What's New in Foundry VTT v14: Every Major Feature Explained

Foundry VTT v14 is best known for bringing Levels into core, but there's a lot more in it. This is a tour of what's new and changed, in roughly the order you'll run into it after updating, so you can decide whether to update or get your bearings once you have. It's the written companion to Zephyr's v14 feature roundup on the Baileywiki channel. Each section links to that part of the video.

▶ Watch the full roundup: More Than Just Levels! - #FoundryVTT Version 14 Feature Roundup

Select and palette tools

▶ “Select and Palette Tools” (1:23)

The Select tool is no longer limited to tokens and tiles. It's now in the lighting, wall, and sound controls too, so you can drag-select almost anything without a module.

Every control set except tokens also gets a Palette. Select several objects, open the palette, change just the setting you care about (say, the animation on three lights), and click Apply. Everything else on those objects, like their individual colors, stays as it was. It works on walls too: you can change one property on a mix of walls and doors without turning the doors into walls. Ctrl+Z undoes it. It's similar in spirit to Baileywiki Mass Edit, though it works a little differently.

Measured templates are now regions

▶ “Measured Templates as Regions” (3:21)

There's no separate measured templates layer anymore. Templates live in the Regions controls, which have a measured template mode. In that mode every shape you draw becomes a new region, and the shape conforms to the grid instead of being a true circle. Outside that mode, drawing adds shapes to the selected region as before.

The placeables directory panel

▶ “Placeables Directory Panel” (4:18)

The old pop-out regions list is gone. In its place is a placeables directory in the right-hand sidebar, which lists the tokens, tiles, drawings, walls, lights, sounds, regions, and notes on the scene. It opens to the section matching the tool you're using, and you can open each object's configuration from there. Tiles are named after their image files, and advanced filters let you narrow the list, for example to only doors or only terrain walls.

UI tweaks: scaling, rotation, and activation

▶ “UI Tweaks For Scaling, Rotation, and Activation” (6:04)

• Lights and sounds now show a small dot at their origin instead of an icon, with a handle to resize them. When disabled, their radius disappears unless you hover (then it's dashed). Darkness-sensitive lights that are inactive because of the darkness level show a solid line on hover, so you can tell the two cases apart.
• Tiles, drawings, and other placeables get a resize handle that keeps the aspect ratio by default. Hold Alt to change it; after that, resizing keeps your new ratio. New rotation arrows let you rotate by dragging instead of with the scroll wheel.

Scene configuration and setup

▶ “Scene Configuration and Setup” (8:00)

"Configure" is now Edit in the scene menu, and the scene configuration has been cleaned up. The Basics tab has everything a simple scene needs (background image, grid, darkness level, and weather), and the advanced options live on the other tabs.

Detachable windows

▶ “Detachable Windows (Pop Out)” (8:44)

Any dialog or sheet window can now be detached into its own browser window and moved to another screen, then reattached. Pop-out windows are now part of core. If you used PopOut! only for this, you may not need it anymore, although it's still verified for v14.

Scene grid configuration tool

▶ “Scene Grid Configuration Tool” (9:14)

A new grid configuration tool in the scene's grid settings lets you try grid types, adjust grid size, check the scene scale, and offset the grid interactively, with on-screen tips for using Alt or Shift with the mouse wheel and the arrow keys. It's ideal for maps with odd dimensions or an unknown grid size: no more working out squares and resolution by hand.

Scene transitions

▶ “Scene Transitions” (10:21)

In the scene's Miscellaneous settings you can set a transition animation with a type and duration. By default it plays whenever someone views the scene; turn on the "only on activate" option and it plays only when the scene is activated. The preview plays on the scene you're currently looking at.

Core Levels

▶ “Core Levels” (11:45) · Go deeper: “Scene Setup” in #FoundryVTT Basics - A Practical Guide to v14… (1:45)

The headline feature. A scene can now have several levels, which work a bit like sub-scenes and show up in navigation. Each level has its own elevation range, its own background, foreground, and fog of war images (with scaling options), and settings for which other levels it can see. Tokens see differently depending on their level, and regions can move tokens between levels (stairs). There's a learning curve, especially if you're coming from the v13 Levels module, so start with our v14 Levels guide.

Odds and ends: Active Effects and performance

▶ “Odds and Ends - Active Effects and Backend Improvements” (13:41)

• Active Effects V2. The active effects system has been upgraded and is more powerful. You can now create Active Effect compendiums. What you can do with them varies by system, but it gives module developers and automation builders a lot more to work with, so expect changes in automation modules.
• Performance. As usual there are performance improvements, from a few percent up to 20–30% depending on your setup and the complexity of your scenes.

Should you update?

Check your system and modules first. Use FoundryMods' v14 compatibility tracker, and note that dnd5e 6.x and pf2e 8.6 both require v14. Then follow a safe upgrade path with backups and a test install. Our v14 upgrade guide walks through it.

Related guides

• How to use Levels in Foundry v14
• How to upgrade to Foundry v14 safely · Foundry v14 compatible modules
• Foundry v14 compatibility tracker
• Getting Started with Foundry VTT · All How To guides