Custom die rolling - 'binary' dice

Hi there!

Roll20 looks fantastic, and I'd like to run a campaign with it, however I use a custom ruleset invented by a friend and I, and we use a dice rolling system not covered by your dice roller. Our dice are effectively two sided, with possible values of 1 and 0 - we call them binary dice. What we actually use are blank 6 sided dice which we put pips on three of the six sides.

If a player has a skill (typically in the range of 3-10) of 6, they then roll 6 of these dice for a result between 0 an 6 with a normal distribution. We also have modifiers to rolls, and those modifiers are additional binary dice which are rolled at the same time. However, criticals only apply to the skill rolls, so our modifier dice are a different colour.

So a player might be asked to roll 6d+4, in which case they roll 6 white dice and 4 green dice together, with the total of these being their skill roll. A critical failure would be a roll of 0/6+whatever, a critical success would be a roll of 6/6+whatever.

Is it possible to use your dice rolling system to 1) roll 'binary' dice and 2) keep base and modifier components of the roll separate?

Thank you in advance for your help! I hope we can make this work, as Roll20 looks amazing :)

Let me see if I understand correctly:

If I were to roll 6d+4 I am in fact rolling 6d2+4d2 with each set of dice being recording successess or failures? (1s = 0s and 2s = 1s)

If I understand correctly the answer is: more or less, yes.

Using your example type in the following:
/roll white dice 6d2>2
/roll green dice 4d2>2

You will get the number of successes or failures. A success is a 1, a failure is a 0. The total number of successes will be posted.

Here is an example (copy/pasted from the chat log).
rolling white dice 6d2>2
(1+1+1+2+1+2)>2 = 2 Successes

rolling green dice 4d2>2
(2+2+1+1)>2 = 2 Successes

It should be noted that in the dice roller > is greater than or equal to and that < is less than or equal to.

- Gauss

Ah! That does indeed seem to do what I need! Thank you! My only concern is that it is a little bit unwieldy. Is there a way to perhaps use the macros function to create a shortcut allowing a player to put in the values for the result?

Perhaps like this:
#r
/roll white dice xd2>2
/roll green dice yd2>2

And the player types:

#r6,4

I don't know if you can use more than more variable in a macro, or how to seperate them, I've only been looking at Roll20 for a couple of hours :)

Thank you very much for your help :)

I do not believe so. However you could use the Dice Roller (found on the toolbar on the left hand side of the screen) to more quickly change the numbers. In that case use D4 and set > to 3. Then just adjust the number of dice.

- Gauss

awe man, yew got my hopes up for a second there Gauss with the white/green dice...so now I HAVE A QUESTION:

is there a way to macro different color 3d dice? id love to roll out 2 diff colors so I new what the outcome was before it loaded in the chat.

Afraid not, the only way to change the color of the dice is by changing your color. (Bottom right corner where your name is there is a color box, click on it and you can select a different color.)

Note: reskinning 3D dice has been suggested.

When I mentioned white and green dice I was referencing the announcement that they were white or green (as per the OPs example).

- Gauss

Neil:

I thought of another alternative:

Since you are typically using only a range of 1-10 dice I would make macros of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 dice. Label each macro with the number of dice. Also make 2 macros that state the color of the dice. 12 macros should fit on most people's screens.

Example:
Hit the 'White' macro which results in: I am rolling white dice.
Hit the '6d2' macro which results in: 6d2>2 are rolled and the successes are announced.
Hit the 'Green' macro which results in: I am rolling green dice.
Hit the '4d2' macro which results in: 4d2>2 are rolled and the successes are announced.

To save your players work you can make all of these macros yourself and put them in the players Macro lists.