Getting started

Install

Caution

Bondsmith is a premium module, distributed only through Patreon. There is no manual install, no public manifest URL, and no Forge mirror.

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

Visit https://foundryvtt.com/me/account and connect your Foundry account to Patreon. Once the connection verifies, Bondsmith shows up in your entitled module list.

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 tab to the right sidebar, next to the Journal tab. Its icon is a handshake. The tab holds a compact navigator of your tracked actors, factions, and locations.

From the sidebar tab you can open the full window, the Graph Dashboard, and the settings. A GM-only welcome window opens the first time the world loads.

The scene controls add tools under the Token group for a GM. Draw Connection lets you link two tokens on the canvas. Arrange Tokens lays tracked tokens out on a relationship board scene. These tools appear only when the active scene has the matching options enabled.

Track your first world actor

Bondsmith tracks actors that already exist in your world; it does not create them. A tracked actor carries a reputation score and can join factions.

Open the Bondsmith sidebar tab and drag an Actor from the Actors directory onto it. The actor lands under Player Characters or NPCs depending on its type. You can also use the + button above the NPC list to track an existing world actor or to add an entry with no linked actor.

A GM can have Bondsmith track new actors automatically by actor type. That behavior is configured on the settings page.

Create a faction

A faction is a group that carries its own reputation and can hold member actors. Click the + next to the Factions heading in the navigator. The creation window asks for a name, a type, and an optional parent faction. Leaving the name blank fills in a default.

Nesting a faction under a parent builds a hierarchy. See Factions and hierarchy for how parents and members relate.

Assign a reputation score

Every tracked actor and faction has a reputation value that maps to a named tier. To set it, open the entity in the full viewer and drag its reputation bar, or use the increase and decrease controls beside the bar.

For a token on the canvas, select it and press R to open the reputation slider for that actor. The actor must already be tracked. A GM can also nudge the selected token’s reputation with the + and - keys.

How values map to tier names and colors is covered in Reputation and tiers.

Open the main viewer

The sidebar tab is a compact view. Click Open Full Viewer in the tab to open the main window, which shows the full navigator alongside a detail panel for the selected entity. Selecting any entity in the sidebar also opens the window focused on that entity.

The character-sheet badge

On the dnd5e system, a tracked actor’s sheet shows a reputation badge in its window header. The badge displays the current tier name and value, tinted with the tier color. Clicking it opens the Bondsmith viewer.

Undo

A GM can undo the last reputation or relationship change with Ctrl+Z. The undo stack holds a limited history of recent changes.