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Turn Tracker reocurring issues

1684895908

Edited 1684895948
Hi Roll20, my DnD group have been playing for a few years now, and a common frustration we have is we often have to roll initiative several times for one battle. There are some causes: If a player rolls straight from their character sheet (an intuative move, especially in the heat of the moment) then it doesn't count. They have to select their token first and THEN roll from the character sheet, and I can't tell you the amount of times players moaned about losing the'good roll' they just had. As a DM I also have to roll initiative for several monsters, and the tedious select-token-select-sheet-click-initiative routine slows things down tremendously.  If we are on a new map, the turn tracker remembers all the rolls from a previous map, which leads to confusion and characters appearing twice or more on a turn tracker. I have to manually go through and delete all the 'wrong' ones, which slows everything down and kills the mood a bit. This is even more a problem when dealing with slow internet, as the turn tracker takes a moment to load, and sometimes I think it's all clear and ready for new rolls, only to be proven wrong a second after players start rolling. To add to the confusion, often my players see what they think is a fresh and ready turn tracker, so they begin rolling. This is because only the DM can see the extra rolls, and if the DM's internet is slower, it leads to the doubling up problem again. I'm wondering if initiative can be tied to character sheets intead of needing both token AND sheet, and if each new map can have its own, fresh turn tracker? At the very least I would like the option to pick a fresh new tracker rather than it always defaulting to one that remembers previous battles.
1684896472
Gauss
Forum Champion
Hi Katie,  This sounds like you might want to post this in the Suggestion Forum.  With that said my suggestion is to give your players a Token Action to roll initiative with, retrain them not to roll initiative from their sheet. If you would like the macro for that I can supply it.  There are also solutions for you as a DM rolling all your monsters at once using an API script called GroupInitiative. However that is a Pro feature.  Alternately a Token Action macro for your NPCs would also work well and be faster than your current method.  Also, your players do not need to sacrifice their earlier roll. Just change the number on their initiative to the earlier roll. It does take a moment but, it may allay their frustration.  Regarding issue #2, keeping track of initiatives across maps is useful for some game systems or adventures where battles can happen across maps. But to prevent the issue you are having I always do an turn tracker cleanup after every battle or when I switch maps. It takes me just a few seconds and so the turn tracker is always ready before the next battle. 
Katie. Yes, it is tedious and I also wish otherwise. However as for your players moaning about the loss of the good roll: I always let the first roll count and edit the number in Turn order directly...  I REALLY hope that they renew this feature as they hopefully do all Layers with the redesign currently in the making... Katie W. said: Hi Roll20, my DnD group have been playing for a few years now, and a common frustration we have is we often have to roll initiative several times for one battle. There are some causes: If a player rolls straight from their character sheet (an intuative move, especially in the heat of the moment) then it doesn't count. They have to select their token first and THEN roll from the character sheet, and I can't tell you the amount of times players moaned about losing the'good roll' they just had. As a DM I also have to roll initiative for several monsters, and the tedious select-token-select-sheet-click-initiative routine slows things down tremendously.