Roll & Keep / 7th Sea

Hi Guys. I'm weighing the pro's and cons of which VTT to use for a long term campaign I'm starting. Hope this is the right place to post :). I've got a license to a different VTT and I know what I want to do there will take a lot of very user unfriendly coding, but I have no experience in Roll20. I'm not at all averse to purchasing a subscription if it will let me (relatively easily) do the following: How does Roll 20 deal with the R&K system of 7th Sea (or Legend of the 5 Rings)? Meaning, for example: Roll 5k3 means roll 5 ten sided dice and keep the 3 highest. 10's explode and are rolled and added again. Could this be programmed in? I don't mind doing the number interpreting the old fashioned way, but the more automation that could be built in the better. Secondly - Initiative "phases" from the R&K system - could these be placed on the combat tracker roughly automatically? Basically, a combat round has 10 phases - players get to act a number of times equal to their initiative attribute at different phase numbers. Players can also give up actions to interrupt earlier in the phase. On a real tabletop players simply roll a few non-exploding D10's (equal to their initiative attribute) and then leave these in front of them, with the number on the D10 showing the phase number(s) in which they get to act - but I know this is impossible to set up in Fantasy Grounds. Could it be done in Roll20? Thanks in advance for any replies :).

Are there only always 3 dice kept? For example there is the macro: /roll 5d10!kh3 The exclamation mark makes 10s explode, and the kh3 means keep the three highest - but only three dice are kept. If that's the way it works, there's your macro. If it's "keep three of the original 5, and if any of those are 10s, roll another die for each one and add it to those three," then it's a little more complicated. And you'd probably need to run 2 macros to make it work.

<place holder for Aaron to suggest API> Gozer's macro is (as always) a good solid start and seems like it would provide your answer. For the auto-add to tracker there is the &{tracker} suffix you can add to a macro to do that for you (see Useful Macros for details). I don't use it personally so i'm not 100% how it works but in theory it would give you what you need... In terms of roll20 in general as a VTT, you can't go wrong with it. There is a solid community of dedicated members who are more than happy to support you while you learn the system, the devs are constantly hard at work improving the system generally and yet still find time to answer questions, help with advice and generally make us feel valued. And, if as you say you aren't adverse to a small bit of spending, there is the API system which allows for complex coding which can do (almost) anything you want it to which makes any game system possible here... and if, like me, you aren't too clever with the old java script there is a core of superb coders more than happy to take requests for scripts (from what i can tell they are either workaholics or just enjoy the challenge of devising a new script... either way its awesome!).

The number of kept dice changes, depending on players attributes. And it's indeed the latter, so - to go into detail, say I'm rolling 7 keep 3, or 7k3, and my results are 1, 1, 2, 5, 8, 10, 10 - I'd have a total of 28, and add 2 more exploding dice to it - which /could/ explode again. How would using 2 macro's work? Would that be convenient in actual play, or something that would take time / get in the way of enjoyment. I'm sorry - I'm sure I'm asking some very newbish things. I'm not at all averse to throwing some money at roll20 - if it can provide a working initiative tracking system as described in the OP. I'll watch some video's tomorrow, toy around with the program a bit and erh... come back and phrase my initiative question in a more techy way - I suppose. If anyone lurking here is familar with both the R&K initiative system and roll20's finer points; please feel free to give me an educated guess or two. Thanks for the feedback, so far :)

I run a monthly(ish) 7th Sea game using Roll20 without any problems. For normal R&K I use: /roll Xd10kY!! X = Rolled Dice, Y = Kept Dice The !! at the end means that 10's will explode AND that they will be counted as a single dice when they explode. Thus if you roll 1d10, get a 10, get another 10 and then get a 4 it will actually show as a single dice with a value of 24 - which is the correct way of dealing with it in 7th Sea. Does that make sense? I don't really use the initiative tracker a great deal (we have a mixed online and face-to-face group) but it can easily be used for 7th Sea (albeit not quite automatically) as follows: For each character/token Right Click and Add Turn a number of times equal to the character's Panache. Let them roll their initiative and manually type in the values. Sort in ascending order. You'll end up with something like this: The only slight quibble is that it won't automatically determine who has the highest total initiative on a given action phase - but that's never bothered me. It might be something that could be improved further using the API but I haven't really thought about it. In work at the moment, but let me know if you have any questions!

Oh, and if you actually remember to name your tokens it'll be more like:

Pringle said: The only slight quibble is that it won't automatically determine who has the highest total initiative on a given action phase - but that's never bothered me. It might be something that could be improved further using the API but I haven't really thought about it. There's a simple way around that. Use decimals. I have never played 7th Sea, but there has to be something you can tag on. In my d20 games, dividing the initiative bonus by 100 and tagging that to the end works rather well for tie-breaking.

Initiative in 7th Sea is my single favourite mechanic in the game, it's also a pain in the backside. Lets assume you get 3 actions a turn, you roll three action dice (d10). Each of those dice reflects a phase that you can act in. If multiple people have actions in the same phase then the order is determined by their 'Initiaive'. Initiative is the sum of all your action dice. However when you take an action you remove that action dice so your total initiative actually drops every time you take an action. If on a particular phase multiple people have actions AND have the same initiative then they roll off (although personally I house rule that they act simultaneously and can thus kill each other at the same time). For example if I have 3 actions, I roll 3d10 and get 4, 8 and 10. In phase 4 I get to act, if there are other people acting in the same phase then order is determined by initiative which is currently (4+8+10=) 22. In phase 8 I get my second action, however now if there are other people acting in the same phase my initiative has dropped to (8+10=) 18. In phase 10 I get my final action, however now if there are other people acting in the same phase my initiative has dropped to 10. I imagine it could somehow be automated using the API but as I say, my group is partially face-to-face so I just let the players deal with it and just ask what their initiative is when it comes up.

Oh. Wow. Um. That's complicated. ^_^ Yeah, I got nothing for you. Sounds like something best left to manual/negotiated methods, like you say.

Pringle. I love you. I just thought you should know that. Throwing money at Roll20 first thing in the morning - if I get any non-obvious things popping up, could I shoot you a PM or two?

Glad I could be of help, Niki K. Feel free to PM me with any questions or random thoughts you might have.

And yeah, GenKitty, it's weird and really complicated on paper but it actually works wonderfully in practice and gives a great feel of swashbuckling with interruptions, parrying, ripostes, etc.

There we go. It claims I'm a mentor now. Misnomer much? :) I'll post this one publicly, since if you answer in the positive it might help more people out: I'm toying around with the app now, and am just wondering if you have a 7th Sea roll20 character sheet lying around I can shamelessly steal from you? Or would I be making my own? It doesn't look too complicated so not a dealbreaker either way :).

Couldn't even wait until morning? Good, throw money at Roll20 I say! Unfortunately, my 7th Sea campaign has been going on for about 5 years now and has been horribly butchered so what we use as a character sheet wouldn't work for normal 7th Sea anymore I'm afraid. If you're comfortable doing HTML / CSS then you should be able to make your own without too much difficulty.

And if you're not comfortable doing HTML / CSS someone can probably be persuaded to help (maybe even me :P).

Hah, sleeping on it is for people not in their holidays! I might take you up on that half-offer, but I'll give it a fair shake myself first. I figure I'll need to learn basic coding if I want to run this smoothly anyway. For now though, it's 1 am, and I'll probably do better with a clear head in the morning.

Are people still following this thread? Because I'm running a 7th-Sea based homebrew right now and have come up with some very useful macros recently, but there are a few I'm still trying to sort out. I'll wait and see if there's still any interest here, but I'd definitely be willing to share what I've figured out; things like universal skill check macros and the like.

I run my 7th Sea game mostly face to face but I wouldn't be adverse to looking at any macros. II know Niki is working on a character sheet and it's possible some of the macros could help with that too.

Absolutely following - absolutely working on. <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1695112/7th-sea-" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1695112/7th-sea-</a>... In short, yes please :). Share 'm if you got 'm!

LOL, well, based on the other thread, it looks like you guys have already done more work than I've done... Mostly, what I've been doing for my own party is giving each character 5 macros, one for each Trait. They go something like this: /roll (@Trait+?{Knack|0}+?{Modifiers?|0})d10!!k@Trait Super simple, I know, but it lets everyone input Knacks and modifiers really easily. I've worked on a few macros for specific Swordsman knacks and such too; the most useful thing I've found, honestly, is to carefully prompt my players for modifiers in the right places (such as when using the Riposte knack, for instance). We're far from having things fully automated, by any stretch, but I'd love to follow along as people work on this project.

Oh! I've had great success automating Brutes, too. By giving them a "Numbers" attribute, which is the number of Brutes in the squadI can can a script like: /roll (@Numbers+Threat)d10!!kThreat , where the Threat is simply the TR of the Squad. I have four different buttons, all of which will act with a different Threat rating, but it makes me able to adjust Brute rolls on the fly and divide squads up pretty cleanly. Giving Henchmen and Villains a "Brutes" attribute and setting up a similar formula within their normal rolling macros is also a great way to factor in characters supported by Brutes, ie, adding +[[@Brutes*Threat]] to whatever they roll.

I need to have that sink in a bit, and I like the idea of automating brutes but... If you use /roll (@Numbers+Threat)d10!!kThreat Wouldn't that make the roll equal to the number of brutes + threat rating? I always thought Brutes just rolled numbers and kept threat rating? If so, I've been playing it wrong for years!

Other than that, I had been thinking about how to deal with Brutes (partly will depend on how successful is with Initiative) so thanks for that! :)