Beg of a Pathfinder PFS player

PLEASE MAKE CHARACTER SHEETS PORTABLE where we can assign all our attributes, macros, information blah blah blah. Please make them portable. Honestly this can't be more than 100 lines of code. (just 1 additional database field for the sheets) if you want to get fancy a additional table for games this character is in but honestly. My Pathfinder character has 24 macros and growing typing them all in chanign all the stats due to level ups is tedious. Makes it nearly impossible to do if you are in a pickup game. --------------------------- if you want to make this simple have an upload ability [simple xml] with a simple macro parcer. Although honestly the top option probably easier to do since most of the code and tables already exist. * although I bet I could write a macro parser in less than 30 lines. upload xml file read next line of XML Validation rule toss validation failures into a text create new macro go to top finish when done... -------- 2nd longer term request simple logic in macro's (If than else) But 1st part drives me nuts honestly makes me want to use Fantasy Realms just because the pain this can cause.

You might be interested in how I do my pathfinder macros. You can find them here . Because of doing them this way. It's very simple for me to to level up or to change how damage or my attacks are calculated. I just change an attribute or a reference macro and of the macros that use them all update. So by changing one macro I am in a sense changing 10.

Your macros look very promising but it make it even more important to have portable macro's most gm's in PFS rarely take the time to setup character sheets. macro's for me have gotten a bit explosive due to combat options I am a ninja Two-Weapon focus eg/ I have 2 "sets" of weapons I usually use. Primary (Katana, wkizashi) Secondary Kusarigama. Attack options (weapons) (primary 1 weapon (moving), Full attack (both not moving) Power Attack (use it, or not) Am I Flanking? (yes add 3d6 damage+2 to hit), no) Kusarigama the wonder weapon makes it even more intresting. As it can Trip, Entange(grapple) or full attack. + it has reach. So there are now 3-4 more options for this, (full attack damage, Trip, entangle) which can also flank & power attack. Macro's thats 8 macro's for primary, 12 Kusarigama, let alone the macro's for skill checks, knowledge,saves, etc... with a portable character sheet I could get very fancy and use your (samuel) options to reduce the number of macros or how many updates I have to do when I level up. I try to limit my macro bar names to 3 letters or less to provide more space for the bar my macro bar looks like this acro,hid,OO,K,Kp,Kf,Kpf,2w,2Wp,2Wf,2Wpf,KGt(trip),KGe(entangle/grapple),KGf K=katana, OO=perception, 2W= two weapon, p = power, f=flank,t=trip,e=entangle,KG=Kusarigama Weapons are capitalized, attack options are lower case just incase I get weapons or options that have similar abbreviations. I would love to be able to set some toggles (flanking on/off, power on/off etc.)

It introduces a little interaction from you when you use the macro, but you can fake boolean checks in your math. example for flanking: /me stabbity stabs from behind his opponent! /roll 1d20 + @{Character|BAB} + {@{Character|WeaponAttackBonus} + ( ?{Flanking?|0} * 2) that effectively multiplies the flanking bonus (+2 attack) by 0 if you respond no/0/blank to the prompt (equalling zero bonus) If you respond with "1", it will multiply the flanking bonus (+2 attack) by 1, adding +2 to the overall attack roll. In this way you can setup your macros with a yes/no (really 1 or 0/blank) for all sorts of conditions like flanking, power attacking, adding sneak attack damage, rapid shot, full attacks, etc.

Emeketos, if you want to post your macros we may be able to find ways to scale them down. Once scaled down it would be easier to just copy/paste the entire lot into macros. When I play PFS I can get about 10 macros pasted into Roll20 in about 60 seconds but they do not incorporate attributes.

A lot of my macros are heavy on the flavor text but it generally breaks down like this Item sets #1 Katana #2 Katana + Wakizashi #3 Kusarigama (the super weapon) Kusarigama it self has a ton of options(Reach,trip,entangle & can do both reach and close) I can't think of another weapon with so many options. Single reach (slash), Single Reach(blunt), Single (trip), Single (entangle), Fulll Attack(both heads),Full (attack(b), trip) and Full (Entangle, slash) This of course doesn't include the options of power(yes/no) & (Flank(yes/no) item: Weapon set(1,2,3) Attack mode (single, Dual[full]) Power Attacking (yes,no) Flanking (yes,no) Special Attack options(Trip, Entangle(person or weapon) with varables which I would love to just beable to move character sheet across attack bonus, tohit bonus, BAB, CMB of course not every macro uses every option. The rest of my macros are misc items (stealth,acrobatics,socal,save,knowledge,initiative, Throwing stars(s),... I can set them all up in about 20 minutes but at this point some of my macros are just type #know etc Its just without a portable sheet when my weapons change or I level up I need to go through every macro make sure I have them all. With a portable character sheet I would just have to adjust the attributes and ocasionally the weapons when they get upgraded.

also remember PFS games have very short lived campaign pages they generally go up and down within a week. its Exceedingly rare for them to take the time to give each character a character sheet and good reason it would take 30+ minutes longer setting up the variables on them. I am sure with a build character sheet and attributes updating the macros would be very easy but that requires a character sheet.

I have been vouching this for a long time. If it were possible to link characters to a roll 20 acct, it'd be extremely beneficial to players, and something that many would use repeatedly. I have also vouched that the time/effort it would take to be able to do such a thing warrants a supporter price tag on the service, but again. This is just my opinion.

The part that frustrates me about this is its such a easy piece of code to do. I know I could have a working version in less than a days work. Testing etc would be relatively minor compairitively.. (but being a professional programmer I know what testing means sometimes its not always known how changes effect other elements) Character ownership has its own rewards as well it allows players to journal about them (if they wanted to) In a lot of cases it could mean having the characters prebuilt for future games with all the macro's, skills, attributes etc setup. Going further than that you can have people build templates for characters where if someone put a lot of work in building a character sheet they could share the work. Particularly with people a lot less skilled than some of us. Again this allows character sheets (or other elements of the game) to be build and expanded on with unexpected results helping the community as a whole. That the roll20 development team could see unexpected gems show up which can then be put back into the game.

You know, I think the idea has a lot of merit. I don't know how you're helping make this a reality, though, with such an abrasive, condescending feature request . I would think that, as a "professional programmer," you'd know that making broad claims on how it is "such a[n] easy piece of code to do" without having any familiarity with their codebase doesn't inspire confidence in your experience. There are any number of things that could increase the complexity of implementation and testing is rarely "relatively minor." There would need to be new interfaces for this additional functionality, decisions on sheet security and permissions, database changes, many additional use cases, etc. And that's not even considering a major issue of priorities. They could have several things that they see as more pressing to get done in the near term. So, yeah, you could write a "working version" of a "sheet" that belongs to an "account" in less than 100 lines, but it'd be a toy version that doesn't integrate with anything else. Acting like a lack of immediate action on one of your priorities is a sign of incompetence on their part is a surefire way to positively influence them, no doubt. Instead of laying out how easy all of it is as a "professional programmer," why don't you just give a list of features pertaining to a portable sheet as a user of their application? If enough other users think this is a terrific idea, I'm sure they'd chime in on a more positive thread. As for the development and implementation of features, let the dev team work out the details.

It could be argued that the functionality Emeketos is asking for could be hard to create, EXCEPT for the fact that already exists (in part, at least). Supporters or Mentors have the ability to transfer abilities between character sheets. Emeketos may come across as abrasive, but if so, I think that's just a measure of how seriously frustrating it is that roll20 is so primitive in this regard. There absolutely should be some way to export macros and abilities, and important them to other characters and campaigns, and it's shocking and downright frustrating that it doesn't have that. I'm fairly new at using roll20, and I'm using it to introduce some players to virtual tabletop play. But I expect that once I get a decent bunch of players and a group going, I'll be switching off roll20 to maptools or epictable for any serious games, so that I can have the features I need.

A lot of new people do not understand how young Roll20 is and the fact there is only a few programmers. They are working on a plan and they have stated it many times that they have to work jobs still because not enough subscribers are here to support them to work on roll20 fulltime. The fact they have done what they have as fast as they have speaks wonders but cut them some slack here. This feature might be in the pipeline but only in the distant future which they don't discuss until they are ready to beta test it on the dev server. The mods and devs both have repeatedly stated the devs do not comment on this portion of the forums unless they need to but they do read it. They let us suggest or brainstorm stuff for them here and the more people talk about it not just a few people talking about it constantly the more likely they will write it in on their work calendar to work on or move forward. That is what Rugged Reroll consisted of, features that was requested by many members of the site.

the problem of text Chris S .is the impossibility of reading "context" such as abrasive vs just general conversation. I mention the complexity of the problem because on the surface it is. Its about 70% database field adjustments the rest is gui changes. the next 100% is testing etc. (joke sorta but also true). I mention my experience due to my own understanding of doing similar changes on Oracle/sybase/mysql/.... servers. Which is is one of the areas I have done the majority of my work thats all. If you read abrasive I apologize it wasn't the intent of my statements. Truthfully I did overly simplified I know what any database changes could make to the overall server code. It has the possibility of breaking sql scripts in unintentional ways. Which does make even minor changes more difficult to test and there is always something that needs updating. But a lot of this is how the code is structured. But comparatively to a LOS/dynamic lighting program this is trivial. Metroknight -- yeah I completely understand that being new there is more work than you can ever get done it seems when you think your getting close more changes come in. But the best part of being new is the code is fresh you do not need to deal with as much legacy code so not to break they system. This is always the best part of a new programing project when you start from the ground floor the organization & development of new ideas and code are 1000x times easier. Believe me I completely understand the work load of having not enough programmers on a project that needs 2x as much. Devs not commenting on items makes sense too. My goal is to refine the idea which is where the forums come in. This very conversation can polish an idea into something of a Gem or expand it into something I didn't think of in the first place. There may be better ways to implement this. A short term solution would be a xml macro import to create macros from a text file. Which requires no database changes and only an import/export procedure and a parser function.

No problem. I just thought I would toss out those facts as there are a lot of new people here that are not program/computer literate other than turning one on and clicking on icons. I'm starting second year of college in the CIS coursework and visual basic and intro to server classes starts this coming semester so I have some idea of the complexity of what has to be done (like you indicate you have as a professional programmer).

Hey gents. I don't have much useful to add, except that I think it is great there is this dialogue going on, and some smart cookies that could handle it. I'm not a programmer by trade, other than diving in headfirst to do complex scripting for my neverwinter nights server for three years as a subset of C++. Right out of High school, I went to a tech school to learn 1500 clock hours af business programming, where we learned COBOL and all of the dinosaur stuff, that was in '84 so I am generations long gone in my skill set. but it seems like you guys know what you are doing. I don't use the macros or API or anything other than just simple graphics because frankly it is beyond me at this point and seems like there is not, or at least I am not aware of a manual that says, type this function, and get this out. Like C++ has or NWN's Aurora toolset had. So I do really simple stuff and use the thing here as a record holder just storing html as tables for things like AD&D 2e stats as a character sheet. So good luck with it. I have faith that of all of this grey matter, something can be forged to keep people happy. and I'm paid for mentor level on the other end, to do my own part to kind of micro scale support Roll20's hackers.