Dice Rolling Plans & Suggestions

After spending an inordinate amount of time reading the original thread I've come up with what I hope is a decent summary. To be clear, our goal is a straight-forward dice rolling system that includes features generally used across a large number of systems. At this time we have no plans or desire to create a whole dice rolling language, just add some shortcuts to help with what are otherwise painful tasks with digital rolls. Original Thread: <a href="http://community.roll20.net/discussion/208/dice-rolling-suggestions" rel="nofollow">http://community.roll20.net/discussion/208/dice-rolling-suggestions</a> Summary of Planned Features Prefix-Less Rolls No longer will you have to type than whole extra 1 before the d to roll! Commands such as "/roll d20+d6+3" will work just like you've always dreamed. Keep &amp; Drop As stated in the original thread our current keep/drop utility essentially provides two ways to do the same thing. 10d6k2 keeps the top two rolls and drops the bottom 8. 10d6d8 drops the bottom 8 and keeps the top 2. This syntax provides no way to drop high rolls. We're proposing extending the drop/keep syntax to include: Keep Low - 10d6kl2 - keeps only the lowest two rolls Drop Low - 10d6dl2 or 10d6d2 - drops the lowest two rolls Keep High - 10d6kh2 or 10d6k2 - keeps only the highest two rolls Drop High - 10d6dh2 - drops the highest two rolls Alternatively instead of l and h we could use - and + after the d and k. Let us know what you think ReRoll Several systems require a re-roll on X feature. The re-roll system will allow specifying re-roll of a specific value, multiple values, or values in a range. 10d6r - re-rolls all 1s 10d6r2 - re-rolls all 2s 10d6r&lt;2 - re-rolls values less than or equal to 2 10d6r>2 - re-rolls values greater than or equal to 2 10d6r2r4 - re-rolls all 2s and 4s Penetrating Dice This extension to the explosion system adds a constant decrease on each re-roll for an exploding die 10d6!p - every time a dice explodes a -1 modifier is applied to it (non stacking) 10d6!p3 - every time a dice explodes a -3 modifier is applied to it (non stacking) Don't filter out . in math operations Seems obvious but it was a bug in our parser numbers with decimal places and negative signs will now be supported correctly. I'm also whitelisting the modulus operator Grouped Rolls Several operations also make sence for groups of rolls, we are adding square bracket support for success, drop, keep, and reroll to be applied to a group of dice [3d6, 4d8] > 2 - success check, note the use of a comma for seperation for success counts [3d6 - 4d4]dl4 - drop lowest 4 rolls out of all 7 dice being rolled [3d6 + 4d4]r2 - reroll any dice from either the d6 or d4 that come up as 1 or 2 Multiple Rolls Run the same roll command a specified number of times /roll3 1d20+5 - runs the 1d20+5 roll three times giving three results Roll Sorting Roll20 specifically does not sort rolls as we realize roll order is important to many systems. There are a few systems out there that have a very good reason to need sorted rolls for things like comparing individual dice from different players. sort[3d10+2, 4d8, 5d3] - sorts the results of the entire set of dice into one array. Math operations are applied to each individual die Best/Worst Compare two roll groups and show the result of whichever group was better or worse /roll [1d12!+2] b [1d6!+2] /roll [1d12!+2] w [1d6!+2] Roll Builder GUI Coming Soon to a VTT near you! Virtual Dice Coming Soon to a VTT near you! Additional Suggestions The following are other ideas that we like too but aren't going to make the initial cut. We have a lot to do and most of these are significantly more complex than just tweaking the dice syntax. We will keep them on our list! Campaign wide / Global Macros Integration with Dicenomicon Pre-built decks of dice faces to use for counters / dice pool Variables in macros Ability to import and export macros as a plain text file.

Not specifically dice but since I noticed mention of pre-built decks for counters....it would be nice to have an easier way to build (or have pre-built) decks for "bag draws." I'm specifically thinking of Deadlands Reloaded fate chips and similar systems. Here you need poker chips in a bag 5xblue, 10xred, and 20xwhite for players to draw. This can be handled with the deck system but a pre-built would save a lot of effort (or the ability to add a card and set how many occurrences are in the deck)

It would be cool if we could manipulate the dice pool and interact with the 3D dice sorting by die size and all and moving across the table. It would be a blast for playing Marvel Heroic Roleplaying. :)

re: Best/Worst For my uses (Savage Worlds) a mechanic that simply outputs the best of two rolls and obfuscates the undesired one wouldn't be sufficient since the other roll is often relevant for the purpose of critical and arcane failures when it comes up a 1. Because of this I would really like to see Best/Worst spit out the output of both rolls and then *severely* highlight (large text, bold, red, circled, some combination of several) the specified value.

with the "(1d20) b (2d10)" syntax you would see a result that looks like "(14) b (8+3) = 14" I'm thinking that I'll bold the best/worst group to highlight which one worked. The big thing to remember is that we will never hide rolls from you. Even with the drop/keep/reroll mechanics we show the ignored dice and just grey them out.

Just FYI Roll20 team, you will make a small fortune if you sell Dice Skin's eg Marbled or Steel colored etc :)

"Ability to import and export macros as a plain text file." This will be extremely useful for me, and for novice players in my games too: I can arrange the macros for them, making their first game easier. So these pre-set macros given to them would work well along with premade (oro sample) characters.

Would it be possible to create custom faced dice to go along with your 3d dice or even to just display the custom face as a 2d pic when rolled? This would open up the possibility to create custom Hit/Miss dice that are used in many games.

Would it be possible to create custom faced dice to go along with your 3d dice or even to just display the custom face as a 2d pic when rolled? This would open up the possibility to create custom Hit/Miss dice that are used in many games. I agree, this would be a great feature. I really want to play the new Star Wars Beta from FFG, but it uses custom dice.

Custom faces and dice packs are something that is under consideration :)

Perhaps I don't see how this is done, but I have not seen how to create a dice syntax that takes into account a critical roll for games such as DND 3E. In such systems, if you roll a 20, or a number within a range including up to 20, the damage is multiplied. I don't see a way to achieve this using any of the available syntax. If there isn't a way to reflect this in a virtual roll there should be. If there currently is, someone please help me out with the proper syntax. Thank you in advance.

Can you supply a little math example of that multiplier and I'll see what I can do :)

I would like to see a menu item added to re-roll the last roll. As a GM you often have to roll multiple times for a set of monsters. Having a quick button would be handy.

Press the up-arrow in the chat box, that lets you scroll through your previous commands. Up then Enter will redo your last command.

re: Best/Worst Playing a Savage Worlds game at the moment, I would love this to become a reality soon. :-) My macros would look much cleaner. 0:-) A small comment on notation. I wonder if it would make sense to choose the best/worst from any number of rolls, not just two, e.g. intead of a syntax like /roll [1d12!+2] b [1d6!+2] something like /roll b [1d12!+2, 1d6!+2] which extends nicely if needed into more rolls, e.g. /roll b [1d12!+2, 1d10, 1d6!+2] Thanks for all the good work!

Good suggestion Sergut and just in time. I'll be tackling the remaining mechanics this weekend to get them ready for the next update and I'll use your syntax :)

Oops, pressed "post" too soon. 0:-) The [ , , ] can also be used for other things apart from best/worst rolls, like e.g. mixed dice pools for success-based rools: [2d4, 2d6, 2d8] > 4 . Thanks once again! :-)

That is in the plans, you'll be able to use [] to group rolls and apply certain modifiers to the entire group.

apply to each roll of the group individually? if so, great

In Dark Heresy based games (FFG) there is a "number of successes" feature related to skill tests. If I roll a 43 against a target of 80, I succeed with 3 degrees of success, 1 degree for each "10" I beat my target by. 50 vs 80, is also a 3 degree, whereas 51 vs 80 is only 2 degrees of success. Hope that I have explained that sufficiently, but it would be a fantastic boon to our campaign. Thanks and keep up the great work.

Plox Titus, I'd like to see a different way of rolling under or equal to a target number for achieving success with Roll20, and having this margin (or degrees) of success displayed without we having to type an indirect, not very much intuitive syntax (not to me, in any case) like, for instance "/r 13-3d6 Meditation", that in the end displays things in this way: rolling 13-3d6 Meditation 13-(6+1+1) = 5 That 5 would be the degree of success. Many RPG systems use this "roll-under-or-equal" way for their dice rolls: Chaosium's BRP & CoC & Stormbringer & Runequest, Hero System, GURPS . . . and seemingly Dark Heresy too, between others. The easiest and more elegant way of doing this roll-under , to my mind would be by means of, for instance, /roll 3d6 < 13 Meditation but this syntax is already used by Roll20 for handling the success of individual dice according to other rule systems. I don't know, maybe we could use this syntax: /roll 3d6 < = 13 Meditation

Plox's GM here, thanks for getting back to his post so fast. We all are interested in this function as it is used in all of the 5 rpg system's for warhammer 40k roleplay put out by FFG. Anyways, looking at your example of the convaluted syntax mad me think that while that is a bit counter intuitive, it would essientially work for us if we made the syntax its own macro ( lets call it the roll macro) and then could write a new macro, DoS macro, dividing the result of the Roll macro by 10. While the end result would be anything but clean and pretty, essientially if your result had any whole numbers in it, they would be your degree of successes. And any negative result would indicate it was a failure on the roll. Unfortunately i am on an iPad right now and I can not check if this works, and I do not know if there is a divide function or if the structure would work but on paper it would seem to make sense. Another option that is long but could work is if you could input multiple target numbers and then just count down by intervals of ten ( 1d100<74;64;54;44;34;24;14;4 ) then for each success you get, that would be one degree of success. Further, there might be some way to get it to neatly group your successes and failures for a cleaner and easier end result. Just some ideas that came to mind after sleeping on it. Thanks again for making this awesome product and keepin in touch with the users, and addressing our comments.

Hello all, please be patient with my requests as I have only played one session, but had a great time. I was wondering if you could add a button to the graphical dice box that would let the roll be seen by the player and the DM only? There are times when the Game requires a quiet check of a skill roll that the DM might not want to advertise to the rest of the players. There is probably a way to do that with a string of commands, but I was never good at math and it would be a great help for those of us less gifted with putting together a string of numbers and symbols. This brings me to my second request. Is it possible to create a Macro Builder? Something that you could give a descriptor, and then the type of dice required along with any modifiers? This would let us all save time and move the game along for everybody. Thanks for your consideration.

Razir, you can type /gmroll instead of /roll to create a private roll that only you and the DM see.

Suggestion: an option to cheat as GM, or to secretly modify a dice roll. My Idea: If the dice rolling system gets more complex, you could add a command line, that requires the GM to allow the dice roll. As a GM this would look like this: -------------------------------------------------- Player would like to "Smash skull" @Goblin, would roll a 18 and deal 12Dmg. Do you, as GM: "allow"---"refuse"---"modify" ---------------------------------------------------- /blah blah blah-start Additional thought: I heard the argument that a comlex dice rolling system would disencourage new players. Folling the example of some other game editors, you could add a simple and advanced version of the dice roll GUI. The simple one would only include the basic commands, suitable for non-programmers and cassual gamers. The advanced mode would feature all the commands and maybe also a direct script language input method. I guess that allmost every gaming group has at least one guy in it, that is capable of programming stuff. Or knows a guy that could help them write complex and usefull macros and export them as plain text file. /blah blah blah-end Keep up the good work! I am looking forward for any macro related updates :)

I've been using rolz.org until I found this site, one dice roll feature it had I really liked was a repeat function on its dice rolls. I could do: EXAMPLE: repeat 6 1d100 and it would roll 6 d100 and list all results on the same line so it would answer, EXAMPLE: 6,21,75,89,100,45 It'd be really nice to have that feature here aw well

Hey guys, I've been using reroll function (as 5d10r10>8) for my WoD campaign, but I noticed when 10s are rerolled they are also excluded from the success count [rolling 12d10r10>8 (6+6+1+1+1+7+3+10+2+6+2+4+10+5)>8 yelds no success], which is wrong according to WoD rules (rerolled dice are not ignored). Does anyone know can I make those rerolled die count?

@Radhra you want exploding dice, not reroll. Try: 12d10!10>8

Critical hits in DnD 3.5 and other similar d20 systems, where if you roll a natural 20, or a upper range of natural rolls numbers up to and including 20, that does not factor in any modifier added to the initial roll and multiplies the following damage roll. For example, your initial attack roll hits and is a critical with a long sword. Then the next damage dice is multplied by times 2. Let's say the attack roll was d20+5. for a longsword, the critical hit range is a "natural" 19 to 20 (before the +5 is added). So then minimum 19 is rolled on the "d20" portion of the syntax before the +5 modifier is added. Next, the damage dice is rolled, which we will say is d8+2, which yields an 4. Since it is a critical, it should become [d8+2]x2 = [2+2]x2= 8. Perhaps a syntax something like this for the example above; /r 1d20+5, If d20=>19, then (d8+2)x2, otherwise d8+2.

That is getting out of scope. We don't have any intent of having roll expression A affect roll expression B. In that case I'd recommend having a "attack" macro and if you crit just click your damage macro twice.

Fair enough, though that would automatically double the amount of needed macros for attacks and damage, which was what I was trying to avoid. I hope in the future this will be reconsidered. Thank you for your time.

I'm having problems trying out the 3D dice on my Firefox browser. My plugin and graphics drivers are all up to date and it's been a few days since then so I dunno what could be the problem.

@Razz, please start a new discussion in the Help & Support forum.

Any plans for a way to drop some numbers from a success system? For example i use /roll 10d10!>4 i want all 1's to be substracted from the success totals the same way 10's count for 2

Do simply want the 1s dropped or do you want the 1s re-rolled?

Subtracted from the total amount of success

hrm, ok I'll add it to the wish list :)

Super thanks

Just wanted to tack this on here, I would love to have a virtual d100 like all of the other 3D dice. I run a Dark Heresy game, and it is all d10 and d100s.

Like a golf-ball d100 or a pair of d10s?

The golf ball would be a little difficult to read, I think.

Yeah, I just wantet to clarify. We are looking into getting the pair of d10s working. I think the physics engine might have a heart attack if we start rolling d100 golf balls :p

On readability, if you guys did it like the Zocchihedron than I see no issue.

Eeeerrhhh! On the picture illustrating your wikilink, I would be hard-pressed to read a result. Thanks for the link, I liked Lou Zocchi as a game designer, but didn't knew about this dice

Yeah, that is exactly what I was referring to as "golf ball dice". Trying to read those thing in reality is hard. Reading them (and waiting for the physics simulation to resolve) virtually would be VERY painful. Hopefully we'll have good news about using two d10 as percentile die soon enough.

For players of systems like Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, and other dice pool systems where the result and the type of die rolled are important, it would be nice to have implemented 2 dimensional die icons (in the place of simply the result numbers) in chat, with the result printed on each that can then be clicked and dragged or sorted as needed.

For players of systems like Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, and other dice pool systems where the result and the type of die rolled are important, it would be nice to have implemented 2 dimensional die icons (in the place of simply the result numbers) in chat, with the result printed on each that can then be clicked and dragged or sorted as needed. This is something we're looking into. I don't have any more info than that but it is on the radar!

Follow up. Sorry for mentioning one of your competitors. But Tabletop Forge is an example of the simple die icons in chat that I mentioned in my previous post. Also dice tagging and the ability to edit the colors of the die icons would be great.

Hi! First off, kudos for the virtual dice! I'm glad you decided to add this feature and roll20 has definitely arisen in my estimation by leaps and bounds because of it. Again KUDOS! Query, will there be any attempt to provide virtual dice for the odd zochi dice the DCC RPG uses? Thanks. Peter

I am fine with a pair of d10, or 1d10 and one of the double digit d10s, Ive actually used a golfball d100, and that thing takes forever to stop rolling.

Any plans for a way to drop some numbers from a success system? For example i use /roll 10d10!>4 i want all 1's to be substracted from the success totals the same way 10's count for 2 Yeah having those 1's dropped from exploding dice would really make V:tM/M:ta dice rolling system easier. something like /roll 10d10!#>6 where the # mark denotes 1's canceling. Aside from that an alias system that allows for an argument would simplify the entire process. For example if I have a macro named myDice /roll xd10!#>6 then I could just /myDice 6. Double input would be even nicer but I imagine more troublesome like macro: myDice2 "/roll xd10!#>y" then I type /myDice 6 4 6 would be the number of d10s, 4 would be the target number to beat. Just some ideas, you have done great with the dice rollers thus far!