Floors: multi-level maps

Build the whole building on one map: floors and each floor's plan, seeing the floor below through gaps, stairs, roofs with their occlusion modes, walls with height, and how combat works across floors.

A normal map is one plan. With floors you build the whole building (basement, ground floor, first floor, tower) on the same map, each with its own walls, floor, lights and fog. You go up the stairs by walking, without changing scene, and the combat is a single one: the initiative mixes those upstairs and those downstairs.

This guide is for the GM. Players don't have to do anything: they see the floor their character is on.

Turning on floors

On the map rail, the Floors button (the building, next to Layers). A map without floors offers you Turn on floors; from then on you have the list, ordered top to bottom like a building.

Floor above and Basement add a floor above or below the current one. They stack automatically: the ceiling of one is the floor of the next.
The marked floor is the one you're editing. Everything you draw goes on it, and only its own things are visible.
Page Up and Page Down move between floors without letting go of the mouse.

Each floor shows its band in feet (0–10, 10–20...) and how many elements it has.

What was already on the map

When you turn on floors on a map you had already built, nothing moves: anything unassigned keeps applying to all floors. That suits the building's outer walls, but not the living room partitions.

For that there is Bring what's loose down here, which appears when something is unassigned: it sends everything that isn't on a floor yet to the marked one. Bring the selection here moves whatever you have selected on the map up or down, tokens included.

The plan of each floor

The first floor of a castle is usually a different drawing, not the same one with different walls. The Image of this floor button uploads the plan and places it tagged to that floor, at the bottom of the stack and with its real proportions. Adjust it with the handles like any other piece, and lock it once it fits the grid.

It doesn't change the map's background image. The background defines the size of the world and the scale of the grid, so changing it on the stairs would move the camera and throw the squares off.

Use a plan with transparency around the building. Looking down depends on it (see the next section).

Bringing in ready-made maps

If you already built each floor in another tool, with its walls, doors and lights, you don't need to redo it. In the Floors panel:

Bring a map into this floor: pick a .dd2vtt, .uvtt or .df2vtt (Dungeondraft, Dungeon Alchemist, Owlbear…), or the .json of a Foundry scene without levels together with its image. Its image becomes the plan of the selected floor, and its walls, doors and lights are added to that floor, scaled to the map grid. Other floors and unassigned items are left alone. If the floor already had walls or lights, you're asked whether to replace them or add the new ones.
Bring a building: pick several files at once, one per floor (Dungeon Alchemist exports one .dd2vtt per level). They're sorted by name and you can move them up and down and mark which one is the ground floor; anything below it becomes a basement. Missing floors are created for you. If the map had no floors yet, they're turned on and the ground floor sets the background and the grid scale, just like the usual import.

If a file comes with a different grid or size, everything is converted to the map grid and you get a warning. To line it up, Move or adjust this floor shifts or scales the whole floor (plan, walls, doors, lights and drawings together) with the arrows and the 1% buttons. Tokens and stairs joining two floors stay put.

A Foundry scene that already has levels is imported whole from Map → Foundry or Dungeon Alchemist: it comes in assembled by floor.

Seeing the floor below

With See the floor below turned on (the default), the lower floor is painted dimly under yours, and the plan of your floor acts as the ground. It covers the floor below where the drawing is opaque and lets it show where it's transparent.

So you don't declare holes: they are the transparent areas of your plan. The inner courtyard, the stairwell and the street around the building are already transparent in any normal plan. If your plan is opaque edge to edge, you won't see anything below, which is correct for a solid floor.

What it does cover on purpose are the roofs of the floor below. From the balcony you see the street, but not the inside of the tavern across the way, because it has a roof.

A player only sees downward what their character sees: the fog is painted over everything.

Stairs

A staircase is a portal that changes floor instead of place. With the Portal tool you draw the opening, and in its panel the Stairs section lets you choose which floor it goes to.

It's a single piece, not a pair to match up. It joins the two floors, can be seen from both and takes you to the end you're not at: up for whoever is below and down for whoever is above.

Without an arrival square you stay at the same point, which is how the opening is drawn on both plans. If you want an offset landing, pair it with another portal.
Check Travel zone and you go up by walking, without clicking anything: any token that ends its movement on top changes floor.
The token's elevation is set automatically, and the ▲/▼ mark shows which floor each one is on.

Roofs

A roof is a tile with the Roof box checked. It's painted over the tokens, so from outside you see the village's roofs. In its panel you choose how it gets out of the way:

Fade: the whole roof lightens when someone is underneath. The usual choice.
By line of sight: only what the table sees is uncovered. Peeking through the door opens the part you can see, not the whole house. Best for a mixed map of street and interiors.
Around: a circle opens around whoever is underneath.
Never: it stays put (a canopy, a tree's crown).

Each roof decides independently, so a village of six houses with an open courtyard works without tricks. Only the table's characters lift them: a monster you put inside doesn't uncover the house for players who haven't gone in.

While you build you can turn them off with the Roofs row of the Layers panel.

Walls with height

In a wall's panel, Height (feet) limits the band in which that wall exists. Empty = full height, which is how every wall starts.

A low top (the Railing button, 3 feet) blocks movement for whoever is at its level, but from above you can see over it.
A high floor is a bridge: you pass underneath.

Combat across floors

The initiative is a single one. This is the main advantage of having the building on one map: those upstairs and those downstairs share the turn order.
You can't target another floor. Neither areas nor line of effect cross it.
Cover comes from the walls of your floor, not those of the floor above.
Range counts height: a dragon gliding 30 feet above you isn't within reach of your sword.
Falls: select on the map and click Let them fall to the floor below. It applies the damage from the rulebook (1d6 per 10 feet, maximum 20d6) and they end up prone. It never triggers automatically, because deciding who leans out too far is your call.

Foundry

Floors travel both ways. Importing a .json scene with levels (the Levels module or native levels) brings it in assembled, with every wall, tile, light and token on its floor. Exporting sends out the same data, so it opens there with its levels. Wall heights export as the Wall Height module.

UVTT (.dd2vtt) doesn't support floors: it exports the one you're editing and tells you so. To take the whole building with you, use the Foundry export.

Checking it before the game

View → View as a player shows exactly their fog, their tokens and their roofs. Use it to check that going up the stairs changes floor, that each floor has its own fog, and that a monster hidden inside a house doesn't uncover its roof.

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