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[Shaped 5e] character sheet issues: doesn't seem to take dragging in class, races, and backgrounds and comes up with different carried weights.

When I create monsters everything seems to work fine with the exception of not being able to do a random health generation for HP based on the die roll. Character sheets on the other hand... Dragging class, races, and backgrounds doesn't seem to work right. It does not update the header at the top where your character states these choices but it does do some updates. Some in wrong places, for example I added dwarf to the a character and it looked like it did nothing but when I stopped editing the character the dwarf race information was listed under ALL the characters weapons instead of under the race information. Also, it added proficiencies for the class but did not update the header with class, hit dice, and spell caster type so I had to fill those in manually. Backgrounds did nothing. I manually copied it into the character sheet under race because … their doesn't appear to be a character background block and it doesn't even update the skills and proficiencies it provides.  My players both immediately asked "Why can't I just click the class, background, and race and get a drop down or pop up with an add button so I can select from available options and perhaps level of each option in the case of class/multi-class leveling, you know like the MorePurpleMoreBetter much more limited PDF??" To which I have no good answer.  Are these possible? Could this be fixed and/or automated? Even if it is just drag and drop as long as it actually worked correctly I think background and race are one time selections so its not that big a deal. Dragging in a class for initial or additional levels or multi-class or removing accidental wrong class selections or changes due to considering different options on the other hand would mean a massive improvement for the character sheet. 
1533608599
keithcurtis
Forum Champion
Marketplace Creator
API Scripter
Kryx will be the authoritative answerer here, but you are trying to do some things that the sheet is not set up to do. Only with the release of the charactermancer is it even now possible to automate adding some of the categories you are working with. In general, you can drag and drop equipment, spells, or entire monster stat blocks. AFAIK, no sheet at this time has full drag and drop access to all aspects of character creation and levelling. Further, it would probably be not worth community sheet developers' time to include all options, as it would only benefit the percentage of players who have bought the Players Handbook, which might sometimes have different data formatting from the SRD.
Ok, but fixing the drag and drop functions seems like a thing you would want on a character sheet moving forward...That's my primary concern.
1533627358

Edited 1533627624
Lucian
Pro
API Scripter
Hey Daniel, Again, I can't speak for Kryx (author of the sheet), but I can repeat what he has said before and clarify a few things for you. The sheet is written by one guy in his spare time, for free; it is not affiliated with Roll20. It has been developed over a number of years based on a combination of his vision and a lot of user feedback. It has also evolved as new things have become possible with the platform. The compendium and its drag-and-drop capabilities didn't even exist when the sheet was first created. Turning up afresh, knowing nothing of the history of the sheet, its development or its community, and rather brashly stating what you think is self-evident about how it should be/have been developed is not a recipe for ingratiating yourself with someone who has volunteered thousands of man hours to produce and support it. It may seem self-evident to you that smooth character creation is a critical feature, but you should bear in mind that Roll20 is a platform for actually playing RPGs, not just a toolset for supporting them. Outside of tedious CharOp discussions on forums, character creation is actually a very brief part of playing DnD. It's actually much more important that the sheet supports use-cases that arise repeatedly during play - rolling checks , attacks, spells, etc, etc - smoothly in ways that don't slow the game down, than that it speeds up a process that generally happens once at the beginning of the game. Simple dragging-and-dropping of classes, races and backgrounds wouldn't actually be very helpful. A class and a race come with a bunch of options, some of which have complex inter-dependencies. Character builders like DnD Beyond and Orcpub have sophisticated multi-step wizard UIs to walk you through character creation for exactly this reason. Until about a month ago, this was impossible on Roll20 - and Roll20 wrote the Charactermancer to change this. Furthermore, I believe I'm right in saying that the compendium didn't actually contain any structured data about things like race and class until the charactermancer release either, so there was nothing to drag-and-drop into the sheet anyway. The charactermancer is still in its infancy - the spec for 3rd party sheet authors is still subject to change and bugs are still being fixed. It's not likely that Kryx is going to put the rest of his life on hold to do the very large amount of development involved in implementing it until the platform is somewhat more locked down. You can follow/vote for this ticket if you wish to track progress on implementation of this: <a href="https://bitbucket.org/mlenser/5eshaped/issues/746/feature-support-charactermancer" rel="nofollow">https://bitbucket.org/mlenser/5eshaped/issues/746/feature-support-charactermancer</a> Unless you've bought the PHB module you're not going to get much value out of drag-and-drop anyway, since a lot of the archetypes and sub-races aren't included in the SRD compendium content Classes and their features are extremely well-supported by the Shaped sheet,&nbsp; just not by drag-and-drop. You ask "Why can't I just click the class, background, and race and get a drop down or pop up with an add button so I can select from available options and perhaps level of each option in the case of class/multi-class leveling"? Well, that's exactly how classes work on the shaped sheet. You can select the class and level at the top of the sheet, and then add new rows for extra classes if you need MC. Perhaps you haven't read any of the Roll20 or Shaped Sheet documentation? Some racial traits are also available to select at the bottom right automatically as well, where they have a mechanical impact that can be modelled by the sheet. You should be prepared for the fact that Roll20 is a generic platform; the compendium and character sheets are built using generic tools designed to support an open-ended range of different games. As such, even the in-house implementation of the new charactermancer functionality on the 5e OGL character sheet (built by Roll20 themselves) is considerably less slick than a dedicated tool built from the ground up just for DnD 5e - like DnD Beyond or OrcPub (This is not to diss the new functionality which is a huge leap forward - just an acceptance of the inevitable cost of maintaining a generic platform). If you want something that really lets you play around with character creation options in the slickest way possible, you might want to consider using one of these tools outside of Roll20, and then transferring the data across when you're happy with your characters. Whether that's worthwhile for you will depend on how much time you spend on the mechanical aspects of character creation vs. the time cost of copying the data across. Alternatively you can use the 5e OGL sheet which supports the Charactermancer and saves you having to manually re-enter things from an outside source. As a general point, if you're new to the platform, you might want to spend some time reading up and finding out the details of how things work before you come in hard with the criticisms. Read some documentation, watch some howto videos, ask some questions on the relevant forum thread (ideally without the snark) and you will find that there are ways to achieve much of what you want, albeit not perhaps exactly as you might expect - the generic nature of the platform does impose some constraints on the UI occasionally.
1533643365

Edited 1533649251
Lucian said: Hey Daniel, Again, I can't speak for Kryx (author of the sheet), but I can repeat what he has said before and clarify a few things for you. The sheet is written by one guy in his spare time, for free; it is not affiliated with Roll20. It has been developed over a number of years based on a combination of his vision and a lot of user feedback. It has also evolved as new things have become possible with the platform. The compendium and its drag-and-drop capabilities didn't even exist when the sheet was first created. Turning up afresh, knowing nothing of the history of the sheet, its development or its community, and rather brashly stating what you think is self-evident about how it should be/have been developed is not a recipe for ingratiating yourself with someone who has volunteered thousands of man hours to produce and support it. It may seem self-evident to you that smooth character creation is a critical feature, but you should bear in mind that Roll20 is a platform for actually playing RPGs, not just a toolset for supporting them. Outside of tedious CharOp discussions on forums, character creation is actually a very brief part of playing DnD. It's actually much more important that the sheet supports use-cases that arise repeatedly during play - rolling checks , attacks, spells, etc, etc - smoothly in ways that don't slow the game down, than that it speeds up a process that generally happens once at the beginning of the game. Simple dragging-and-dropping of classes, races and backgrounds wouldn't actually be very helpful. A class and a race come with a bunch of options, some of which have complex inter-dependencies. Character builders like DnD Beyond and Orcpub have sophisticated multi-step wizard UIs to walk you through character creation for exactly this reason. Until about a month ago, this was impossible on Roll20 - and Roll20 wrote the Charactermancer to change this. Furthermore, I believe I'm right in saying that the compendium didn't actually contain any structured data about things like race and class until the charactermancer release either, so there was nothing to drag-and-drop into the sheet anyway. The charactermancer is still in its infancy - the spec for 3rd party sheet authors is still subject to change and bugs are still being fixed. It's not likely that Kryx is going to put the rest of his life on hold to do the very large amount of development involved in implementing it until the platform is somewhat more locked down. You can follow/vote for this ticket if you wish to track progress on implementation of this: <a href="https://bitbucket.org/mlenser/5eshaped/issues/746/feature-support-charactermancer" rel="nofollow">https://bitbucket.org/mlenser/5eshaped/issues/746/feature-support-charactermancer</a> Unless you've bought the PHB module you're not going to get much value out of drag-and-drop anyway, since a lot of the archetypes and sub-races aren't included in the SRD compendium content Classes and their features are extremely well-supported by the Shaped sheet,&nbsp; just not by drag-and-drop. You ask "Why can't I just click the class, background, and race and get a drop down or pop up with an add button so I can select from available options and perhaps level of each option in the case of class/multi-class leveling"? Well, that's exactly how classes work on the shaped sheet. You can select the class and level at the top of the sheet, and then add new rows for extra classes if you need MC. Perhaps you haven't read any of the Roll20 or Shaped Sheet documentation? Some racial traits are also available to select at the bottom right automatically as well, where they have a mechanical impact that can be modelled by the sheet. You should be prepared for the fact that Roll20 is a generic platform; the compendium and character sheets are built using generic tools designed to support an open-ended range of different games. As such, even the in-house implementation of the new charactermancer functionality on the 5e OGL character sheet (built by Roll20 themselves) is considerably less slick than a dedicated tool built from the ground up just for DnD 5e - like DnD Beyond or OrcPub (This is not to diss the new functionality which is a huge leap forward - just an acceptance of the inevitable cost of maintaining a generic platform). If you want something that really lets you play around with character creation options in the slickest way possible, you might want to consider using one of these tools outside of Roll20, and then transferring the data across when you're happy with your characters. Whether that's worthwhile for you will depend on how much time you spend on the mechanical aspects of character creation vs. the time cost of copying the data across. Alternatively you can use the 5e OGL sheet which supports the Charactermancer and saves you having to manually re-enter things from an outside source. As a general point, if you're new to the platform, you might want to spend some time reading up and finding out the details of how things work before you come in hard with the criticisms. Read some documentation, watch some howto videos, ask some questions on the relevant forum thread (ideally without the snark) and you will find that there are ways to achieve much of what you want, albeit not perhaps exactly as you might expect - the generic nature of the platform does impose some constraints on the UI occasionally. Hello again. Thank you for your reply. 1. I am just type opinions and honest observation. Their is no way for me to ever know the developer process and team on any online project nor the difficulty of the task I am asking. Your also implying intonation on my direct statements that I don't intend (but are likely easily applied to my text and I don't see it but you do). I don't take offense it happens all the time but you can't read tone well in poor writing. I am a poor writer and what your calling brash is me trying to be clear and concise. Why am I trying to be clear and concise? Because I know its my nature to ramble, be repetitive,&nbsp; use bad examples, and be so wordy that people don't even read my post much less reply. So I am sure your right that my wording is irritating and perhaps the author doesn't like me already and has no desire to reply to my posts, in fact I kind of got that from my first message to him when I sent a direct message and he replied let me know to post on the forums so other could answer not just him. While I get your trying to say if I am nice and polite then the author will be more incline to helpfully reply. That was actually my intent and my failure to do so is not intentional but the nature of my extremes of ether over writing to extremes or being so concise in attempt to defy my nature that its read as snippy and/or brash. Ultimately if we had a conversation face to face you would understand anything I write may be impassioned or stale to a point of confusion but its all meant in good will. Short of being someone else though I lack the skill set to have the same good matured conversation in type. So if your reading this and it sounds like an angry defense ... try it again with confused concerned and slightly over impassioned but light hearted tone and you will fine me in there some where. lol 2. I completely understand this and said as much in the sheets defense to my players... however, that does not undermine the importance of a good first impression does it? Particularly if these are easy fixes. Which is why I asked.&nbsp; Because after one session trying to fill out the character sheets my players are questioning my choice of sheet (free or not). Their characters are built now so its like you said, but what about guests in the future? What about other people testing sheets? Is it or is it not a valid point to raise to the author that new players question its use due to what could be (I don't know) and easy fix? If not an easy fix or priority that is an understandable reply. I would think though that someone who has dedicated the work you mentioned before to the sheet and who has such pride on it to even get this far would want to consider feed back that might hold back support and use of something he worked so hard to build and share. I know I wouldn't want to work hard on something only for no one to care or use it... its happened to me a few times on projects that also took me years. New "player" feed back is first impression feed back. Just like any answer is better than no answer, even if its not the answer you wanted. That's my opinion anyway. 3. Sure but that means is possible now right? Is it in the plan to support now that it is? That's what I am asking however poorly. 4. I did, and the monster manual + volo's guide to monster which oddly these two work just fine for NPCs. So are you saying its and issue with the the PHB conflict or the Player character sheet vs the NPC sheet because that is basically part of what I am asking. 5. I don't really understand what your saying here can you clarify? sorry I am sure its me. 6. Sure general platform. This sheet is however for D&amp;D 5e only, correct? thanks again for your reply and any further clarifications. Seriously, not trying to be a jerk.
1533652934
keithcurtis
Forum Champion
Marketplace Creator
API Scripter
Just a few quick replies on a few points: 3) It is not possible right now. As Lucian said, the necessary tools are in their infancy and undergoing extensive modification and development. Trying to support the charactermancer on a community sheet would be like trying to build a house on a sand dune. Too much underlying change that can completely invalidate work. This is likely one of the reasons that the official sheet only supports level one character creation at this point, and not advancement. A house needs a solid foundation. Eventually Roll20 will have the tools in final, stable shape, at which point Kryx may decide it is a worthwhile feature to add to the shaped sheet. It will not be soon, in any case. 4&amp;5) The data for monsters and NPCs is a fairly simple, static format. It can even be parsed from text stat blocks by the companion script if need be. Data for characters is several layers of complexity deeper, as many things interlock and are interdependent or exclusive, or require step-by-step decision-making. And like the charactermancer itself, is undergoing development so that they support each other well. 6) Specific sheet, which uses generic tools. Roll20 is not built on an underlying assumption of D&amp;D5e, and its tools are not specialized for that. You can reassure your players that you have chosen a fine sheet. Neither the official, nor the shaped sheet are the "wrong" choice. Neither handles character creation and advancement like you describe. That's not really what Roll20 was developed to do, although huge steps have recently been made in that direction. The OGL sheet has good features of clarity and simplicity. The Shaped sheet offers customization and automation. I would suggest doing what Lucian has said, and add your support for charactermancer on the issue tracker link he supplied. Significant interest may (or may not) influence Kryx into devoting the huge number of hours that would be necessary to make it happen. Finally, if you really want to unlock the power of the Shaped sheet, after&nbsp; you have played with it a while, and gotten used to Roll20, consider trying a Pro subscription. The Companion script adds sooo much to the functionality of the sheet. (In fact the API in general, which can do some of the things you suggest above.)
1533660508
Lucian
Pro
API Scripter
Hi Daniel, It seems like we've fallen victim to the classic failing of the internet: tone deafness! "Directness" and "rudeness" are often hard enough to&nbsp; tell apart offline, let alone online - particularly across cultures.&nbsp; I'm sorry if I came across a little harsh in my response as a result; there's obviously responsibility on both sides of a conversation to get this right. A friendly piece of advice, however: if you're providing feedback about/looking for help with something that's provided for free on the internet, it's worth making an extra special effort to have your tone come across correctly, even if that doesn't come naturally to you. Developers like Kryx deal with a lot of requests and comments from people who are (a) genuinely rude and ungrateful and (b) haven't made any effort to read the documentation/see if their problem has already been solved; you're unlikely to get the "benefit of the doubt"&nbsp; if the tone of your message strikes them as unfriendly or unduly critical, even if that wasn't your intention. It may take you some extra time and effort to get this right, but remember that you're communicating with someone who's given you thousands of hours of work for free, so that's not so much to ask! On to the specific points: At a minimum I'd suggest that you skim through the latest thread on the character sheet forum for the Shaped Sheet which will give you some background information. The development process of the sheet is very open and Kryx communicates a *lot* on that thread. For example, all of the stuff about the charactermancer has been discussed there recently. I get the "first impressions" thing, and in a perfect world I'm sure Kryx would like to implement something smart using the charactermancer for this reason, but as has been discussed, it's not an easy fix - it's hundreds of hours of development work. Keith has covered this; it would be possible to build a test version against the current charactermancer API, but Roll20 have warned that it's not a stable platform at the moment and it's a massive amount of work that could potentially need rewriting. Translation: not gonna happen any time very soon. NPCs work quite differently to PCs, both technically on Roll20 and in the game rules. NPCs have traits, actions, reactions etc; PCs have class features, racial features, equipment etc; they fill out different fields and operate differently. By design in 5e, NPCs have a much simpler profile to make them easier to run - their actions and traits tend to be discrete items without too many mechanical interactions. The same cannot be said for class features etc. Plus, as discussed before, PC creation is a relatively small time cost compared to NPC creation, which was a nightmare before drag-and-drop and other automated import mechanisms became available. At the top of the sheet there's a drop down for class and a box for level. As you change these values it populates class features as appropriate. You can also click the little "add" button to add multiple classes If you're not able to do this it's possible that you don't have the sheet in edit mode (click the little pencil icon). This is what I'm talking about: Character sheets are user-created and can only do stuff based on the tools that Roll20 provide. These tools are limited because (1) security and (2) copyright violation potential. Those limited tools are designed to be generic rather than specific to DnD. When you limit a tool, it's a lot easier to make it fully functional for a specific application than a generic one. Generic tools generally derive their power precisely from not being limited. As a software developer myself, I'm frankly astonished at what some of the sheet authors have managed to achieve given the constraints they operate under!
1533671220
Lucian
Pro
API Scripter
Hey Daniel, One other thing. You've said that you've paid for the PHB and Volo's - so I'm guessing that money is not a really tight constraint for you. Looking through some of your other posts, I'd like to join Keith in strongly encouraging you try a month of a Pro subscription and install the Shaped Companion Script. I think you'll find it significantly simplifies some of the things you're tying yourself in knots over. In particular, for example, you can configure it to automatically create a bunch of custom token action buttons for each character based on the actions/traits/equipment etc that they have configured so that you can run most of your game without needing to open the character sheet. You've been trying to produce custom macros for this stuff and I think you've been making a whole load of unnecessary work for yourself to produce an inferior result. You can do it the right way manually if you read the sheet documentation on&nbsp; BitBucket, but it's massively easier if you can use the script to automate it for you.
keithcurtis said: Just a few quick replies on a few points: 3) It is not possible right now. As Lucian said, the necessary tools are in their infancy and undergoing extensive modification and development. Trying to support the charactermancer on a community sheet would be like trying to build a house on a sand dune. Too much underlying change that can completely invalidate work. This is likely one of the reasons that the official sheet only supports level one character creation at this point, and not advancement. A house needs a solid foundation. Eventually Roll20 will have the tools in final, stable shape, at which point Kryx may decide it is a worthwhile feature to add to the shaped sheet. It will not be soon, in any case. 4&amp;5) The data for monsters and NPCs is a fairly simple, static format. It can even be parsed from text stat blocks by the companion script if need be. Data for characters is several layers of complexity deeper, as many things interlock and are interdependent or exclusive, or require step-by-step decision-making. And like the charactermancer itself, is undergoing development so that they support each other well. 6) Specific sheet, which uses generic tools. Roll20 is not built on an underlying assumption of D&amp;D5e, and its tools are not specialized for that. You can reassure your players that you have chosen a fine sheet. Neither the official, nor the shaped sheet are the "wrong" choice. Neither handles character creation and advancement like you describe. That's not really what Roll20 was developed to do, although huge steps have recently been made in that direction. The OGL sheet has good features of clarity and simplicity. The Shaped sheet offers customization and automation. I would suggest doing what Lucian has said, and add your support for charactermancer on the issue tracker link he supplied. Significant interest may (or may not) influence Kryx into devoting the huge number of hours that would be necessary to make it happen. Finally, if you really want to unlock the power of the Shaped sheet, after&nbsp; you have played with it a while, and gotten used to Roll20, consider trying a Pro subscription. The Companion script adds sooo much to the functionality of the sheet. (In fact the API in general, which can do some of the things you suggest above.) Great reply. I think I can track all that. To summarize and rephrase, roll20 may be able to support some or all of these features in the neat future but the change is resent so its still shifting sand and Kryx will need to wait for it to settle before considering this or end up duplication a very large amount of work. The character sheet is not as far as the monster because of huge number of player options vs just transferring a standard formatted sheet. Makes since. Thanks for clearing that up for me. I tried to vote for&nbsp; charactermancer but their are some account issues, So I will deal with it at a more convenient time.
Lucian said: Hi Daniel, It seems like we've fallen victim to the classic failing of the internet: tone deafness! "Directness" and "rudeness" are often hard enough to&nbsp; tell apart offline, let alone online - particularly across cultures.&nbsp; I'm sorry if I came across a little harsh in my response as a result; there's obviously responsibility on both sides of a conversation to get this right. A friendly piece of advice, however: if you're providing feedback about/looking for help with something that's provided for free on the internet, it's worth making an extra special effort to have your tone come across correctly, even if that doesn't come naturally to you. Developers like Kryx deal with a lot of requests and comments from people who are (a) genuinely rude and ungrateful and (b) haven't made any effort to read the documentation/see if their problem has already been solved; you're unlikely to get the "benefit of the doubt"&nbsp; if the tone of your message strikes them as unfriendly or unduly critical, even if that wasn't your intention. It may take you some extra time and effort to get this right, but remember that you're communicating with someone who's given you thousands of hours of work for free, so that's not so much to ask! On to the specific points: At a minimum I'd suggest that you skim through the latest thread on the character sheet forum for the Shaped Sheet which will give you some background information. The development process of the sheet is very open and Kryx communicates a *lot* on that thread. For example, all of the stuff about the charactermancer has been discussed there recently. I get the "first impressions" thing, and in a perfect world I'm sure Kryx would like to implement something smart using the charactermancer for this reason, but as has been discussed, it's not an easy fix - it's hundreds of hours of development work. Keith has covered this; it would be possible to build a test version against the current charactermancer API, but Roll20 have warned that it's not a stable platform at the moment and it's a massive amount of work that could potentially need rewriting. Translation: not gonna happen any time very soon. NPCs work quite differently to PCs, both technically on Roll20 and in the game rules. NPCs have traits, actions, reactions etc; PCs have class features, racial features, equipment etc; they fill out different fields and operate differently. By design in 5e, NPCs have a much simpler profile to make them easier to run - their actions and traits tend to be discrete items without too many mechanical interactions. The same cannot be said for class features etc. Plus, as discussed before, PC creation is a relatively small time cost compared to NPC creation, which was a nightmare before drag-and-drop and other automated import mechanisms became available. At the top of the sheet there's a drop down for class and a box for level. As you change these values it populates class features as appropriate. You can also click the little "add" button to add multiple classes If you're not able to do this it's possible that you don't have the sheet in edit mode (click the little pencil icon). This is what I'm talking about: Character sheets are user-created and can only do stuff based on the tools that Roll20 provide. These tools are limited because (1) security and (2) copyright violation potential. Those limited tools are designed to be generic rather than specific to DnD. When you limit a tool, it's a lot easier to make it fully functional for a specific application than a generic one. Generic tools generally derive their power precisely from not being limited. As a software developer myself, I'm frankly astonished at what some of the sheet authors have managed to achieve given the constraints they operate under! 1. I have read some of the forums threads but I was reading an old one that I soon realized was out dated then I went to the last page, next thread, last page next thread several times. To be honest as someone who has never GM'd I was on a bit of a time crunch and more interested in getting my game ready that learning everything about the processes, hopes, and plans. As a result, I have found the Wiki's a lot more useful and a few roll20 youtube videos (This caused some friction with Kyrx because I posted I am using macros someone else suggested but Kryx intent is to never need those, however, like you mentioned the sheet is not finished but in a state of continual growth. I also explained, that the macros I made are mostly just calling his macros. So I am using his automation, but I am doing a lot of work myself so that I can manage NPCs from tokens which REALLY improves game speed over entering the character sheet and waiting for it to load for each NPC and it helps with my confusion by not having to constantly manage NPC sheets sometimes for the same monster and know which one is acting because you can highlight the initiative tracker and it turn red, then click the token to perform all sheet actions with pop up macros. Kyrx said he has some sheet macro changes coming so similarly, I may have to rebuild macros for 100+ monsters when he does so. So believer me I get the shifting sands part of this.)I have another session coming up soon and a similar time issue, however, after that game I don't GM again for another 3 months due to how we rotate so I will try to dig a little deeper then, but after I figure out map setup and dynamic lighting.&nbsp; 2-4, 6: I am tracking this now, but understand I have been working with this for about a month now, I think. So I asked. Perhaps with time and research I could have come to the same conclusions with out asking but the forums, roll20, and the Shaped 5e character sheet are all shifting sands so I could research for a month only to come to the wrong current answer. So it seemed like a forum post asking the question to Kyrx or (at his request) other on the forums like yourself that have the knowledge to know the answer without me first spending a great deal of time to learn the wrong answer. 5. So after some experimentation I am able to use this and understand it but it was not intuitive enough for me or my two co-GM/players to just look at and understand. For example I made a cleric, I looked up my health and put it on the wrong side of the 0-0 for HP and then selected the black for the third one which made may cleric not a caster so when I added spells later I initially though their was no spell slot management at all. I am their now. I am able to use it. BUT, A [Shaped 5e] character creation video in Lou of some more intuitive headers might be just as good a sheet changes. I looked and found some for other forms but not this one. I would honestly take lessens learned and make one myself but I HATE my own voice when its reproduced without the echo in my own skull. As such, I am not likely to explain anything in a video. Also, I am not likely to keep up with all the changes that are heading our way. I am not recommending Kryx make a video, I get their are more important tasks on schedule do to roll20 changes. If someone was inclined to do so I might not have spent 2-3 hour teaching my player only for them to both say "we will use the basic macros you setup because they do make things easier but your going to have to our tech support for issues and updates (Mostly they just call Kryx sheet so other than macro format changes they should be pretty stable), they are however using MPMB for equipment management because even after me explaining how simple it was they both got wrong weight for encumbrance {(Battle axe 1 handed / battle axe 2 handed count as two battle axes with weight, Dagger(melee), Dagger (thrown), Dagger (offhand-Melee), Dagger (offhand-ranged) counts as 4 even though the player only has one of both. So they use MorePurpleMoreBetter because the "offense" block does not count to equipment you put your 4 attacks then you put your number of daggers in your inventory separately for weight). I fixed mine however by making the weight of all but the first entry 0}. This is not a critique on the sheet entirely but perhaps more so on my ability to explain it to the other 2 in a way to convince them to use it.&nbsp;
Lucian said: Hey Daniel, One other thing. You've said that you've paid for the PHB and Volo's - so I'm guessing that money is not a really tight constraint for you. Looking through some of your other posts, I'd like to join Keith in strongly encouraging you try a month of a Pro subscription and install the Shaped Companion Script. I think you'll find it significantly simplifies some of the things you're tying yourself in knots over. In particular, for example, you can configure it to automatically create a bunch of custom token action buttons for each character based on the actions/traits/equipment etc that they have configured so that you can run most of your game without needing to open the character sheet. You've been trying to produce custom macros for this stuff and I think you've been making a whole load of unnecessary work for yourself to produce an inferior result. You can do it the right way manually if you read the sheet documentation on&nbsp; BitBucket, but it's massively easier if you can use the script to automate it for you. This is the first I have heard of the companions script being able to make macro buttons. I actually asked Kryx about this when he replied to my initial post but he did not reply. ( He is busy and its like you said, its possible that I offended him with directness that appeared as rude brashness or sarcasm, when in truth, it was an honest question asking and hoping their was away to save me hours of work) I have seen a couple of mentions about the "companions script" but I don't really know anything about it. What is it? What does it do? Based on your statement I have to pay for it? Is it a subscription or a one time payment? (I don't like subscriptions, I would prefer a 60 dollar one time purchase to a 5 dollar a month 1 year subscription. When someone says scripts and I am at the macro level, I am tentative due to not being aware of the work/value relation. As stated earlier the best way to sell me on this would be a demonstration video, instead of a wall of text I have to decipher and that might still not answer my question. For example, Kryx said, pulling tokens with HP formulas instead of a static HP is not an option. Also, I am pulling out the monsters I need from the monster manual and setting up macros but I am also sorting them in my journal by type and story since this is a product of my campaign I am going to guess their is no script for pulling and sorting how I want. If their is … AWSOME!!&nbsp; If their are auto macros, as you say, what macros am I getting? I am not against spending a little money but I don't buy something unless I know what I am buying first. I am not broke but I am by no means rick with money to waste.&nbsp; I also have to question the inferior part here. As Kryx told me that the goblin boss for example, does not have a specific macro for making multi-attack with a single click, and that the best solution for that is to attack once go into the character sheet, change to disadvantage, then attack again. Which defeats the point If I have to go into the character sheet. The Nilbog and Mephits elementals don't pull innate spell casting correctly, the elementals not having any spells listed. so my process of going through the one at&nbsp; time takes me 5 mins each, but then lets me find one off cases where "standard" macros don't work. This goes back to your statements about this being a generalized platform and sheet. In the same way, while Kryx has done a great job and a lot of hard work, he is still in the wide net, priority feature, base over haul phases from what you and he have said. So I am using his built in macros most of the time just called on a template that is easy to setup, then I am making my own based off his with overrides or building my own.&nbsp; For example, I have macro for perception checks that rolls twice with characters stats (its been corrected since my last post on it) and shows passive perception in a very concise box only showing it to the gm. This means, that when I call for a perception check the other players don't know the result only what I narrate, the player rolling doesn't know if they have advantage/disadvantage or if I just needed a reminder of what their passive perception was. Does the companion script offer options like this? If it does, awesome! Your pulling me towards it. If not... then I need to know more and how it will help be before I spend money on it. If I buy it and end up having to do what I am already doing... then its not really helping out and I have spent money on something I didn't understand. Even if it would just pull the token, setup special sight radious, hp, spead, and ACt, then make HP a static number so I can change one mob without changing them all, and then change the avatar to the large picture instead of the token … It would still be completely worth buying (with a one time buy), to save me time there. I just don't know if I am going to need to setup macros and tokens for my needs anyway because I have only seen vague references to the companion sheet up to now and as I said, I have and I am on a bit of time crunch right now so when I have free time I will look for specific answers to question I know I have but I will not have the time to explore for unknown features right now. I was relying on a bit of luck my last session that players when right and didn't decide to go left (which they did, fortunately) but still have a few random matters I was not prepared for and some process issues where I had difficulty following my notes and engaging the players fluidly. So for right now, unless I have see some way to maxims my time and understand the benefit, I am focusing on fixing those issues with permanent fixes before next session if possible.&nbsp;
1533697208

Edited 1533700614
keithcurtis
Forum Champion
Marketplace Creator
API Scripter
Hi Daniel, A lot of stuff going on in your post; I'll try to address the high points. Basically a Macro duplicates the things a player can do with a die roll or chat message. It can poll a character sheet for values to use in a roll formula. It can't alter the value on a sheet or token. The API allows you to do all sorts of things taht you theoretically could do manually, but much faster, or accurately, or with some degree of "intelligence". It can change values on a sheet (for example, to track ammo), or change any number of attributes on a token (re-size, turn features on or off, move it to another layer, and so forth.) It can also do many kinds of data manipulation (for example, simulating a foreign language that is intelligible to some player, but not another.). To get an idea, the wiki has a page of many of the scripts available. I'd suggest browsing through there to get a good feel for what is possible. Many sheets have a companion script, with built in functions tailored to work well with the associated sheet. The Shaped Companion can for example create a token macro for each action on a sheet with a single command. Again, the wiki for the companion goes into great detail about what is possible. It's amazingly robust. I'll type more later, as I am called away by real life. API scripts such as the companion and others can do many of the things that you describe. As for changing one token's HP without changing the others, this is possible for anyone. You just have to set the tokens up properly . The Companion script does not have the ability to create the very specific macro you describe regarding perception, though such macros are possible, even without the API. Consider universal token macros built in the Collections tab that whisper to the GM based on pulling a token's sheet's values with @{selected| Attributename }. Finally, there is no offering for a permanent Pro membership. The best you can do is get the yearly subscription discount rate. My suggestion would be to read up on the scripts available, read the Companion script page, and gamble the cost of a one-month subscription, just to see first hand what is available. Once you have tried it, it is hard to go back.
1533700861
keithcurtis
Forum Champion
Marketplace Creator
API Scripter
This is a separate post, just to save you some future heartache. It sounds like you are trying to set up a huge number of monsters in your campaign. If so, this is a mistake. the more characters you add, the more will be loaded into memory each time you open the campaign. This can cause serious slow-downs in performance. Most people build a second, library &nbsp;campaign for this purpose, but it does require subscription-level resources to move things between campaigns. Is this limitation a bit annoying? Well, yes, but keep in mind that while operating at a free level, you are necessarily going to have to deal with some limitations.
1533712790

Edited 1533712811
Lucian
Pro
API Scripter
Hi Daniel, Final reply as I really don't have too much more time to spend on this, but I will say a few things: The script can build token actions for you. Read the Roll20 documentation about what a Token Action is for more details. It can build e.g. a token action for each "Action" that an NPC can take. These display at the top left of your screen whenever a token that represents a particular character is selected, and allow you to launch those actions without&nbsp; opening the character sheet. A monster with a bite attack and a claw attack and a multiattack will get 3 buttons, for example, one for bite, one for claw, one for multiattack. Clicking the multiattack button will display the text "The Dragon makes 3 attacks, two with claws and one bite", for example, but won't actually make those attacks. But making the multiattack is as simple as clicking the claw button twice and the bite button once - none of which requires the character sheet to be open. The script can help you set up your tokens properly. It will copy the appropriate HP values across, or roll them if you want random HP for each monster, allowing you to have separate HP totals for each monster. You can also (e.g.) bind passive perception to one of the token bubbles so that this information is readily available to you on the tabletop without opening the character sheet The sheet has a bunch of options for controlling visibility of rolls, but it doesn't provide per-skill granularity. What I do is to have a macro that allows me to toggle rolls to hidden, and then I make the ability check via the sheet's ability checks chat macro (bound to a token action). But if you're doing lots of hidden perception checks for your players this may be too much extra faffing for you, so you may have to use a custom macro. Be aware that the heavier you make your customisation the more likely you are to end up with something that doesn't work quite right, or short-circuits other features that the sheet provides. I roll almost everything out in the open so this has never been an issue for me. It would be great if there was a companion script video, but there isn't right now. There may be something a little way down the line, people are talking about making some stuff. For the moment, by the far the best way of understanding it is to try it. You can buy a Pro-level subscription to Roll20 for a month for $5 (no ongoing commitment). The script itself is free (you need Pro to use API scripts). Spend some time playing around with it, following the documentation that Keith linked to. I share your dislike of ongoing subscriptions but in this case once I tried it I never went back (there are many other useful scripts as well as the Shaped Companion Script) You've said you're a new DM and it seems that you are also new to Roll20. You need to be realistic about what you are undertaking here. You're starting out running one of the most complicated games in the world, and you're trying to be a perfectionist about automating it using a sheet that is very powerful but has a steep learning curve, on a platform that you've only just come to, without enough time to really get to grips with it. You're also quite sure of yourself - to the point that you're telling people who are experienced DMs&nbsp; who run games on Roll20 regularly and who built some of the tools that you are using, that you have a better way of doing things than what they're advising. You want your first game to be perfect, and you've spent ages reading up and working out exactly how you're going to run it; you've probably compiled a bunch of houserules from lots of places (maybe including some of your own tweaks). Now you want to get the game going before your game group loses momentum, but there's just so much to sort out before your first session. Is that about right? Here's the thing: within the first 10 minutes of your first session it's all going to fall apart anyway, because it always does. For everyone. And that's ok. I'd seriously advise you to think about running your first session as "tools-light" as possible. Use roll20 to show your players maps and roll dice and run chat (if you're not using an external VOIP tool). Make the character sheets in PDF and then print the damned things. Roll hidden rolls with actual dice next to your keyboard. Roll20 + Shaped (especially + the Companion) is an amazingly powerful tool for running slick games, but it has a learning curve, and for a new DM, I'd say it's more work and harder than running a F2F game.&nbsp; It took me months to get to grips with it and (1) I was an experienced DM (2) I'm a programmer and I understood a lot of the technical implications of how things fitted together. And guess what? My first game still&nbsp; had loads of technical problems. You've got enough on your plate just running DnD without building a complex framework of tools and macros to automate it. Start with something as simple as possible and then bring the tools in as you find your play style and as you see first hand how things go down in actual play. You'll save yourself a huge amount of heartache and wasted effort. Hell, I wrote the Shaped Companion Script and am heavily involved in all things Shaped, and I'd have no problem saying that if you're a new DM just starting out on Roll20, you might want to consider running your first game using a bought one-shot module and the OGL sheet! Once you and your players have played a session or two and got a feel for how things work, you might come back and look at what's possible with Shaped etc - which is a bit more powerful and let's you streamline things a bit more. I'll leave you with a software development story. A couple of old grognards at a XYZ Corp were objecting fiercely to the introduction of some new user-friendly "point-and-click" software. They said that the old text-based system was way more powerful, and let you do things much more quickly with fewer keypresses and without all this faffy mouse-and-windows crap. So the developers of the new software issued a challenge. They'd train some staff on the new system for a day, and then the newly trained staff would do a time challenge against the grognards. They'd have a sequence of tasks to do based on real-world use-cases that the software systems were supposed to handle. The grognards chuckled to themselves as they accepted with glee. They'd seen how slow the new system was, they'd wipe the floor with the other team. Challenge day rolls around, and, sure enough, after 15 minutes, things are looking pretty bad for the GUI team. They're plodding through their tasks well enough, but everything involves a bunch of extra clicks to get to, whereas the old grognards are chewing through things based on 5 years of muscle memory of key sequences. The old software was designed to be fast once you knew how to use it. But that's where the problem lay. You see, 3 tasks from the end of the challenge, the grognards hit something that they didn't know how to do. They had to dig out the 300 page manual, and start leafing through it. But it was all written in highly technical language and organised by key command, not by use case. As they flipped back and forth, looking for the correct incantation to deal with this specific situation, the plodding GUI team slowly caught them up. You can see where this ends, right? By your own admission, you're not a grognard. You will hit that "task that you don't know how to do" really early on in your first game. If you're using a simple, albeit slow system, then it won't be hard to work round. You'll /roll 1d20 and add what you believe are the appropriate modifiers to it manually and move on. If you've built a tower of custom macros on top of an already complex sheet, you'll spend 20 minutes saying "bear with me" while you try and figure out WTF went wrong. The fact that the rest of the combat went slightly faster will be irrelevant as your players check out and start browsing Reddit.
1533713486
keithcurtis
Forum Champion
Marketplace Creator
API Scripter
Lucian said: Here's the thing: within the first 10 minutes of your first session it's all going to fall apart anyway, because it always does. For everyone. And that's ok. That should be put on a plaque somewhere. Mine did. I used paper and dice for so much my first month.
1533729028

Edited 1533729141
keithcurtis said: This is a separate post, just to save you some future heartache. It sounds like you are trying to set up a huge number of monsters in your campaign. If so, this is a mistake. the more characters you add, the more will be loaded into memory each time you open the campaign. This can cause serious slow-downs in performance. Most people build a second, library &nbsp;campaign for this purpose, but it does require subscription-level resources to move things between campaigns. Is this limitation a bit annoying? Well, yes, but keep in mind that while operating at a free level, you are necessarily going to have to deal with some limitations. Well that's a bit of a problem. Hmm... So the reason for so many monsters is I created a macro on a character called "Fate" that only I as the GM can see. When the party is traveling I role the macro once for every hour. It randomly determines if there is an encounter, it its a good or bad encounter, a difficulty level of enemies low, med, high, deadly or a DC to obtain if good, the story the monsters or good things are from and the number of monsters if its a possible combat encounter. So far is working perfectly. The idea is characters have multiple hooks and they&nbsp; choose what to follow but all of these stories cross their path randomly during play. So even I don't know what is going to happen... but its not REALLY random because they all have a direct. The never waste time on something unimportant even if they think they are. All roads lead somewhere even if its not obvious. In order to support that I need many monster available because I don't know what pool or how many until I roll the dice, then based on the difficulty and number I select a Max CR and pull enemies from it or lower from the correct pool, adding in the next story point for that encounter and done... in seconds with a push of a button. ... I kind of love it.&nbsp; ... So lower level mobs do reduce in value as they level once they can beat more than 10 of a mob I will generally not use it unless its part of a higher CR group. Like an orc chieftains hunting dire wolf or something.&nbsp;&nbsp; ... so is there a max number of enemies I should stay below? Maybe I can rotate and still make this work. Still working through yours and Lucian 's other post. Need some time to sort through information and digest.
1533729155
Kryx
Pro
Sheet Author
API Scripter
It's just like spells. More monsters = more lag. There is no specific number.
Kryx said: It's just like spells. More monsters = more lag. There is no specific number. Ok. Thanks for the reply! I will keep that in mind and try to put only what I need and keep an eye on the lag it creates adjust accordingly. If it turns out I am using too many maybe I will eliminate a couple of story branches so that I don't need monsters. Perhaps by resolving them in game sooner rather than later instead of just disappearing them.
keithcurtis said: Hi Daniel, A lot of stuff going on in your post; I'll try to address the high points. Basically a Macro duplicates the things a player can do with a die roll or chat message. It can poll a character sheet for values to use in a roll formula. It can't alter the value on a sheet or token. The API allows you to do all sorts of things taht you theoretically could do manually, but much faster, or accurately, or with some degree of "intelligence". It can change values on a sheet (for example, to track ammo), or change any number of attributes on a token (re-size, turn features on or off, move it to another layer, and so forth.) It can also do many kinds of data manipulation (for example, simulating a foreign language that is intelligible to some player, but not another.). To get an idea, the wiki has a page of many of the scripts available. I'd suggest browsing through there to get a good feel for what is possible. Many sheets have a companion script, with built in functions tailored to work well with the associated sheet. The Shaped Companion can for example create a token macro for each action on a sheet with a single command. Again, the wiki for the companion goes into great detail about what is possible. It's amazingly robust. I'll type more later, as I am called away by real life. API scripts such as the companion and others can do many of the things that you describe. As for changing one token's HP without changing the others, this is possible for anyone. You just have to set the tokens up properly . The Companion script does not have the ability to create the very specific macro you describe regarding perception, though such macros are possible, even without the API. Consider universal token macros built in the Collections tab that whisper to the GM based on pulling a token's sheet's values with @{selected| Attributename }. Finally, there is no offering for a permanent Pro membership. The best you can do is get the yearly subscription discount rate. My suggestion would be to read up on the scripts available, read the Companion script page, and gamble the cost of a one-month subscription, just to see first hand what is available. Once you have tried it, it is hard to go back. Thanks for the update. So I looked at the links you provided and I am REALLY interested in dynamic lighting, the NPCs health formulas for randomly generated HP, quick/easy macro creation, and the numbered NPC tokens for tracking monsters of the same type. But the prerequisites brings up a good point. "You should be familiar with how to use roll20 , have a basic understanding of how to configure a game on Roll20, including setting up character sheets and installing API scripts. If you've only just started using Roll20 and haven't found your feet yet, setting this script up and using it is probably a bad place to start - it's an advanced tool" Having only been working with this for about a month and a half, I maybe putting the cart before the horse in picking up a Roll20&nbsp; Pro subscription and trying to work the API with companion config.&nbsp; Macros are more my speed and I do have working save and perception macros and have adjusted some of the [Shaped 5e] macros for specific cases. Though I feel like I am asking the right questions and it is good to know the answers exist but I might not yet be capable of implementing them. I am on that note not sure how/when I will know and be ready to do so. Again, some tutorial demonstration videos would be awesome here. I might go a head and make the jump once I square away my campaign plans, what I am doing currently in roll20, and get my notes transferred to one note and better organized. Right now I am taking on more than I can handle though. Its working out and moving forward but I may be dividing my time too much and pushing to hard only to become less efficient and ultimately take longer.&nbsp; I do think I want to go to the Pro-subscription with API and companions script... I am just think I need to catch up with basics first. I guess right now I am primarily trying to figure out what the basics are and are not so I can focus my learning with respect to my needs and wants. I did setup my tokens using your linked post, I had found it asking that question before. I am using the select hp then select none method but it means all my NPCs have the same health. That is really what I want to solve. I do see with API &amp; Companion script it says I can do that but while its high on my desire list, its low on my necessity/priority list.
Lucian said: Hi Daniel, Final reply as I really don't have too much more time to spend on this, but I will say a few things: The script can build token actions for you. Read the Roll20 documentation about what a Token Action is for more details. It can build e.g. a token action for each "Action" that an NPC can take. These display at the top left of your screen whenever a token that represents a particular character is selected, and allow you to launch those actions without&nbsp; opening the character sheet. A monster with a bite attack and a claw attack and a multiattack will get 3 buttons, for example, one for bite, one for claw, one for multiattack. Clicking the multiattack button will display the text "The Dragon makes 3 attacks, two with claws and one bite", for example, but won't actually make those attacks. But making the multiattack is as simple as clicking the claw button twice and the bite button once - none of which requires the character sheet to be open. The script can help you set up your tokens properly. It will copy the appropriate HP values across, or roll them if you want random HP for each monster, allowing you to have separate HP totals for each monster. You can also (e.g.) bind passive perception to one of the token bubbles so that this information is readily available to you on the tabletop without opening the character sheet The sheet has a bunch of options for controlling visibility of rolls, but it doesn't provide per-skill granularity. What I do is to have a macro that allows me to toggle rolls to hidden, and then I make the ability check via the sheet's ability checks chat macro (bound to a token action). But if you're doing lots of hidden perception checks for your players this may be too much extra faffing for you, so you may have to use a custom macro. Be aware that the heavier you make your customisation the more likely you are to end up with something that doesn't work quite right, or short-circuits other features that the sheet provides. I roll almost everything out in the open so this has never been an issue for me. It would be great if there was a companion script video, but there isn't right now. There may be something a little way down the line, people are talking about making some stuff. For the moment, by the far the best way of understanding it is to try it. You can buy a Pro-level subscription to Roll20 for a month for $5 (no ongoing commitment). The script itself is free (you need Pro to use API scripts). Spend some time playing around with it, following the documentation that Keith linked to. I share your dislike of ongoing subscriptions but in this case once I tried it I never went back (there are many other useful scripts as well as the Shaped Companion Script) You've said you're a new DM and it seems that you are also new to Roll20. You need to be realistic about what you are undertaking here. You're starting out running one of the most complicated games in the world, and you're trying to be a perfectionist about automating it using a sheet that is very powerful but has a steep learning curve, on a platform that you've only just come to, without enough time to really get to grips with it. You're also quite sure of yourself - to the point that you're telling people who are experienced DMs&nbsp; who run games on Roll20 regularly and who built some of the tools that you are using, that you have a better way of doing things than what they're advising. You want your first game to be perfect, and you've spent ages reading up and working out exactly how you're going to run it; you've probably compiled a bunch of houserules from lots of places (maybe including some of your own tweaks). Now you want to get the game going before your game group loses momentum, but there's just so much to sort out before your first session. Is that about right? Here's the thing: within the first 10 minutes of your first session it's all going to fall apart anyway, because it always does. For everyone. And that's ok. I'd seriously advise you to think about running your first session as "tools-light" as possible. Use roll20 to show your players maps and roll dice and run chat (if you're not using an external VOIP tool). Make the character sheets in PDF and then print the damned things. Roll hidden rolls with actual dice next to your keyboard. Roll20 + Shaped (especially + the Companion) is an amazingly powerful tool for running slick games, but it has a learning curve, and for a new DM, I'd say it's more work and harder than running a F2F game.&nbsp; It took me months to get to grips with it and (1) I was an experienced DM (2) I'm a programmer and I understood a lot of the technical implications of how things fitted together. And guess what? My first game still&nbsp; had loads of technical problems. You've got enough on your plate just running DnD without building a complex framework of tools and macros to automate it. Start with something as simple as possible and then bring the tools in as you find your play style and as you see first hand how things go down in actual play. You'll save yourself a huge amount of heartache and wasted effort. Hell, I wrote the Shaped Companion Script and am heavily involved in all things Shaped, and I'd have no problem saying that if you're a new DM just starting out on Roll20, you might want to consider running your first game using a bought one-shot module and the OGL sheet! Once you and your players have played a session or two and got a feel for how things work, you might come back and look at what's possible with Shaped etc - which is a bit more powerful and let's you streamline things a bit more. I'll leave you with a software development story. A couple of old grognards at a XYZ Corp were objecting fiercely to the introduction of some new user-friendly "point-and-click" software. They said that the old text-based system was way more powerful, and let you do things much more quickly with fewer keypresses and without all this faffy mouse-and-windows crap. So the developers of the new software issued a challenge. They'd train some staff on the new system for a day, and then the newly trained staff would do a time challenge against the grognards. They'd have a sequence of tasks to do based on real-world use-cases that the software systems were supposed to handle. The grognards chuckled to themselves as they accepted with glee. They'd seen how slow the new system was, they'd wipe the floor with the other team. Challenge day rolls around, and, sure enough, after 15 minutes, things are looking pretty bad for the GUI team. They're plodding through their tasks well enough, but everything involves a bunch of extra clicks to get to, whereas the old grognards are chewing through things based on 5 years of muscle memory of key sequences. The old software was designed to be fast once you knew how to use it. But that's where the problem lay. You see, 3 tasks from the end of the challenge, the grognards hit something that they didn't know how to do. They had to dig out the 300 page manual, and start leafing through it. But it was all written in highly technical language and organised by key command, not by use case. As they flipped back and forth, looking for the correct incantation to deal with this specific situation, the plodding GUI team slowly caught them up. You can see where this ends, right? By your own admission, you're not a grognard. You will hit that "task that you don't know how to do" really early on in your first game. If you're using a simple, albeit slow system, then it won't be hard to work round. You'll /roll 1d20 and add what you believe are the appropriate modifiers to it manually and move on. If you've built a tower of custom macros on top of an already complex sheet, you'll spend 20 minutes saying "bear with me" while you try and figure out WTF went wrong. The fact that the rest of the combat went slightly faster will be irrelevant as your players check out and start browsing Reddit. Well written reply. Your pretty spot on here I think, with the exception of the house rules. We are co-GMing and critiquing each other between sessions. Our rotating GM game is actually focused on all 3 of use learning and improving our GM capabilities in part to become better more understanding players as well.&nbsp; We actually had our first session and it was the character creation process that caused problems. This post is actually a direct result of the technical issue, you said would happen as the NPCs I setup worked, the story worked, but players were turning to MorePurpleMoreBetter for characters. I had two issues with my "all saves" macro and "initiative macro" both I was able to fix while they were trying to resolve character discrepancies between MPMB and the Shaped 5e. Some of the problem was one player using MPMB wrong and some was player patience to resolve character sheets as I was able to fix all my problems but it took time. They were their to play this time and didn't want to deal with it but also didn't bother to check things our prior... I am the type to check my character over 3 times before showing up to a pen and paper game in person.&nbsp; As a GM roll20, worked and the players were pleased with the session and my automation... I was personally disappointed with my holdups of "referring to the manual" not about roll20 but because I had spent a lot of time preparing roll20 but had my game notes all over the place. So I am turning to a OneNote organization method to consolidate notes to one location and reduce document/map/notes hunting. … Basically your right. Maybe not 100% on the nose but at least 90%. So thank you for answering my comments so well. I will try and scale back a bit and perhaps focus more on my notes outside of roll20 before I look at attempting then companion script. I do want some of those features and am excited to head that way.. but priorities.&nbsp; I do wish the character creation was a bit smoother but I noted "Character sheet enhancements", "New Characters", and "Token default" bar, aruas, and adding action macros will go along way to working those out. It doesn't really show anything about the drag and drop options and/or inventory issues but you addressed that and things like the perception macro I made could be handled by " Roll 2 : Roll two dice, display both results" With all that in mind I may use this thread as a reminder of direction and pacing. I do still have one question if anyone has a moment to answer. If I get a pro-subscription and the companion script, then promote a player to co-GM to run their session in our rotating group, do they get to use all the functions of my pro-subscription and companion script?&nbsp;
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Gen Kitty
Forum Champion
I do still have one question if anyone has a moment to answer. If I get a pro-subscription and the companion script, then promote a player to co-GM to run their session in our rotating group, do they get to use all the functions of my pro-subscription and companion script? As long as the Creator of a game has a Pro subscription, all members of that game have access to the goodies installed by the Creator and any GMs of that game, to the extent that the APIs installed allow (scripts such as Powercards are usable by players without GM access, other scripts will require the invoking entity have GM access; check on a script by script basis).&nbsp; When you're ready to dive in, feel free to start a new thread for API suggestions, I know I have my own favorites :)
As long as the&nbsp; Creator &nbsp;of a game has a Pro subscription, all members of that game have access to the goodies installed by the Creator and any GMs of that game, to the extent that the APIs installed allow (scripts such as Powercards are usable by players without GM access, other scripts will require the invoking entity have GM access; check on a script by script basis).&nbsp; When you're ready to dive in, feel free to start a new thread for API suggestions, I know I have my own favorites :) Gotta echo GenKitty's response here.&nbsp; I have a Pro subscription, but my wife and son do not (in fact, they have no sub at all - free).&nbsp; I have no less than 8 API scripts running at any time.&nbsp; They reap the benefits of all of them.