Dice Pool vs Dice Pool: Comparing Successes for Victory. API, Macro, or Bust?

I have created my own d8 dice pool based tabletop RPG system that I plan to play-test on Roll20 (as well as offline locally). One issue I am running into here on Roll20 deals with challenges. During any challenge in my game (combat, chases, debates, stealth vs searching, etc.) both opponents roll their dice pools simultaneously and compare successes to determine who wins (and by what margin, as my game has tiers of success that each allow for the activation of more character abilities). When I get around to implementing die roll automation in my play-test campaign, will Macros be sufficient to handle my game's dice pool challenges? Would the API be better suited? Or am I simply out of luck for now? Btw, I am a brand new mentor (Hello, new friends!), having signed up just last month - half of which I spent in the hospital - so I'm completely new to the API. I am also a relative beginner when it comes to coding, with some basic HTML experience and that's pretty much it. I spent this week coding basic character sheets and am just now digging in to Roll20's Macro system (which I like so far). I plan to move on to the API after I am comfortable writing Macros. In other words, I should be able to comprehend your responses in a couple of days. :)

Assuming the rolls you're keeping are 7 and 8... [ [ ?{How Many Dice In Your Pool?|1}d8>7 ]] ...would prompt the user for how many dice are in their pool, roll it, and display the number of successes ( 7 or greater). If they just hit enter without inputting a number, it will assume only one die is rolled by default. The thing to remember with < and > signs in Roll20 is that they inherantly include the = sign with them. They're really "Less than or Equal to" and "Greater than or equal to". If you wanted to compare two rolls, you would have to do a visual comparison, roll it for them as the GM, or have some method for letting a single person know what their dice pool is as well as their opponent and role for both of them. (pulling both dice pool counts from two character's sheet attributes could be done easily) The comparion roll could be done with parenthesis around two similar rolls subtracted from each other... [ [ ( ?{How Many Dice In Your Pool?|1}d8>7 ) - ( ?{How Many Dice In Their Pool?|1}d8>7 ) ]] ... which would ask the end-user how many dice are in their pool, how many dice are in their opponent's pool, roll them and subtract the first group of successes from the second. A positive value would be the first roll winning and by how much. A zero would be a tie, and a negative number would be the second roll winning and by how much. Unfortunately, short of the API, there's no way to retain someone's roll in a variable to compare it to someone Else's roll without doing it all in a single roll.

Thanks for this information, Mark! Good to know. I'll play around with the syntax and see how the results impact the speed of gameplay.