When an actor is assigned to a folder, an effect in that folder will only be used if that actor is the one triggering the FX.
Some additional specifics:
When multiple effects are defined for a single LID/Name, the effects are "de-duplicated" according to their actor assignation. Therefore, multiple effects can be defined for the same LID/Name without conflicting, so long as each effect is in a folder with a different actor.
When selecting an effect, if a flow has both any-actor and actor-specific effects, the actor-specific effects will be preferred. This allows the user to customize the FX for a LID/Name generally, and then add a specific override for an actor.
For NPCs, we link folders to the "base actor." This ensures that any synthetic actors derived from that actor (NPC tokens) use the effects configured for the base actor.
Effects defined for an actor take precedence (here, Mech 1 has "Stabilize" as their AR. Mech 2 has "DefaultMelee" as their AR):
When an actor is assigned to a folder, an effect in that folder will only be used if that actor is the one triggering the FX.
Some additional specifics:
Effects defined for an actor take precedence (here, Mech 1 has "Stabilize" as their AR. Mech 2 has "DefaultMelee" as their AR):
actor-specific-vs-general.webm
Linking and un-linking an actor; duplicate checks are done per-actor:
actor-link-unlink.webm
NPC "synthetic actors" use the effects assigned to their base actor:
npc.webm