plugins → **Initiative Tracker**. Add your **players** and create a **party**, because the builder reads the party from here (covered in the original Initiative Tracker video). - Step 2: Run the **Initiative Tracker: Encounter Builder** command or button. It opens in a new tab with collapsible header sections that use some clever CSS. ![[images/Obsidian-Encounter-Builder-t0350.webp]] *Encounter Builder tab with the "Kids Power" party. Three players are struck through as absent, and the Pathfinder 2e XP panel reads Trivial 40, Low 60, Moderate 80, Severe 120 and Extreme 160 XP.* - **Players box:** loads the default party from settings. His is **Kids Power**, his kids' game with seven local kids ("they always burn things down"): Hercules, Wednesday, Leanne Lea, Nyx Swiftwood, Merrick Brightwater, Sundew (Jasmine) and John (Brad). You can switch parties or click the icon to drop players who didn't show up. In the example, four attend and three are removed. - Player **level** matters because the builder uses it to work out the XP budget. All players are level 2. - **Experience (Pathfinder 2e) panel:** with four players (PF2e's default party size), the bands are Trivial 40, Low 60, Moderate 80, Severe 120 and Extreme 160 XP. The panel also shows the **current difficulty** of the draft encounter. - **Adding creatures:** the Encounter section starts with "add some creatures to get started" and has add/save buttons, a filter area and a large monster list from the bestiary. - Search **Goblin** → **Goblin Warrior** (Trivial; about 15 XP of the budget) → add a **Goblin Pyro** (Low) → add an **Orc Scrapper** → **Moderate**. Per Archives of Nethys, Moderate is a serious challenge for the players, which is where he wants it. - Per-creature controls: **+/−** count (difficulty updates live), XP value, **hide from the Initiative Tracker**, **make ally**, and **remove**. ![[images/Obsidian-Encounter-Builder-t0650.webp]] *Goblin Pyro, Orc Scrapper and Goblin Warrior give a Moderate encounter (65 XP). The Initiative Tracker sidebar on the right is already running it with player initiatives.* - Useful for planned fights and for quick unplanned road encounters, since it's all inside Obsidian. - **Start encounter** sends everything to the Initiative Tracker, which auto-rolls initiative. At his table everyone rolls **real dice** ("Nick, what did you roll?" → 14; Sanji → 16) and he overrides the values, which keeps the physical feel of tabletop. Some players even use paper character sheets. Sometimes he rolls monster initiative behind the screen just for the sound effect. ### 07:42 Save and Trigger an Encounter - **Save** the encounter with a naming convention such as **Goblin Encounter 1 (Px4)**. "Px4" means it was designed for four players. - **Load encounter** brings it back, and **Clear** empties the builder. Clearing and then loading restores the full encounter. - The Initiative Tracker sidebar can also **load an encounter** directly, so Goblin Encounter 1 (Px4) is available from the combat view. - Settings → Initiative Tracker → **Encounters** lists the saved encounter. - Prep advice: don't stockpile too many saved encounters. Stay one or two sessions ahead rather than pre-building six sessions. - Summary: build quickly, check the balance, start combat fast, and reload from the tracker fast. ### 09:19 Encounter Filter Options and Customisation - He skipped the filter options and cog buttons earlier because they didn't work in his testing. After more digging he found they are very customizable. - The filter row (normally collapsed) filters by **name**. Expanding it shows more filters, and the **cog** on the right has **Edit headers** and **Edit filters**. - After resetting to the defaults (which are built for **D&D 5e**), he gets Name, **Min CR / Max CR** slider, Size, **Type** and Alignment. On **PF2e**, the slider shows only one handle and does nothing, and Type does nothing. Size and Alignment work. ![[images/Obsidian-Encounter-Builder-t1000.webp]] *Loaded "Goblin Encounter 1 (Px4)" with the filter panel open. The renamed Min/Max Level slider still has only one working handle, and the creature list shows "Creature N" level strings.* - **Diagnosis:** Settings → Fantasy Statblocks → edit a monster (e.g. **Acrobat**) to see the raw statblock data. The default slider reads **CR**, which PF2e statblocks don't have. PF2e uses **level**, stored as a **string** like `Creature 2`, but range sliders need numbers. Type isn't present in the PF2e data either. - Caveat: the community is reviewing the PF2e statblock layout for Obsidian's new **Properties** system (not yet public), which will have a significant impact on this plugin. Expect changes. ![[images/Obsidian-Encounter-Builder-t1410.webp]] *Cog → Edit Headers dialog showing the 5e defaults (Name, CR, Type, Size, Alignment), with Reset Headers and Add Header options and drag-to-reorder.* - **Fix headers** (cog → Edit headers): change the CR column to **Level** with type **string** (now showing Creature 13, Creature 11, and so on), remove the broken **Type** column, and add **AC** linked to the `ac` property as a **number**, placed next to Size. Result: Name | Level | AC | Size | Alignment. He notes that PF2e's remaster is removing alignment. - **Fix filters** (cog → Edit filters): change the CR slider to **AC**. The slider works because AC is stored as a number. Replace Type with **Level** and set options to **Derive** (generate the choices from the data) instead of entering them manually. - Result: filter by size, pick **level** values (e.g. Creature 1–4), and narrow further by alignment (e.g. chaotic evil). - Takeaway: statblock layouts for different systems store different data types, so 5e defaults break on PF2e until you remap headers and filters. If the PF2e level were stored as a plain number, the level slider would work. ![[images/Obsidian-Encounter-Builder-t1820.webp]] *After the fixes, the Min AC slider works and the filters are Size, Level and Alignment. The list shows each creature's "Creature N" level, AC, size and alignment.* - **Properties preview:** Obsidian's new **Properties** layer defines a frontmatter layout with rules. The community is rethinking statblocks around it, possibly with **predefined monster data types**. That should make the plugin easier to use and less likely to break when things change. "Watch this space." ### 20:07 Outro - Recap: the Encounter Builder is built into Initiative Tracker, is easy to use, and makes balanced encounters quick to produce, especially for **Pathfinder 2e** with its tight encounter math. - New viewers: go to **obsidianttrpgtutorials.com** and start with **Getting Started**. - For regular viewers: there's a new **Templates** section with **functionality templates** (encounters, monster statblocks, callouts) and **note templates**, starting with his **NPC template**. Each has a copyable example and a breakdown of how it works so you can build your own. - Thanks to his patrons (Patreon link on the site). The **Obsidian TTRPG Community Discord** is active, and members are now talking about world building, which shows they've become comfortable with the tool. See you on the socials. ## Things mentioned ### Obsidian plugins and features - **Initiative Tracker** (free community plugin): combat tracker sidebar, inline encounter blocks, players and parties settings, saved encounters, and the built-in **Encounter Builder** tab - **Encounter Builder** (part of Initiative Tracker): party picker, toggling absent players, PF2e XP bands and live difficulty, creature search with +/−, hide, ally and remove controls, save/load/clear, start encounter, and cog → **Edit headers** / **Edit filters** (types string or number, options Derive or manual) - **Fantasy Statblocks** (free community plugin): the bestiary that feeds the builder. Settings let you edit raw monster data (Acrobat example). Uses the PF2e community statblock layout. - Obsidian **Properties** (core feature arriving in 2023, structured frontmatter), expected to change how statblock data is defined - Inline encounter code blocks in adventure notes that calculate difficulty and launch into the tracker (1.0A. On the Beaten Path example) ### TTRPG systems and content - **Pathfinder 2e**: XP budget bands (Trivial/Low/Moderate/Severe/Extreme), default four-player party, creature level stored as "Creature N", and the upcoming remaster dropping alignment - **D&D 5e**: the source of the builder's default CR and Type headers and filters - Example creatures: Goblin Warrior, Goblin Pyro, Orc Scrapper, Acrobat, and Adult Blue/Black/Bronze Dragons in the list - **Archives of Nethys** (free official PF2e rules reference) for encounter difficulty descriptions - His "Kids Power" home game party (level 2, seven players) ### Websites, tools and guides - [Obsidian](https://obsidian.md/) (free core app) - [obsidianttrpgtutorials.com](https://obsidianttrpgtutorials.com) (free): Getting Started, plugin tutorials, and the new Templates section (functionality templates and his NPC note template) - [Josh's Patreon](https://www.patreon.com/JPlunkett) (paid, optional) - **Obsidian TTRPG Community Discord** via his site (free) ### Free vs paid (quick) - Free: Obsidian, Initiative Tracker (with Encounter Builder), Fantasy Statblocks, Archives of Nethys, his tutorial site and templates, the community Discord - Paid / optional: Patreon support; PF2e books if you want the printed rules (the encounter math itself is free on Archives of Nethys) ## Bios - **Josh Plunkett**: Australian GM and educator behind Obsidian TTRPG Tutorials (YouTube and obsidianttrpgtutorials.com). Here he runs his kids' Pathfinder 2e table, uses physical dice for initiative, and focuses on tweaking plugin settings so 5e-oriented tools work for PF2e. - **Jeremy Valentine (javalent)**: Developer of the Obsidian **Initiative Tracker** and **Fantasy Statblocks** plugins (plus Dice Roller, Leaflet and others). These are the core combat and bestiary tools behind the Encounter Builder shown here. - **Archives of Nethys**: Paizo-licensed free online reference for Pathfinder and Starfinder rules. Josh cites it for what each encounter difficulty means.