Nesting Macros, nested macros not responding correctly?

I'm trying to help a player out with macros to make things easier. He has a barrage attack (Spheres of Might) that let's him shoot 2, 3, 4, or 5 shots off, each for a different penalty to hit. I have a basic macro that is ?{How Many Attacks?|2,#barrage2 |3,#barrage3 |4,#barrage4 } Which works fine if I have barrage2 macro just set up as like "2" or something to know I have the correct output. If you press the up arrow after someone uses an attack of spell, you get all the text needed to reproduce that attack in a macro. I can make an attack under Weapons/Attacks and that works fine. I can copy + paste that into a macro and that macro works fine. I call this macro barrage2. But when I try to nest barrage2 in Barrage now, I no longer get the option to select 2, 3, or 4. I get Input Value: How Many Attacks? and get prompted with"2, &{template:pc" and can't select any values anymore. If I just type 2, it runs the macro for barrage2 but with "2" at the front of it, so it is no longer recongized as code. I know I can just run a few roll commands and add text to say "this is the to-hit" and "this is the damage" but I really like having everything formatted if possible, since the attacks also do a few nice things like adjust to any buffs the player turns on/off and rolls critical confirmations.

<a href="https://wiki.roll20.net/Roll_Query/Nested" rel="nofollow">https://wiki.roll20.net/Roll_Query/Nested</a> <a href="https://wiki.roll20.net/Order_of_Operations" rel="nofollow">https://wiki.roll20.net/Order_of_Operations</a> If the #barrage2 macro has any query 'control' characters ( | , } ) then what happens is Roll20 will first substitute #barrage2 into the Barrage query, and those characters 'break' the Barrage query because Roll20 sees the control character from #barrage2 and thinks that the characters belong to 'Barrage'. The workaround is to use html replacements in the #barrage2 macro Comma: , = &amp;comma; Right Brace: } = &amp;rbrace; Vertical Pipe: | = &amp;vert; If you save any html replacements in a Collections Macro, the caveat is that they will be parsed (replaced by their regular characters) if you ever open the macro again in the future.&nbsp; You can avoid that by putting them in an Ability on a character sheet, and calling that from a Collections Macro. The other option is to use a chat menu &nbsp;instead of a nested query.

To add to jarren's excellent post, I'd say: never nest queries, always use chat menus (where possible). Your original macro as a chat menu would look like this &amp;{template:default} {{name=Choose How Many Barrages}} {{[2 Barrages](`#barrage2) |&nbsp;[3 Barrages](`#barrage3) |&nbsp;[4 Barrages](`#barrage4) }} That would place the 3 buttons in chat, like this: You could whisper it to the player, so only they see the buttons. /w "NAME" &amp;{template:default} {{name=Choose How Many Barrages}} {{[2 Barrages](`#barrage2) |&nbsp;[3 Barrages](`#barrage3) |&nbsp;[4 Barrages](`#barrage4) }} Replace NAME with either a player name, character name, or token name. (and you can use /w @{selected|character_name} if it only works when a token owned by a character is selected). Give that macro to the player in question, and they'll be able to use those macros.

GiGs said: To add to jarren's excellent post, I'd say: never nest queries, always use chat menus (where possible). Thirding this. It's just substantially less headache. Combining&nbsp; Chat Menus &nbsp;with a&nbsp; Macro Character Sheet &nbsp;is an extremely robust workflow, allowing you to simplify code, centralize automation, re-use macros across games.

I wasn't try to nest queries. At least I didn't think I was. It was suppose to be choose attack number -&gt; macro to roll attacks. Also I didn't know about chat menus. That is amazing and I thank you for that.

Brandon S. said: I wasn't try to nest queries. At least I didn't think I was. It was suppose to be choose attack number -&gt; macro to roll attacks. Also I didn't know about chat menus. That is amazing and I thank you for that. Sorry for the diversion, if you weren't trying to nest queries. But it's such a common error that we pretty much jump in that direction.

You got me a solution and that's all I could ask for. I don't expect anyone to look at the entire code for the attack page and figure out what is wrong.

Brandon S. said: I wasn't try to nest queries. At least I didn't think I was. I should have been more specific. I meant never do this: ?{How Many Attacks?|2,#barrage2 |3,#barrage3 |4,#barrage4 } Basically, never use a query when you put yourself in a situation where you can't immediately see what the macro contains, because you might end up having to use HTML entities and ruin the macro you are calling. Always use a chat menu in these cases. Also, never use HTML Entities, if you can avoid it. Again, chat menus will usually fix those situations.