Broken Links on Archive

The state of being archived causes all of a Character's tokens to unlink from it. This creates a lot of unnecessary clutter, since I have dozens of characters active at a given time (usually as monsters or NPCs in a town), but if I wanted to hide them away all of my macros would fail.

But when I un-archive an item, the token does not remember it. I am doing what you said, but that's not good enough. I am sure I am not the only one who build dungeons in advance. Here is my planning routine, which can be replicated to reproduce the problem: Build a dungeon. Design all monsters for said dungeon. Fill dungeon with said monsters. Archive these monsters. Archive the dungeon. Wait a number of weeks. Players stumble onto said dungeon, which I believe to be completely prepared. Unarchive dungeon. Unarchive monsters (although at this point it makes no difference) Chaos ensues, as all macros and references utterly fail.

I can generate new tokens after the fact, but all of my pre-planned tokens cannot remember.

When I saw Kristin say this: Kristin C. said: If you still have tokens sitting on the tabletop linked to archived character journals, it won't be able to find the archived journal to pull the attributes from for macros. I had to try to reproduce Robert R's problem, as I knew from experience that what she just said was not the case. Not to say that she's a liar, just mistaken on this issue. I have a campaign with a large number of monsters, tokens linked fully to journal entries, and their journal entries archived. I have a single example of each monster on a map as a display, so I know what I've done already. As I create new monsters, I put a representative token onto this map, and test their Token Action macros against other monsters already on the map, and then archive the new monster. Since I have 60 or so journal entries in the archives, and none currently active, I would notice if archived entries did not work. This is not the case; they work just fine. I also tested to see if the map itself, being archived, would cause a problem when un-archived. It did not. I went so far as to archive the map, duplicate the campaign, and un-archive the map in the new copy to test the token actions. Still, no problem was found; everything worked perfectly (tokens representing archived journal entries had full functionality.) The only step I cannot reproduce easily is 6. Wait a number of weeks. It is my opinion that this is how the system is intended to work; it would be silly to 'fix' it to reduce functionality. If an archived journal entry for a token works properly without being un-archived, which it does in my experience, do not 'fix' that 'bug'. It is better this way. If, as Kristin suggests, Kristin C. said: You only should be archiving items that you do not plan to use for your current session. Then the archive loses a LOT of its functionality, as it becomes impossible to archive a fully prepared encounter. One would have to reproduce the encounter basically from scratch upon un-archiving it - the map would exist, but none of the tokens would work, and would have to be replaced one at a time. I believe that the system itself works as intended; Robert R has encountered a bug specific to his own campaign. Just sharing my information and opinion; I hope your problem gets sorted out Robert R. -Phnord

Gladly. So assuming I did it properly, the answer is yes. Google Chrome, fairly recent although I don't claim it's the most recent upgrade. Went to Tools, to Clear Browsing Data. From there I selected ONLY "Empty the Cache", and let it do its thing. Then when I loaded up my campaign with tokens on the board, and their journals archived, it did take time to reload the maps involved, leading me to believe that I did empty the cache properly. Picked a token at random, used its token ability at another token chosen randomly, and everything worked perfectly. I have some 50 tokens on the map, and all of them have their journals archived. They all seem to work just fine. I repeated the experiment: This time, I archived the map with the tokens. I copied the campaign, then closed the window. I cleared my cache, and opened the new campaign. I unarchived the map, and watched as all the tokens reloaded one-by-one, implying that the cache was properly cleared. As I expected, the token actions continue to work perfectly. Hope that helps. -Phnord

I want mine to work like Phnord's! :D

My testing: A token assigned to an archived character sheet continues to work normally with one exception: the "represents character" drop down shows "none/generic token" even though in all other respects it behaves like it is still linked to the character sheet. The bug here appears to be that the "represents character" dropdown is not still listing the character sheet. Archiving and un-archiving the map did not appear to have any bearing on things. It is possible there is a step we are missing that is causing Robert's problem or it could be a campaign level bug.

Yes, the "represents character" drop down is the component that is unlinking. It's the same campaign that has problems with Rollable Tables, but they are fixed now. It's called PTU Civil War Season V: Second Generation

Ah yes... I posted this as a 'bug' not too long ago, then did a bit of thinking and realized it's not so much a bug as an issue to watch out for. Not Really A Bug After All Post My conclusion: It seems as if the reason for this is, as would make sense, the Edit Token window can't access an archived journal entry. It doesn't matter, until some change is made in the Edit Token window. But once any change is made and saved, the token is saved as "None/Generic Token" and it loses its journal-linked properties. PS: Sorry that post isn't 'pretty' for you Gauss! q;}

I see… In any case, the huge issue is, as Phnord iterated (albeit mistakenly) "it becomes impossible to archive a fully prepared encounter" without having to go back and re-link everything. Is this becoming a suggestion thread?

If we postulate that Robert R attempted to make a change to a token, while the token's journal entry was archived, then the problem is solved... as described in my "not really a bug" post, making any change to a token unlinks it from the archived journal entry. The solution is to un-archive all journal entries related to tokens on the desired map, before making any changes to said tokens. If this is not the case then, yes, RobertR's campaign still has something funky going on. PS: I just checked; changing the value of one of the three bars, by using the token's circles (ie: Click green circle, type -5, hit enter = bar 1 is reduced by 5), does not unlink the token. However, anything where you actually open the Edit Token window (and save changes [regardless of whether anything was, in fact, changed]) does unlink. So it's possible to track a token's health, for example, but not to change its name.