Community Forums: Target Numbers Thresholds are >= and not >

Target Numbers Thresholds are >= and not >

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When testing out target numbers for Burning Wheel / Mouseguard style gaming, I set the dice rolls for "Greater Than 3" and "Exploding" I noticed that rolls of 3 were considered success, or rather, the condition was "Greater Than or Equal To" The symbol for the target number dropdown should be changed to >= to avoid confusion. (Alternately the underlying logic could be changed, but target numbers are traditionally greater-than-or-equal-to so changing the dropdown makes more sense.) Using OSX and Chrome, both latest. If this behavior is actually buggy and the code SHOULD be producing greater than results, I can provide more details to help reproduce.

1390704908

Edited 1390704961

Gauss

Forum Champion

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This is by design and not a bug. Here is how it works: "Roll20 uses the greater-than symbol > to indicate when the roll is greater-than or equal-to >= the target number. The less-than symbol < is used to indicate when the roll is less-than or equal-to <= the target number." This is the link to the above quote: <a href="https://wiki.roll20.net/Dice_Reference#Target_Numb" rel="nofollow">https://wiki.roll20.net/Dice_Reference#Target_Numb</a>...

1390704921

Michael

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Checked the roll20 docs and I noticed this is actually intended behavior. <a href="https://wiki.roll20.net/Dice_Reference#Target_Numb" rel="nofollow">https://wiki.roll20.net/Dice_Reference#Target_Numb</a>... It makes sense once you get used to it, but its a tad confusing.

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Michael

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(Oops. Sorry Gauss. Was posting as you posted.)

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Gauss

Forum Champion

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NP :)

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Edited 1390705080

Riley D.

Roll20 Team

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I can definitely see how this can be confusing. We do our best to document it (for example: <a href="https://wiki.roll20.net/Dice_Reference#Target_Numb" rel="nofollow">https://wiki.roll20.net/Dice_Reference#Target_Numb</a>... ), but still, it's not intuitive. That said, we based that portion of our syntax off of a long history of other die rollers that have been used for software-based roleplaying for decades. So basically, we were trying to make it as easy as possible in the early days of Roll20 (when we only had like 10,000 users) for people used to other software to jump in and start using ours right away. Since it's been that way for so long, I'm not sure that it will be possible to change it without breaking everyone's existing macros (obviously not something we want to do). So yeah, sort of a "rock and a hard place" situation. Just wanted to fill you in on how that came to be, in the hope it might shed some light on why it seems counter-intuitive.

1390710604

Michael

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Riley, thanks so much for explaining. I understand supporting legacy code for sure. As a thought: while you can't change the macro, could you change the dropdown in the dice window GUI? That would mean people who are coming at it fresh would (ideally) see how >= in the dropdown maps to just > in the textual expression. For myself, when I realized that the window was actually just creating a die expression, that's what drove me to check the docs and realize what was going on. I suspect for most users who are looking to craft a die expression, they'll head to the docs. For users using the dice window, though, they might not even realize the docs exist. Anyway, it's easy enough to work with once explained. Thanks for explaining! I really appreciate both the fast response and the developer engagement.

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Target Numbers Thresholds are >= and not >