Getting Started

Install

Caution

Bondsmith is a premium module, distributed only through Patreon.

Step 1: Subscribe on Patreon

Subscribe at https://www.patreon.com/c/3deathsaves to a tier that includes Bondsmith.

Step 2: Link Foundry to Patreon

Connect your Foundry account to Patreon at https://foundryvtt.com/me/account. Bondsmith appears in your entitled module list once the connection verifies.

Step 3: Install from inside Foundry

1. Open Foundry’s Setup screen.
2. Go to Add-on Modules.
3. Click Install Module.
4. Search for “Bondsmith”.
5. Click Install.

Enable it in your world under Manage Modules.

Where Bondsmith lives

Bondsmith adds a handshake tab to the right sidebar, directly after the Journal tab. The tab holds a compact navigator of your tracked actors, factions, and locations. It shows one group at a time. A strip of four icons switches between factions, player characters, NPCs, and locations. The search field above the strip filters the group on screen.

Open Full Viewer sits in the tab footer. A Graph Dashboard button appears beside it once the world holds a graph the user can open. As GM you also see it once the world holds any relation. As GM you also get a settings button.

3DS:ATLAS is Bondsmith’s only required dependency. Other 3 Death Saves modules are optional and gate individual controls. ATLAS supplies Bondsmith’s theming, its troubleshooter diagnostics, and its update notices. ATLAS also names the Primary GM, the GM client that runs Bondsmith automation when more than one GM is logged in.

As GM you get two tools under the Token scene controls. Draw Connection links two tokens on the canvas. Arrange Tokens lays tracked tokens out on a relationship board scene. Each tool appears only when the active scene has the matching option enabled.

Track your first world actor

Bondsmith tracks actors that already exist in your world. A tracked actor has a reputation score and can join factions. Opening the full viewer as GM tracks your player characters.

To track an actor, drag it from the Actors directory onto the Bondsmith sidebar tab. Holding a dragged actor over the handshake icon switches to the Bondsmith tab and expands the sidebar. The actor lands under Player Characters or NPCs. Bondsmith sorts it by the actor’s type, its party membership, and whether a player is assigned to it. Right-click an entry to move it to the other list. The moved entry carries a Manual pill in the full viewer’s navigator. Clear Category Override in the same menu sends a moved entry back to automatic sorting. The + above the NPC list either tracks an existing world actor or adds an entry with no linked actor.

Dropping an Actor folder on the full viewer tracks every actor in it, subfolders included. A large folder asks you to confirm before anything is tracked.

To stop tracking an entry, click the cross in its detail header in the full viewer, or pick Remove from Tracking in its right-click menu. Removal asks for no confirmation. The world actor itself is untouched.

An entry with no linked actor carries its own portrait. The gear in an entry’s detail header opens its config drawer. Clicking the image there opens the file picker. An entry backed by a world actor shows its portrait read-only.

Right-click an entry with no linked actor and choose Promote to Actor…. Link Existing Actor points the entry at a world actor you pick. From Compendium imports an actor from a compendium into your world. New Blank Actor creates an empty actor for the entry. Relations, faction membership, and the changelog carry over in every case. A world actor Bondsmith already tracks cannot be the link target. Leave Keep this entry’s name and image checked to hold the entry’s name and portrait as display overrides on the promoted actor. Clear it to show the actor’s own name and portrait.

Bondsmith can also track new actors automatically by actor type. Configure that on the settings page.

Create a faction

A faction is a group with its own reputation. It can hold member actors. To create one, click the + on the Factions heading in the navigator. The creation window asks for a name, a type, and an optional parent faction. A blank name gets a default. The Copy from Existing mode copies an existing faction instead.

Nesting a faction under a parent builds a hierarchy.

Assign a reputation score

Every tracked actor and faction has a reputation value that maps to a named tier. Open the entity in the full viewer. The headline bar shows the party average. Each player character’s reputation sits on a row beneath it. As GM you edit any row while Edit Mode is on.

Select a token on the canvas and use the reputation keybinding to open a prompt for its actor. The prompt works only on an actor Bondsmith already tracks. GM-only increase and decrease keybindings change the selected token’s reputation without the prompt.

As GM you get a slider and step buttons on faction, player character, and NPC rows in the sidebar tab. Those controls work outside Edit Mode. A player sees a read-only bar in their place.

Open the main viewer

Click Open Full Viewer in the sidebar tab to open the main window. The window pairs the full navigator with a detail panel for the selected entity. Selecting any entity in the sidebar opens the same window on that entity. The window header has a bug report control that opens Discord. As GM you also get an Edit Mode toggle and a settings control. A Party Spells control appears when the Spell Book module is active. It hands the active party to Spell Book’s party coordinator.

The character-sheet badge

With the system, a tracked actor’s sheet carries a reputation badge in its window header. The badge shows the current tier name and value. Clicking it opens the Bondsmith viewer. Group actors get no badge.

Undo

The undo keybinding rolls back the last change to Bondsmith’s data. Bondsmith keeps a limited history of recent changes. Undo is GM-only.

Deleting a referenced document

Deleting an actor, journal entry, journal page, scene, or item that Bondsmith references opens a confirmation window. Only a GM sees it. The window lists the factions, locations, relations, journal entries, and graphs the deletion touches. Delete & Cleanup removes the document and strips Bondsmith’s references to it. Keep & Unlink leaves the document alone and clears only the references. Cancel leaves both untouched. Do not ask again this session suppresses the window until you reload.