Dice Rolling Suggestions

Ohhh ... that sounds like a fun thing to play with @Henry go create a project on github and you can get all of the programmers (there seem to be a lot) here to chip in :)

so, any progress on being able to roll more than one roll with one macros?

Claytonian-- If it happens, we'll let you know.

Is it possible to have images displayed instead of numbers, so that dice like Warhammer FRP could be used?

I think the best way to alleviate the need for you, the dev team, to create every possible roll system is to see if an advanced macro system would be possible. Basically, give macros variables and logic. So a macro might look something like: roll() = 4d6; for i roll(); if(roll(i) = 6); roll.addroll(1d6); endif; loop; That would essentially be equivalent to 4d6! Not sure what the actual syntax would have to be but giving this to the GMs or players means less work for you and more fun for us. This is just a farfetched idea as I know something like this might be very hard to do and I don't know what your server side code is like but I am fairly certain this would get heavy use by the players.

Sorry if this repeats anything that's been said already but I play a bunch of systems that only use one die type (Shadowrun, Open D6, L5R, 7th Sea, WoD etc), it'd be cool if when I was setting up a campaign I could specify that it's a single dice only (and the die type) so players could /roll 2 rather than /roll 2d10 (or whatever)

I'm also a proponent for allowing users to create custom die and custom die rolls (see my first post in this thread), but it had better not be in any kind of programming language, or you're walking right away from the very user-friendly vibe that can make Roll20 so successful. Make it a menu like the deck system, and it'll be great.

Kenzerco's Hackmaster "penetrating" dice. Like exploding, but at 1 less value. i.e. 1d6p: rolling 6, 6, 1 tallies to 11. 6 (face value), 5 (6-less-1), 0 (1-less-1). Another vote for this...and just as a clarification: Exploding d20p turns into a d6p (ie. on a '20', roll a d6p as your explosion dice). d100's use d20p as their exploding dice.

How about Warhammer Fantasy 3rd Edition dice? Any chance of seeing those implemented into the system? (FYI, Warhammer 3 uses dice with symbols, with some symbols modifying others).

How about Warhammer Fantasy 3rd Edition dice? Any chance of seeing those implemented into the system? (FYI, Warhammer 3 uses dice with symbols, with some symbols modifying others). Do you have a reference for the explicit dice rolling rules?

This page has pretty good overview of the dice: <a href="http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3474414" rel="nofollow">http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3474414</a> I'm at work right now :-) but could later breakdown the number/type of symbols on each die, etc.

I think that it could be a good idea to be able to (optionally) set mouse-clickable buttons and/or hotkeys for rolling dice macros in the GUI of Roll20.

I'm looking for input from other players on if your using Roll 20 with savage worlds and if so how are you handling the wild die situation? I've asked the devs on if they are planning on having the ability to roll multiple die types that dont add up and I was told the following: "You can roll multiple types of dice-- rolling them at once is not a necessary component, although we may implement such a feature down the line. " Does this sound like something that would be useful to those running other games as well? I know this feature exists in other virtual table top system like fantasy grounds. A thought on the formula would be something like this: /roll 1d8! attack, 1d6! wild

Are there plans to support the "9 again" system found in World of Darkness? All dice rolls are made using a number of d10s determined by the character's skill, equipment bonuses, and environmental modifiers. Each roll of 8, 9 or 10 counts as one success, and the "exploding dice" system is used (in other words, each roll of 10 counts as a success AND allows the player to roll an additional die). Some weapons/abilities grant the "9 again" rule, allowing the player to roll an additional d10 for each 9 or 10 they roll. The current exploding dice and target number roll modifiers work great for normal rolls, but there doesn't seem to be a way to simulate 9 again with the current die roller system. If that were added to the roller, it would be much appreciated.

How about implementing the 40k RP dice rules? Essentially, they're checks based on rolling under a target number, but with a number of degrees of success or failure based on how far from the target the result is in increments of 10. For example, a result of 29 vs. a target of 32 would indicate a success, while a roll of 11 vs. a target number of 32 would indicate 2 degrees of success for being a full 20 points below the target. Similarly, a roll of 56 against a target of 48 would be a failure, and a roll of 79 against a target of 48 would be 3 degrees of failure.

Hi! Having used many of the available VTT's out there it seems most don't focus on the ability to actually represent rolling dice. I understand that ultimately they are all random number generators, but I find that people really like the "illusion" of being able to grab dice virtually and "roll" them. That is why currently my VTT of choice is Fantasy Ground 2. While it has a plethora of great tools the main reason my two groups like and use it is due to having virtual dice the players and GM can "pick up" modify and actually see roll across the program inter-phase. I can't tell you how many people that were initially against or lukewarm of playing an RPG online I have swayed into trying it precisely because of "and you can roll your dice just like playing face-to-face!". Unfortunately it seems many VTT's concentrate on other aspects and this particular aspect falls by the wayside. It's a shame but macros and such regardless of utility cannot capture the true tabletop experience without some form of virtual die rolling. I have spent most of today trying out the rolld20 VTT and there is a LOT of excellent work put into it. The way it integrates voice, video and music are in my view unique amongst VTT's. The access to art and music easily places rolld20 ahead of any other VTT out there. I could not run many sessions on the fly in other VTT's due to the fact that I must have previously imported images to run the games. Rolld20 would be the only VTT that I don't need to worry about that. All this said, I could not migrate to it as it stands, nor my players, since having no virtual dice "that you can roll" would be a pretty big drawback. Mind you this is not a rational thing. But gamers are pretty picky when it comes to playing games and not being able to "roll them bones" seems to be a big hurdle for some. The creators of rolld20 have an opportunity to become the dominant VTT out there. I'm not just not saying that. I have actually bought and used most VTT's out there in the last 3-5 years. I have become very discriminate when I evaluate them. Rolld20, with its current features is a BIG DEAL. Head and shoulders above a lot of stuff out there. I only find it lacking in this one thing. Virtual dice to roll. I humbly suggest trying to provide this. At least for me its the only thing missing for it to be just about perfect. Respectfully, Peter Ramos

I'm looking for input from other players on if your using Roll 20 with savage worlds and if so how are you handling the wild die situation? I've asked the devs on if they are planning on having the ability to roll multiple die types that dont add up" Personally, I usually just use the adding dice, and then figure out the result of the die roll myself. Many of the games use some variation of the dice rolls currently implemented, but as long as I have the die rolls themselves, I can still figure out the results of the roll as I normally would. So in the case of Savage Worlds, I'd just do, for example, /roll 1d8! + 1d6! and then ignore the summed result. If the devs do end up implementing a non-adding roll, that'll be nice, for sure. But I think, at least as far as dice are concerned, Savage Worlds is quite playable now. (Cards are another matter...but that's coming). I only find it lacking in this one thing. Virtual dice to roll. I humbly suggest trying to provide this. At least for me its the only thing missing for it to be just about perfect. I'm with you in that I think virtual dice would add quite a bit to Roll20, even if for no other reason than that it would, by definition, cover every rolling style and system out there. I made a suggestion about a possible way to handle virtual dice over here: <a href="http://community.roll20.net/discussion/539/giving-tokens-sides#Item_3" rel="nofollow">http://community.roll20.net/discussion/539/giving-tokens-sides#Item_3</a> . Perhaps you can add to that discussion as well, give your experience with the variety of VTT options available.

Hi! Thank you for the link Balladeer. :) Peter

I'll second (or third, or whatever) virtual dice, assuming it's possible in the software environment of Roll20 and not performance-taxing. Either that or macro buttons/clickable macros. Without something like that, though, I'm going back to MapTool. Can't deal with typing dice rolls anymore.

I'd definitely like the ability to do the Savage Worlds rolls properly in a single action, as Shawn Gore suggests above.

setting a default roll for a campaign, attaching macros to tokens, and adding the Exalted and Hackmaster options would make me so very happy. My group can manually count the 10's twice for Exalted for now, but I'd love to see it do it on it's own. Also, shared macros would be cool. Finally, macros that take arguments, if we don't already have that - that is, /exalted 10 to roll 10d10>7 counting 10's twice, while /exalted 5 would do 5d10>7 counting 10's twice. Putting a few default roll macros as shared would be awesome.

Implementation would be the hardest part of virtual dice. The only possible way to do it would be WebGL but that is a really young technology and the os/browser/videocard incompatibilities would be a nightmare. Google Maps has a WebGL version and even Google only has it working on a very limited set of browsers/OSs right now.

I think there should be a "fudge" function. Not as in Fudge the system, but... well basically... Some people are innately lucky or unlucky, and every d20 player knows how much luck can screw you over. I think that there should be a suffix that keeps track of the rolls the user makes with that suffix, and if the average strays too low, then it gets a small bonus, or a penalty if the average starts to get too high (without going out the possible bounds of the roll). Probably like /roll 1d20 -GL, -BL, or -L. Meaning Good Luck, Bad Luck, and Luck respectively. Say I rolled a 3, 5, and a 2 on "/roll 1d20 -BL", it would give me a small bonus on my next few rolls. Perhaps give it bounds as well. Let's say you have the lower bound set at 30%, which is a 6 on a d20. If your average die rolls were at 2, your next roll would get a +4 on your next roll. I think only the GM should see the original result and everyone sees the fudged result with no indication that it was fudged, along with an option to completely disable it. It might be hard to explain and implement, but I know a few players who ragequit over bad luck. tl;dr A means of compensating and balancing the innate luck of a player.

I came here looking for a way to do OVA RPG dice rolls in this game without having to do the manual labor of doing all the adding myself. The way it works is this. You Roll 2d6 + xd6 (which is your stat modifier), taking only the highest dice roll, adding duplicates when they appear. Example being 6d6 coming up as (6,4,4,4,5,5) giving us numbers of 6, 12 and 10 respectively, with the player taking the 12 (because it is the highest). Is there any way to do this currently, or could this be implemented somehow.

I apologize if this is covered already...or I am just missing it in the documentation. Is there a way yet to roll multiple sets of dice together? IE...rolling two attacks at once? example: /r 2(1D20+5) = 15, 18 or /r (1D20+5)*2 = 15, 18 I know the short answer is just roll you macro or roll twice...but I have gamers who are lazy...or want to roll their attack and damage at same time...Thanks! Awesome project

I saw the update that allowed us to add variables to the exploding dice mechanic, but is there a way to force it to not explode on the max die roll (such as systems that explode on 1 instead of 6 on a D6) ?

A suggestion as my previous thread said... rolls over 100 dice. I'm going to run a ridiculously high powered campaign and it would be nice to roll all +300d6 at once.

I agree with previous posters who would like to set the default dice system for a campaign or load pre defined dice kits. For example if I were playing a World of Darkness campaign typing out 4D10!>8 is pretty cumbersome every time a player needs to make a roll. If we could set the system or the default roll that allowed the player to type /r 4 and get same result it would expedite rolling substantially. A more universal and simpler solution might be to allow a macro to be fed a simple variable. For example, /roll nD10!>8 and save it as #r then feed it a variable by typing #r 4 to get that same roll as above.

As the feature set grows, the user interface is becoming opaque, use of the app difficult and arcane. This "effort-saving" feature creep is actually making the app harder to use and to learn. Unpopular though it was, I renew my recommendation that you axe the cruft. Roll dice for players and display the results. But leave all interpretation of results, all application of rules about what gets re-rolled, to people. After all, when we are playing at a real table with real dice no-one expects the successes to count themselves, nor the 10s to add and re-roll themselves.

I'd like to voice my tentative support for Agemegos' suggestion. I think that Roll20 could use a little more info about the dice rolls themselves, but I do think that interpretation and rules-application should be up to the people involved, not the computer.

I'm going to respectfully disagree. There is nothing stopping you from doing normal straight rolls, which is the first example they give and the easiest to understand. Having more tools available will only make it easier to play in rule systems that don’t lend themselves to normal nDx+y style games. When I play with my local group and we are running World of Darkness I have a set of D10s with the eight, night, and ten highlighted so I can roll and tell at a glance how many successes I’ve gotten. RPG mechanics by their nature are clunky. Tools like these make them run more efficently and allow us to focus more on the roleplay and action.

That's absolutely fair, and I appreciate your point. With respect to any particular system, adding features to Roll20 is a great convenience to the users of games with elaborate dice mechanics. On the other hand I'm afraid that feature creep is making Roll20 as a whole clunky, arcane, and difficult of access to newcomers. The dice roller used to be simple and obvious: now it needs a key, and I can never remember which way around ! and !! go. Obviously there is a golden mean somewhere, and obviously the developers are the only judges of where that is. But so long as only the playtesters who want more, or their favoured, features added speak up, the devs get a biased impression of what the users want. I'm one of the users who was originally attracted by the suggestion that Roll20 was going to resist becoming computer-game-like and was going to emphasise interaction between people ("camaraderie"), and who praised the original beta for simplicity and accessibility to the unprepared. I don't mean to howl down anyone else's opinion, but I can't accept the proposition that beta testers ought to recommend only additions. There's a variety of opinion out here in Betatesterland, the devs ought to be aware of it all, and I am expressing one point in it. I mean no criticism of any other opinion, but in my view Roll20 is getting to be too complicated and arcane.

I think agemegos might have a point. Not to disparage other games, rolling 1d6 or 1d20+4 or 1d100 as a percentile is the most basic kind of dice rolling around. All these exploding dice, keep the best of, etc are rather complicated exceptions. At best, expand the macro language to include logic, and supply a modular set of macro packs for "other" games that people can pick from when they make a Campaign. At least as macro's they'll appear in the player's macro list, so they can get used to them. It'll be easier than obscure dice syntax. I would like to see dice notation parsing in regular text or /em content. That way I could type: /em swings his sword and rolls a [1d20+4] for [1d8+1] damage I could then put that in a macro for #sword and have the app send: "Janx swings his sword and rolls a 14 for 6 damage" I like automating attack rolls to just about that level. I also suggest the probability that GMs probably are NOT going to use the dice roller for most things, as it is likely easier (given all the other things they have to type) to just roll real dice and tell players the outcome. Whereas players are likely stuck with the dice roller because that ensures the results are reliable (barring cheating/mistakes in macros).

Any way we could get a command that hides the mathematics and just displays the result. like a /rollhide? I bring this up because as a judge its sometimes necessary to fudge rolls as to not TPK in a bar fight (Bars in my games are deathtraps!). And if i suddenly start dropping that +4 damage to +2 people will obviously know.

I was working on macros for Barbarians of Lemuria, which has a particular set of "Boon / Flaw" mechanics that work like so: If you have a boon to a roll, you roll 3d6 and drop the lowest result. If you have a flaw affecting the roll, you roll 3d6 and drop the highest result. Right now, Roll20 supports the first easily - /roll 3d6k2 or /roll 3d6d1 both handle it perfectly. However, the Drop/Keep roll doesn't work in reverse - you can't drop the highest N dice, or keep the lowest N dice, as far as I can tell. Have I missed something? If not, can that be factored into the feature request list at some point?

If you have a boon to a roll, you roll 3d6 and drop the lowest result. If you have a flaw affecting the roll, you roll 3d6 and drop the highest result. The current iteration of the DnD Next playtest has a similar mechanic to this. If you have an advantage, you roll 2d20 and keep the highest. If you have a disadvantage, you roll 2d20 and keep the lowest.

Yeah, I was thinking about that mechanic as well. Not sure how I'd code it myself - I might put...maybe an optional letter on the end to signify the switch. In fact, since keep highest / drop lowest are just alternate ways to say the same thing, you could probably just modify one dice roll code, and not both. So I'd say modify the roll-and-keep version, so that by default it keeps the highest N , but if you put the letter "l" after it, it keeps the lowest N dice instead. For example: /roll 3d6k2 will keep the highest two dice (just like it does now), but /roll 3d6k2l keeps the lowest two dice, instead. (alternatively, a new dice code like XdYbN / XdYwN could be used, for "best N" and "worst N" rolls, but that's probably redundant).

It would probably be most flexible to allow for some simple programming in macros and then let people who shy away from programming copy/paste some examples from the site or forums as people develop them for specific systems. That being said, the quickest way to do it with the current system might be to have something like: /roll 3d6k+2 to take the top 2 /roll 2d20k-1 to take the lowest 1 Since they effectively do the same thing, it might also be possible to change 'd' to "drop highest" and leave 'k' as "keep highest". It would mess up peoples' saved macros unless they did automatic fixing through their DBs though.

Along the "programming in macros" topic, it could be useful if macros could call other macros. That way, you could have an "hit" macro, a "damage" macro, and a few "battle cry" macros and then just call the "attack" macro which strings the first two together and then calls one of the battle cries at random. This specific case might not be the most useful of examples, but at least that way would put the stress of complexity on the person trying to pull it off, not one of the developers. It would also be a completely optional macro mechanic.

I'm leery about creating a full-blown scripting language for Roll20. I'm an old hand with MapTool (I'm "Rumble" on the MT forums) and while that software can do amazing things, it's also complex and a bit of a steep climb for newcomers; I'd hate to see anyone intimidated by the tool. I'm also less inclined toward automation than I used to be, so my instinctive response to calling other macros and so forth is sorta "hmm" but that's just my personal bias toward less scripting these days. On the other hand, if the devs eventually decide they want it and work to make it a "very hard to do it wrong" scripting or module-building tool, I could get behind that. If they do go down the route of creating a scripting engine, though, I strongly recommend planning it from end-to-end first , unlike the one from MapTool.

@Chris, I believe that complexity gets solved when Roll20 implements rule sets, either defined by a module or by the storyteller. I.E. I’m running a White Wolf Vampire the Requiem game and Roll20 knows the default roll is /roll nD10!>8. So, when the players type /r 4 it rolls four ten sided dice looking for successes over 8 and exploding on 10. This way the players don’t need to understand the dice system, only the creator of the module or the storyteller running it. Expand this slightly so there are a number of pre-defined rolls such as /r9 for 9 again explosions in WoD or /ra and /rd for advantage/disadvantage rolls previously discussed.

As it gets more and more complicated, I'm leaning towards a completely different solution. That would be to create a dice library, from which the GM loads the roll types he needs into the campaign. Every loaded roll type would then be available in a number of ways to all players. As a macro with parameters ("#sw d4 d6 4"), as a macro that pops up a dialog to enter the (missing) parameters ("#sw", "#sw ? d6 4"), as a formula name for the /roll command ("/roll sw(4,6,4)"), and even as a shorthand notation for the roll command ("/roll 1S4>4", or even as "/roll 1d4" if loaded as default roll type). That library could contain specialized roll types for all kinds of RPGs and other games, categorized by game. And it could be maintained independently from roll20, if published under a compatible licence.

Henry: I think a "dice library" would be very confusing for new users, especially those new to RPGs. On the other hand, being able to pass on parameters to macros (and having GM-established macros) would be an amazing feature, as it would keep the basic dice roller simple enough; and most of the "advanced features", so to speak, could be explained in detail in a new Macro Reference document, making it very user-friendly, while making sure that someone willing to take their time could make some macros that use the maximum capabilities that the system allows.

As others said, I also think that Virtual Dice, like the ones that Fantasy Grounds II has, would be great to have in Roll20. If web technology doesn't allow to implement them (the concern/point raised by Eric Dalquist here), at least *some kind* graphical representation of dice rolls could be cooler than just showing the resulting numbers. Also, such Virtual Dice feature could be optional, since not everyone will want them in their screens.

I agree. We currently use Fantasy Grounds and the big selling point for the group was being able to roll virtual dice. We all know that the underlying code for generating the numbers would be the same for the virtual dice, but it helps keep that tabletop feel.

I'd like to see the Hero dice system implemented, as Agemegos said, where for "normal" damage you count the sum of the 6 sided dice for the "stun" total and then for the "body" every 1 has a value of 0, 2-5 a value of 1 and 6 a value of 2. But I also reckon that implementing a plethora of different, game system-specific dice sets would add to the complexity of the VTT. For this reason it would probably be better an extended macro system/scripting language that could allow the players to implement specific dice-rules when needed. That said, I second Alex idea of at least a simple graphical representation of the resulting numbers. E.g. simple geometrical shapes around the numbers: squares for d6, triangles for d4, and so forth.

With regards to Exalted dice rolls, could you not use multiple targets? Such as 10d10>7>10 ? Not supported currently, but seems fairly intuitive?