I really like the Attributes and Abilities. Very glad I discovered roll20 after this feature had been added.
I do, though, have a few suggested improvements.
One of the cooler, possibly hidden features (I stumbled across it by accident.)
I really like that I can call an ability in chat -- and even modify the ability, so I can do
%{Alistair|Wisdom-Check} +4
And that will roll the ability for the Wisdom Check and add four. Makes it really easy to do modifiers that way. But it would be even cooler if it were easier to reference the abilities -- so when I type %{ it starts auto-suggesting options for me. For example, typing
%{Al
would auto-suggest all of Alistair's abilities.
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To expand on the idea of referencing ability macros in chat: I can only program for the standard type of ability check. Using the method I describe above, I can modify with a positive or negative modifier -- or even add a die roll to it, but if I need to modify the core roll itself, I have to look up all the modifiers and dice that I baked into the macro. What if, instead....when I referenced an ability in the chat ... like so...
%{Alistair|Wisdom-Check}
Instead of just displaying "%{Alistair|Wisdom-Check}" it displayed the actual command in the window. So as soon as I finished typing "%{Alistair|Wisdom-Check}" it would change to:
/roll d20 +@Alistair|Wisdom
Where %{Alistair|Wisdom}% references an Attribute, not an ability. Then I could go in and modify it as needed:
/gmroll 2d20k1+ @Alistair|Wisdom
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Another suggestion: any chance of adding other types of scores? Attributes, as they are defined now, have a current and max value. Great for hit points and other types of scores that might increment/decrement over time, but what about scores that have modifiers (abilities in D&D) or static numbers that rarely change (AC in D&D).
Having these different types of scores as reference-able data in the system would be useful. I need to do a strength check, I can /roll d20 + @strength -- and it knows to use my +3 strength modifier.
Here's how I would break it down:
Have something called "Modifiers" (I would put D&D Abilities here). These are positive or negative numbers that are added to a role.
Have something else called "Scores" (probably put something like AC here). These are static numbers that are not likely to change much during the course of a game, but are important.
Maybe even something else called "Pools" -- useful for games where skills are measured in the number of dice you roll. For each item in a Pool, I would set a number to roll and the type of dice to roll.
What gets really cool is when you can start mixing and matching these different types of scores in the ability macros.
