Better support for rolling dice pools

In many White Wolf games, including WoD games and Exalted, you take the value of an Attribute, and the value of a Skill, add them together, add any bonus dice, roll them all, and then add modifiers as appropriate. Earthdawn also adds the value of an attribute and a skill, but then it uses that total to look up in a table determine the dice to roll. We should be able to easily easily type something akin to "/roll dexterity + acrobatics d10 + 5" that will let us spontaneously combine whichever attribute and whichever skill we need at the time. Unlike other systems, where one skill is dependent on exactly one attribute, games like this use the most circumstantially relevant attribute and the most circumstantially relevant skill to make the roll. In short, the roll you are going to need at any given time is entirely up to the storytelling whims of the GM. But this isn't just inconvenient to anticipate; it's inconvenient numerically, too. Because any attribute can be combined with any skill, the total number of macros you would need to write is the total of the number of attributes multiplied by the number of skills! The total number of possible rolls is simply pathological! Expecting players to macro this is completely unreasonable! Players need to be able to grab their character's attribute value, skill value, and bonus dice, total them, add modifiers, roll them, and compare against a target. And they need to be able to do it efficiently, because they will need to make another roll with completely different stats next turn, in the same format. Requiring players to reference their character sheet with symbols like "@" and "%" just will not cut it. Doing rolls like this manually needs to be efficient to type, because players will have to type it a lot; and there really isn't any other choice.

/roll (@{selected|dexterity}+@{selected|dodge}+?{Bonus dice|0})d10>7+?{Bonus successes|0} This already works. The above isn't perfect for White Wolf's Storyteller system (the dice engine doesn't handle 10s counting a double successes), but you can sum multiple attributes to calculate your number of dice. For the Storyteller systems, I recommend using rollable tables. If you read the description of the Exalted character sheet, you'll find instructions for how to do that -- and then the sheet will have rollable buttons you can use to roll attribute+ability+bonus (no need to learn how to create macros). But beyond using a table instead of a d10, the syntax is the same.

You're missing the point; that only works technically; not PRACTICALLY. Do you really think a player can get that string of nonsense right every time he needs to make a roll? How many times a session is a player going to get that wrong, wind up spamming the chat with gibberish, and have to try again? And there's no other way around it, because the sheer combination of possible rolls is too intractable to macro each one! We need something that can be put to practical use, not something that only works in theory, but fails to live up to any reasonable standard of practice!

Forgive me, but you seem to be the one arguing from theory, not practice. In theory , there are 225 different Attribute+Ability rolls (260 in Exalted if you count Essence as an "attribute" and Willpower as an "ability"). In practice I have never seen a single character that requires anything even on that order of magnitude. It is true that the game would permit you to roll something like Appearance+Melee. In theory. In practice, nobody ever needs such a die pool. I would expect someone using the Exalted sheet to have a few prepared rolls (combat tab, combat repeating section) corresponding to things like their primary weapon attack and perhaps a few maneuvers they expect to make with their character in both martial and social combat (such as coordinating an attack or executing a monologue). I would not expect such a character to have more prepared die pools than a D&D character has macros for skills, for example. For the small number of cases where the player needs to roll something outside their normal set of macros, they could have something such as: /roll ?{Die Pool|1}d10>7+?{Bonus successes|0} In fact, for something so generic, the GM could even create the macro and make it available to all of the players. Combined with character sheets, the player would never need to learn the macro syntax at all.

O.K., first off, either your GMs are unimaginative, or your players are. In the games I've played, creative solutions to odd problems, or simply accurate application of rolls to the problem at hand will invariably bring up a roll you never needed before. Even if you covered a quarter of the necessary rolls, which is FIFTY, you're still going to run into a roll you didn't have. A player shouldn't have to scramble to get the roll he needs. He should just be able to take his dice pools, apply bonuses, penalties, and modifiers, and roll it. Your macro doesn't cut it. What do you have against players having easier access to their dice pools, anyway?

Macros. Use those. Players no longer have to type.

You missed the entire point! NO ONE is going to come up with 225 macros! NO ONE! It's too much! Even picking them from a list is entirely intractable, making character sheets that generate them automatically pointless! It would be FAR BETTER to streamline grabbing the dice pools for spontaneous rolls!

Roll20 aims at being at least as good as sitting at the table, and better in some regards. I don't think anyone is opposed to your suggestion, but they certainly have other ways of handling it. Brian's macro querying for the number of d10s to roll and the number of extra successes to consider is certainly at least as good as rolling a bunch of dice in person, and arguably better because it will count the number of successes for you. If you're interested in an API script that would give you the capability you're requesting and are willing to bump up to the Mentor Level subscription to have access to the API, I'd be happy to help you write it. Best of luck with your suggestion!

Your suggestion appears to be, instead of typing: /roll (@{selected|dexterity}+@{selected|acrobatics}+ bonusdice )d10>7+ bonussuccesses (where bonusdice and bonussuccesses are numbers) The player should be able to type: /roll (dexterity+acrobatics+ bonusdice )d10>7+ bonussuccesses This is what's "intractable" given the structure of the VTT and its system-agnostic nature. You're asking the dice engine's lexer to jump through some serious hoops here, to accommodate something you perceive to be a problem when others (such as myself) see none. Further, the difference between what can be done now versus your proposed syntax is very, very small as far as the user is concerned. And although your proposal is simpler to use (though not by much), it would be much more complex for the dice engine than you might expect. After all, it has to support every single system as well as possible. I'm not against players having access to their dice pools; far from it. I put effort into crafting the Exalted sheet to minimize the effort required by the player to roll the dice. Could I do more to help? Maybe, but literally the only feedback I've gotten on the sheet was to allow for up to 10 dots in attributes/abilities in order to accommodate First Age campaigns. Based on the information I have access to (feedback on the Exalted sheet and my own Exalted games), most people aren't having an issue playing Storyteller system games. Your suggestion is the first time I've heard someone complain about the need for oh-so-many macros to make the game work. I'll reiterate: In over a decade, from personal games with several gaming groups, to multiple different gaming conventions in different parts of my state, to online discussions of the system and the games that use it, I have never been witness to a character that needed more than one tenth of the number of possible die pools on a regular basis. (That's 26 macros on the outside, for those keeping score.) D&D 4e has 17 skills alone, and I know many people who created a separate macro for each prior to the creation of character sheets on Roll20. Add in macros for powers and such, and you had many more than 26 macros for a typical 4e character, each manually created by the player. Based on the information released the other day, there are more than seven 4e games for every one game tagged "World of Darkness", which in turn has about double the number of games as those tagged "Vampire: the Masquerade," "New World of Darkness," or "White Wolf (Any Game)." The disparity between 4e and WoD isn't as great for the count of players who enjoy playing those games (closer to 5:2 instead of 7:1). With practical experience showing more macros on a 4e character than a Storytelling System character, what does that say about the difficulty of playing WW games in the real world, as opposed to playing them in theory? Please take note of the fact that I said "on a regular basis," and do not blow my comments out of proportion. I'll grant that creativity or exceptional circumstances can produce die pools which are not regularly used, and it would not be expected that a player has a macro for. I've already given you an exceedingly simple solution, which the GM can implement and the players don't have to type, even once: /roll ?{Die Pool|1}d10>7+?{Bonus successes|0} GM: Brian! Give me an Appearance+Melee roll! Brian: #die-roll <Brian enters a Die Pool of 5 and 0 bonus successes>

The Aaron said: Roll20 aims at being at least as good as sitting at the table, and better in some regards. I don't think anyone is opposed to your suggestion, but they certainly have other ways of handling it. Brian's macro querying for the number of d10s to roll and the number of extra successes to consider is certainly at least as good as rolling a bunch of dice in person, and arguably better because it will count the number of successes for you. If you're interested in an API script that would give you the capability you're requesting and are willing to bump up to the Mentor Level subscription to have access to the API, I'd be happy to help you write it. Best of luck with your suggestion! Except that not everyone memorizes their Attribute and Skill scores. If you have to check it to roll it, it takes time that doesn't need to be taken. Players should be able to just enter these stats into a basic command.

Brian said: This is what's "intractable" given the structure of the VTT and its system-agnostic nature. You're asking the dice engine's lexer to jump through some serious hoops here, to accommodate something you perceive to be a problem when others (such as myself) see none. Don't complain about the difficulty of making a parsing engine. Roll20 asked for this themselves when they chose not to use an open-source solution that we could improve on our own, without their intervention. If it needs improvement, and it does , it should be improved; period . Brian said: Further, the difference between what can be done now versus your proposed syntax is very, very small as far as the user is concerned. I disagree; the difference is huge; streamlining nearly every White Wolf game is of great benefit alone; never mind all the other systems that roll dice pools! Brian said: And although your proposal is simpler to use (though not by much), it would be much more complex for the dice engine than you might expect. After all, it has to support every single system as well as possible. You're trying to argue that the dice roller supporting this makes supporting other game systems more difficult. This is patently false when some of those other game systems roll dice pools as well. More to the point, it doesn't matter if it does ; Roll20 made it its job to make the dice roller work efficiently for the player; it's their responsibility to fix it when how it works interferes with a player's ability to play efficiently. It's their job to make sure all game systems are as supported as possible, regardless of however theoretically intractable that may be on the coding end. Brian said: I put effort into crafting the Exalted sheet to minimize the effort required by the player to roll the dice. Could I do more to help? Maybe, but literally the only feedback I've gotten on the sheet was to allow for up to 10 dots in attributes/abilities in order to accommodate First Age campaigns. What more you could do is irrelevant. It's up to the devs to fix this, not you . Now, if the dice roller were open source, then you might have something to say about it, but then I wouldn't need you to . Brian said: I'll reiterate: In over a decade, from personal games with several gaming groups, to multiple different gaming conventions in different parts of my state, to online discussions of the system and the games that use it, I have never been witness to a character that needed more than one tenth of the number of possible die pools on a regular basis. (That's 26 macros on the outside, for those keeping score.) D&D 4e has 17 skills alone, and I know many people who created a separate macro for each prior to the creation of character sheets on Roll20. Add in macros for powers and such, and you had many more than 26 macros for a typical 4e character, each manually created by the player. I have oh so much confidence in the quality of your accounting. :P Brian said: Based on the information released the other day, there are more than seven 4e games for every one game tagged "World of Darkness", which in turn has about double the number of games as those tagged "Vampire: the Masquerade," "New World of Darkness," or "White Wolf (Any Game)." The disparity between 4e and WoD isn't as great for the count of players who enjoy playing those games (closer to 5:2 instead of 7:1). The information released is ultimately colored by how easy it is to play a given game system on Roll20. If the game is easier to play somewhere else because of how badly Roll20 does things in that system, then it won't be played here as often. You can't justify whether a fix should be made with these numbers when these numbers are partly a result of giving up on using Roll20 for that system. Brian said: With practical experience showing more macros on a 4e character than a Storytelling System character, what does that say about the difficulty of playing WW games in the real world, as opposed to playing them in theory? See, here, again, you're missing the point. There are less macros on a White Wolf game character because of how ultimately futile it is! That's the point! The macro you need is never there, and never will be there, and even if it was, you wouldn't be able to find it in the ridiculously long list ! But if you could just roll your dice pools, you wouldn't need it to be ! Brian said: I've already given you an exceedingly simple solution, which the GM can implement and the players don't have to type, even once: That is not a solution; that is a kludge for the sake of avoidance of the problem. You're still not rolling the dice pools; you're rolling the total of the dice pools, an odd-ball value you have to spend time looking at your character sheet to come up with on the fly. Rolling the dice pools themselves would be better.

Brian said: I'm not against players having access to their dice pools; far from it. This suggestion is exclusively about players having access to their dice pools. If you're against this suggestion, then you are against it.

Perhaps you could recommend an open source alternative to the built in closed source dice roller which they could integrate into their system? Maybe they are just unaware of the one you are referring to. They do provide an interface for users to extend the system, the Scripting API. If you want to tweak the way dice are rolled, support alternate syntax, write your own open source dice engine, you can do just that. I realize that it is not free, but Roll20 is not free. It is paid for by subscribers, mentors, and artists, and benevolently gifted to the general populous. I would be happy to see the dice engine overhauled with new syntax and more flexibility and greater configurability. I would not like to see that worked on to the detriment of other suggestions that I see as more beneficial. (Deck building games are impossible on the VTT currently, your suggestion is just to streamline something that can be played currently.) I realize this is just my opinion. Perhaps you could more cleverly name your characters and attributes to make it less onerous to type out commands: /r {@{a|dex}+@{a|acro}}d10 > 7 Honestly, I've never played white wolf or a related system, but that might be something you could do in the interim. Additionally, there exist alternatives to using the built in dice roller for Roll20. There are rollers for Google Hangouts, there are things like Invisible Castle. You can even go so far as to write your own using various open source technologies. Then it can be one that does exactly what you want, that you can "improve on [your] own, without their intervention." Best of luck.

Yeah, I'm not a Green Sun Prince with Craft[Vitriol], so I can't do much with the vitriol you're giving me. If you don't want help, that's fine, but most players seem content with the existing solutions, such as the ones I've presented here.

Brian said: Yeah, I'm not a Green Sun Prince with Craft[Vitriol], so I can't do much with the vitriol you're giving me. If you don't want help, that's fine, but most players seem content with the existing solutions, such as the ones I've presented here. That's not a solution. It's a kludge. You still can't roll a dice pool.

The Aaron said: Perhaps you could recommend an open source alternative to the built in closed source dice roller which they could integrate into their system? Maybe they are just unaware of the one you are referring to. Someone else will recommend an open-source diceroller eventually. I'm sure it will get lots of support from the users. I'm also sure the devs will kill the thread. They want their proprietary diceroller. And it's up to us to make sure they make it good enough. The Aaron said: They do provide an interface for users to extend the system, the Scripting API. If you want to tweak the way dice are rolled, support alternate syntax, write your own open source dice engine, you can do just that. I realize that it is not free, but Roll20 is not free. It is paid for by subscribers, mentors, and artists, and benevolently gifted to the general populous. The Scripting API is not meant for basic system support. It's meant for advanced features that are intended to be optional. Rolling dice in a system specific manner is basic system support. Plenty of examples in the dice reference. The Aaron said: I would be happy to see the dice engine overhauled with new syntax and more flexibility and greater configurability. I would not like to see that worked on to the detriment of other suggestions that I see as more beneficial. (Deck building games are impossible on the VTT currently, your suggestion is just to streamline something that can be played currently.) I realize this is just my opinion. You and Brian keep arguing that implementing dicerolling in a manner like this would detriment other suggestions. The deck system has nothing to do with the diceroller. They may not even have the same individuals working on them. Further, deck games feature almost exclusively copyrighted content. On a site that is supposed to be for RPGs, deck building games are a lost cause, particularly when that problem is already well-solved by things like VASSAL: <a href="http://www.vassalengine.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.vassalengine.org/</a> The Aaron said: Perhaps you could more cleverly name your characters and attributes to make it less onerous to type out commands: /r {@{a|dex}+@{a|acro}}d10 &gt; 7 Honestly, I've never played white wolf or a related system, but that might be something you could do in the interim. That's not "clever". That's a kludge. And not even a good one. You had to: Shorten the character name to something unpronounceable and illegible Shorten the skill name to something barely readable Correctly nest curly braces, on the fly Use the "@" symbol, which isn't exactly a convenient key to hit, on the fly None of this makes for a quick, accessible solution to rolling whichever dice pools you need to roll whenever you need to. The Aaron said: Additionally, there exist alternatives to using the built in dice roller for Roll20. There are rollers for Google Hangouts, there are things like Invisible Castle. You can even go so far as to write your own using various open source technologies. Then it can be one that does exactly what you want, that you can "improve on [your] own, without their intervention." Soluions outside of Roll20 are irrelevant. This is suggestions on how to improve Roll20, not how to improve Google Hangouts, or Skype, or whatever random infernal thing. I don't care what those other things have, because they have no meaning to me on Roll20. If I'm going to use those things, I'm not going to use Roll20. I'll use something else.

You seem to be under the mistaken impression that Roll20 is being written by some large mega-corporation. I can guarantee you that any features that are worked on for Roll20 TODAY will be worked on by the same person. His name is Riley Dutton. He is the sole programmer for all that you see on Roll20, and all that you don't see behind the scenes. There are precisely 2 other employees. One handles the face of the company, that's Nolan T. Jones. The other handles all their paperwork and other behind the scenes company magic. I don't recall his name (Apologies Sir Nameless One!). You also seem to think that Brian and I are just blowing smoke. I assure you that we are not. We are both very accomplished programmers. We have both written recursive decent parsers, such as are used by the dice roller. When we say something is complicated, it's be cause we work on complicated software all day, because we have training to work on complicated software, because we are abstract rational thinkers. The detriment to other systems that I'm talking about is that one person can only do so many things. If they work on this suggestion, it means they are not working on other suggestions that I would actually use. I don't have any ill feelings for your suggestion, and I'm sure they don't either. I feel there are more important things for them to do, which is why I voted on them. They will work on something that is best in line with where they want the website to be, and that will likely be something that benefits the greatest majority. You are free to roll dice however you like. You can roll them on a table by your computer, or in excel, or with an online dice roller. You can make up numbers. No one from Roll20 will know or care what method you use. Basic system support is allowing you to play your system. You can play your system. Certainly, you can play it at least as well as you can in person. Anything else Roll20 provides facilities for is an added benefit beyond basic system support. Brian and I have attempted to give you suggestions regarding alternatives, because we realize that your suggestion is unlikely to be done anytime soon (just an application of economics, no offense intended). We are inherently helpful people. We donate a lot of time helping people with things they want to do on Roll20. Sometimes that pans out, sometimes people get upset because they think their way is the only right way. We are happy for people to think whatever they want, and if we couldn't help them with their problems, there are plenty of other people that are happy to have the assistance. Best wishes with your suggestion and happy gaming.

The Aaron said: You seem to be under the mistaken impression that Roll20 is being written by some large mega-corporation. I can guarantee you that any features that are worked on for Roll20 TODAY will be worked on by the same person. His name is Riley Dutton. He is the sole programmer for all that you see on Roll20, and all that you don't see behind the scenes. There are precisely 2 other employees. One handles the face of the company, that's Nolan T. Jones. The other handles all their paperwork and other behind the scenes company magic. I don't recall his name (Apologies Sir Nameless One!). You also seem to think that Brian and I are just blowing smoke. I assure you that we are not. We are both very accomplished programmers. We have both written recursive decent parsers, such as are used by the dice roller. When we say something is complicated, it's be cause we work on complicated software all day, because we have training to work on complicated software, because we are abstract rational thinkers. Your accomplishments as a programmer are irrelevant. You are overestimating the difficulty involved. In all but the most nubile programming languages, parsing text is a solved problem. The only real challenges here are one of efficient interface design and remaining internally consistent. Neither one Roll20 has done particularly well. I sincerely do not care what their excuse is, even if it is "we only have one programmer". If they aren't going to do a job right, then they should either rely on open source to do that, or hire someone to. They shouldn't try to own what they can't get right. The Aaron said: The detriment to other systems that I'm talking about is that one person can only do so many things. If they work on this suggestion, it means they are not working on other suggestions that I would actually use. I don't have any ill feelings for your suggestion, and I'm sure they don't either. I feel there are more important things for them to do, which is why I voted on them. They will work on something that is best in line with where they want the website to be, and that will likely be something that benefits the greatest majority. Brian and I have attempted to give you suggestions regarding alternatives, because we realize that your suggestion is unlikely to be done anytime soon (just an application of economics, no offense intended). We are inherently helpful people. We donate a lot of time helping people with things they want to do on Roll20. Sometimes that pans out, sometimes people get upset because they think their way is the only right way. We are happy for people to think whatever they want, and if we couldn't help them with their problems, there are plenty of other people that are happy to have the assistance. Well, I sincerely disagree that there are more important things to work on. Properly supporting a diversity of game systems is probably the most important thing Roll20 should do! If you really want to stay out of the way, then please stop polluting my suggestion thread with ineffective kludges that don't solve the actual problem. Believe me, if there were effective solutions to this problem, I would have found them! I used modular arithmetic to round down half-levels before Roll20 even had a floor function! But I'm not convinced your supposed helpfulness is actually the case, because helpful people don't get in the way of a problem that needs to be solved. You can complain about your systems not getting enough support once mine are as supported as yours are. Until then, kindly back off! The Aaron said: You are free to roll dice however you like. You can roll them on a table by your computer, or in excel, or with an online dice roller. You can make up numbers. No one from Roll20 will know or care what method you use. No, you are NOT free to roll dice however you like. How you roll dice has to be accountable to the GM, for the sake of fairness. Very few people are going to play with you if you insist on using your own diceroller that they know nothing about! The Aaron said: Basic system support is allowing you to play your system. Anything else Roll20 provides facilities for is an added benefit beyond basic system support. Basic system support is allowing you to play a game system efficiently . You can play lots of things that Roll20 doesn't offer basic system support for; it has nothing to do with whether or not Roll20 allows it. All systems of any popularity need to be supported by efficient dice rolling. Otherwise, Roll20 itself becomes an impediment to playing that system. There are plenty of examples in the diceroller of things done simply for the sake of system support. There's no reason that system support for rolling dice pools should be any different.

Make a campaign macro named attributename for each attribute @{selected|attribute} Make a campaign macro named skillname for each skill @{selected|skill} + ?{Bonus Dice|0}) Make a campaign macro named bonus ?{Bonus Successes|0} Type: /roll [[#attribute + #skill]]d10&gt;7+#bonus I win. ^____^

Alternatively, if you're always using d10's... you can do this: Strength Macro: /roll [[@{selected|Strength} Athletics Macro: @{selected|Athletics} + ?{Bonus Dice|0}]]d10&gt;?{Target Number|5} + ?{Bonus Successes|0} Then all you have to type in chat is #Strength + #Athletics BOOM! I win, again.

After a fashion, yes. But while that does work, it is a lot of gymnastics to avoid using the relevant stats directly. That's what needs to be made more efficient.

What you want is impossible because the game has NO WAY of knowing which character's stats to pull from. My version is the only way it will work. It is actually quite efficient once set up. Click your token, type #attributename + #skillname and hit enter. You're not going to get anything simpler.

It knows the same way it knows which character's emotes to use. It doesn't have to be any more complicated than that.

Wrong again. You can have multiple character sheets with the same name.

Yes, and you can select which one is representing you! If you want to roll as a different character, you can select that one. Or, they can implement a "/rollas" function, the same way they have an "/emas" function. It's not hard.

Even if the app were altered to where that worked, my way is still better because you only type #Strength + #Athletics . You don't have to type anything else. It is faster, easier, and way more efficient than anything you have proposed. Players wouldn't have to type /roll (strength+athletics)d10&gt;7 and all the rest of the crap. The app does what you want it to do already and it does it more efficiently. Accept that, go make your campaign and all the attribute/skill macros, and play.

Again... the app has NO WAY OF KNOWING WHICH CHARACTER YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT. Character names are NOT unique. /rollas Bob when there are three different Bobs will not work. /rollas Orc will not work when you have Orc Warrior, Orc Mage, and more. My way works. Yours doesn't.

I have deliberately not proposed anything on purpose . My suggestion is that they improve it; not how . In particular, because I think the whole damn dice roller needs a rewrite, and suggesting anything in the context of a diceroller that needs to be scrapped has no value. If they rewrite the dice roller so you can access your stats without so much textual garbage, it would be easier to use. There is no way in which your way does it better or more efficiently; it is merely a way in which it works now, if the player goes to the extra effort to set it up; effort that should not be required. If you wanted to roll as your character, you assign yourself to that character, the same way emotes work now. There is no need to specify which character if you've already selected one! If you want to stay as yourself, and roll as different characters, you can use "/rollas", similar to "/emas", or something similar. How is not relevant. That it should be done is damn obvious. All weaknesses in the diceroller should be driven out, so that as many game systems as possible can be supported. This is merely one change that would do the most immediate good to other systems.

My way certainly is better. Much less typing. Players have it easy that way. A: #Strength + #Athletics - vs - B: /roll (Strength + Athletics+X)d10&gt;7+Y A wins and will always win.

No, that's not better; you're forgetting any bonus dice. And the "d10&gt;7+b" part is ALWAYS going to have to be external. But, that's only if they don't make a system specific macro, like they've done for other systems. If they make it "dw" and "dW", for White Wolf, then you wouldn't need to specify "10&gt;7", or whatever they would have to use for Exalted to get those extra successes on a 10. But I've deliberately avoided going that far, and for good reason; I don't want them to focus on a White Wolf only solution that then fails to make it usable for Earthdawn's Step dice. I'm trying to keep the suggestion as universally applicable as possible, so that ALL systems that need dice pools will get the support they need!

I didn't forget the bonus dice. Go back and look at the macros. It is included in the Skill half of the macro.

I provided a solution to your quandry. Not my problem you don't like it, even though it works great.

That just makes it less transparent what you're rolling. It's still not better.

This is not a solution to my quandry. It is a workaround that works well enough in the short term. In the long term, it needs to be replaced with an actual solution to rolling dice pools.

It is a solution. It works. It is easier than what you wanted. Deal with it.

It's not easier. It's just what works now . What I want is easier, because it would work without setting up macros.

How in the fuck is typing #Strength + #Athletics harder than typing /roll (Strength + Athletics+X)d10&gt;7+Y for the player? You're just being fucking obtuse now. You only have to set up the macro's once and then you can copy them from campaign to campaign using the transmogrifier or copying the entire campaign.

Because you have to set it up, and it doesn't support you modifying the roll before the comparison with bonus dice and modifiers. I want it to work out of the box once the stat alone is in the character sheet. And nothing you can contribute will do that.

Oh noes, you have to set something up. Wah wah wah. Everyone sets shit up all the time to make their games run more efficiently. It is patently impossible for Roll20 to be entirely system agnostic and still be as "easy" as you want it to be. Which... you way is definitely not easier. And yes, the macros do allow you to modify the roll with bonus dice and bonus successes and can easily be modified to include modifiers and such. Or do you not know ?{Bonus Dice|0} means?

How is it not easier? You grab the stats directly, add them together, add any bonus dice, roll them, check for successes, and incorporate any bonuses or penalties. You would just rather pretend to be right.

There's no pretending. I am right. You're wrong. My macro set up is superior. Instead of having to type /roll (strength+athletics+1)d10&gt;7+3, I can simply type #strength+#athletics, hit enter, and then enter a number for bonus dice or enter if I don't have any... since the bonus dice roll query defaults to zero. It will also pop up and ask if I have any bonus successes, again... defaulting to zero. My way has fewer chances for errors as well, since you don't have to wrap the attributes/skills in parantheses.

No, it isn't superior. Not needing macros is superior. Who would use your macros when they could just roll their stats? No one, that's who; not even you. Why are you so hung up about the parentheses? I never said there had to be parentheses!

Ok, you already saw(and commented on) my suggestion for rewriting the dice roller, so you know I agree that it should be done, but I don't think the issue you are talking about here is really an issue of the dice roller itself so much as it is the interface for the dice roller. I also think there is a suggestion already in the forums that would enable a solution better than any of the actual proposals here. To be fair it would require the GM to set up 1 macro, but the macro could handle all the possible rolls, with bonuses and successes for the game system you are talking about(if I understand the system right, I haven't played it so I could be wrong). The suggestion I am referring to is to allow a drop down menu in a prompt, with a way to specify the options for the drop down. Yyou can find it here.... <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1248678/drop-dow" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1248678/drop-dow</a>... If roll20 implemented that suggestion, the macro could be /r ({selected|attributename1,selected|attributename2,etc}+{selected|skillname1,selected|skillname2,etc} +?{bonuses|0}-?{penalties|0})d10&gt;7+ ?{bonus successes|0} This one macro could be set as a token action, then every time you needed to make a roll you just click the token, click the action, select the ability, select the skill, and enter the modifiers. Then you never have to worry about leaving out or mistyping any symbols, attribute names or skill names. If my suggestion here would be acceptable, I would suggest pulling your vote from this thread and applying it to either the thread above or my thread for rewriting the dice roller, but that is of course up to you.

I appreciate what you're saying, but it's not typing the attributes or skills that is the problem; it's all the Roll20 diceroller cruft around it. And while you are technically right, in that it's the parser I'm complaining about, and not, strictly speaking, the random number generator, the parser is still "the thing that rolls the dice". And while selecting rolls like that makes a good amount of sense from the GM perspective, from the player perspective, I think it makes more sense to just provide easier access to our dice pools. Thanks for the thought, though; good luck with your suggestion.

I think in general a more accessible way to write commands for the dice roller would be great, but I don't really see any way to make it significantly simpler. If the dice roller is going to live in the chat box(and if you want to do anything with text that includes rolls I don't see any way to put it elsewhere), then you need to have some way of telling the dice roller that the word you typed is a special type of word that it can do something with. The best way I can think of to handle that is to use special symbols that aren't typically part of text based conversations. Roll20 has done a decent job in picking @,#, and % for this purpose as far as I can tell, although I will certainly admit they aren't the most conveniently placed keys on the keyboard. Perhaps they could make it simpler by not requiring the {} but then I think you run into the issue of where does the special word the dice roller can use start and end? I think to only way to accomplish what you are looking for is to completely separate the rolls from the chat box, but then you have to switch between the 2 for entering your comments and rolls, and they could easily get out of sync so to speak with rolls taking up a significantly different amount of space than the chat that goes with them. If you have any suggestions on how to handle these issues I would like to hear them so I can include them the proposed syntax I am planning to put together for my dice roller 2.0 suggestion.

If you are going to make a dice roller 2.0 suggestion, then I have a suggestion for you... start a GitHub project for a dice roller design document, and let people contribute to it for a while. Then suggest the final design document. Once it incorporates all our dice roller changes, we can drop our individual suggestions and vote for it all-but-unanimously. Maybe start a faux campaign for the team to join. That way, we can bang out something that doesn't suck. But, from what I can tell, semicolons, colons, single quotes, and double quotes, are all absent from the dice roll system. There are options not being used, or being mis used by the current dice roller. We can do better.

Tenacious Techhunter said: No, it isn't superior. Not needing macros is superior. Who would use your macros when they could just roll their stats? No one, that's who; not even you. Why are you so hung up about the parentheses? I never said there had to be parentheses! Everyone, because rolling stats just doesn't work that way and never will... because that would be too system specific. My way is superior.

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