Help with creating macros for attacks with multiple variables in Pathfinder

Hello

Yes, this is yet another of those "new player is confused by the world of macro's" type of a post. Thus far I've happily been rolling my attacks from the macros supplied by the character sheet and it has served me well, saving me from having to delve too deep into the world of macros.

But now I've joined a Pathfinder game where I'm playing a Barbarian and the various combinations of attacks are starting to get too varied for my macro bar to fit them and are promising to get more daunting still.

First, the character has two weapons, which he uses situationally, plus a bite attack and a claw attack, both of which have primary and secondary versions. That's six different kinds of attacks thus far.

Now as he hit level 3, he gained the Power Attack feat, which doubles the kinds of attacks he can make, putting him at twelve. Next level I'm thinking of picking up the Reckless Abandon rage power (though might go for something like Raging Grappler or No Escape to keep things simpler), which would again double the possible ways to attack, ending up at twenty four.

Finally on level 6 he'll get Abyssal Blood, which gives him Enlarge once per day, leading to an increase in the damage die of all his attacks, pushing the count of various ways of making an individual attack up to 48. At the same time he'll also gain a new attack from getting to +6 BAB.

Now the situation isn't quite as complex as portrayed as some attacks could be bundled into full-round attack macros, but it still leaves one with a lot of situations to cover. Then again, the macros would need to use the sheet values, as the characters ability scores can vary wildly due to rage and enlarge. (Is there a way to tell which sheet we're using? I'm not familiar with the sheet system on Roll20, but I'm under the impression that there's more than one version of a Pathfinder sheet. Does that matter when writing macros?)

So the point of this thread isn't simply to ask help in writing the individual macros, though any help on that front would be appreciated. What I'm trying to find help for is in figuring out the best way to sort all possible versions of things into as few macros as possible. How would people wiser than me organize this mess?

Now, the mission is daunting already but then I bring up a personal preference of mine: I'd really appreciate it if there was a way to do this without having the macro pop up a drop-down menu from which to specify variables. I find that those po-pups jar me out of the game by pausing everything. It's a bit like if when rolling dice in real world, once you throw it the world stops and starts asking you questions, when all you want to see is the result. Also, numerous have been the times that I've clicked a macro, forgetting it spawns a pop-up and then have the entire table sit there with me, wasting time as nothing happens. Thus, if at all possible, I'd like the macros to be one click to roll.

That being said, if the only sane way to handle this is with pop-ups, so be it.

So yeah, that's a lot of words. Thanks for anyone who suffered through it and doubly the thanks to those who come up with a way to help.

Hi Rev and welcome to Roll20. You can do a lot with the macros, but it does take some getting used to. I'm going to assume that you are using full featured Pathfinder Character sheet which I'll describe at the bottom for these answers.

First, the character has two weapons, which he uses situationally, plus a bite attack and a claw attack, both of which have primary and secondary versions. That's six different kinds of attacks thus far.

I'd put each attack in as a separate attack. The sheet now has the ability to put queries in to some of the attack sections so you could put a query for primary/secondary there if you wanted, or just have six attacks. Now, to keep your macro bar from becoming astonomically large, you will use the Attacks Macro to generate a button menu in chat to access all your attacks rather than polluting your macro bar.

Now as he hit level 3, he gained the Power Attack feat, which doubles the kinds of attacks he can make, putting him at twelve. Next level I'm thinking of picking up the Reckless Abandon rage power (though might go for something like Raging Grappler or No Escape to keep things simpler), which would again double the possible ways to attack, ending up at twenty four.

There are two ways to do this. You can use the buffs section of the sheet to toggle your power attack/rage powers on and off or use drop-down prompts in the appropriate fields of the attack. I'd recommend using the buff for abandon and the query for PA.

Finally on level 6 he'll get Abyssal Blood, which gives him Enlarge once per day, leading to an increase in the damage die of all his attacks, pushing the count of various ways of making an individual attack up to 48. At the same time he'll also gain a new attack from getting to +6 BAB.

Here your best bet is definitely going to be using the Buff section of the sheet as this is something that is active for more than just a single action.

Now the situation isn't quite as complex as portrayed as some attacks could be bundled into full attack macros, but it still leaves one with a lot of situations to cover. Then again, the macros would need to use the sheet values, as the characters ability scores can vary wildly due to rage and enlarge. (Is there a way to tell which sheet we're using? I'm not familiar with the sheet system on Roll20, but I'm under the impression that there's more than one version of a Pathfinder sheet. Does that matter when writing macros?)

What sheet you are using does matter quite a bit. Does your sheet have a yellow background? If so you are using the simple sheet, and pretty much none of what I laid out here will work (although you could replicate most of it by making custom macros. Things get a little more complicated if your sheet background is white though. I've been assuming that you are using a sheet that looks like this at the top:

Notice the ver field that read 0.62 in the top right. If your sheet says that, then the above advice will work. If not then it means your GM is using either one of the old language specific versions (which haven't been updated in a year or so) or a custom sheet.

So the point of this thread isn't simply to ask help in writing the individual macros, though any help on that front would be appreciated. What I'm trying to find help for is in figuring out the best way to sort all possible versions of things into as few macros as possible. How would people wiser than me organize this mess?

Now, the mission is daunting already but then I bring up a personal preference of mine: I'd really appreciate it if there was a way to do this without having the macro pop up a drop-down menu from which to specify variables. I find that those po-pups jar me out of the game by pausing everything. It's a bit like if when rolling dice in real world, once you throw it the world stops and starts asking you questions, when all you want to see is the result. Also, numerous have been the times that I've clicked a macro, forgetting it spawns a pop-up and then having the entire table sit there with me, wasting time as nothing happens. Thus, if at all possible, I'd like the macros to be one click to roll.

As mentioned above for the attacks, I'd recommend using Ability Command Button menus for a lot of stuff. If you aren't using the sheet I thought, then you can manually make these pretty easily.

That being said, if the only sane way to handle this is with pop-ups, so be it.

For some things like PA that are per action, pop-ups might be your best bet unless you want to make an extra ability for each possibility.

Hope that helps and once you figure out which way you want to go and which sheet your on, helping with the specific setups will be much easier.

-Scott

Thanks for the advice Scott. I appreciate the answer.

It does not, however, seem that we are using the sheet you referenced, and ours has no Buff section that I've been able to find. Rather it's a long sheet that has no tabs to separate the fields, with a white background. Will bother my GM to ask which sheet specifically it is.

I'll also muck around with Ability Command Buttons. If I understood what they do correctly, they seem to be a way to solve a good deal of my issues.

Edit: Since I'm asking questions: I know you can drag macros from your character sheet to your macro bar by simply dragging. These macros are not however added to the macro list in your options nor is there any way to open them to edit that I can find. Is there a way to copy these macros somehow and edit them, as by doing that I could skip a bunch of extra steps and ensure my macros work with the sheet we are using.

Can you post up a screenshot of the top of the character sheet you are using? There might be things you can do with it depending on the sheet.

As for the dragging to the macro bar; The button that gets generated on the macro bar should just be a shortcut to that ability, so I'd see if there's a place to edit the macro in the sheet.

Also, does your sheet look like this:


Because that is the Pathfinder Legacy Layout sheet. If your GM has questions about potentially swapping sheets from the Legacy to the current. You might direct them to this post.

Yes, that seems to be the sheet we're using with some very minor differences, probably due to updates.

I can't find the weapon macros the sheet uses anywhere on the sheet at least, so I can't edit/copy them directly. I can at least get their names by dragging them to the macro bar. With those names I can probably use them in Ability Command Buttons and save some time for myself by not having to handcraft macros that use sheet values.

For some reason though, when I roll them from the sheet the rolls are broadcast to everyone, but if I drag them to the macro bar, they become whispers to the GM.

The help is appreciated and now I can see a way to get things work out somewhat sanely. Will put some time into it later when I have more of it.

Ah, it looks like that sheet has a way to see what the macro is, but it doesn't actually respect that macro text (it's hardcoded into the sheet). It looks like this is what the pathfinder sheet was before many of the updates that it has gone through in the last (couple?) years. I remember when the PF sheet my game uses wouldn't respect changes made to the macro field; it was a real pain to do do anything different than what was hardcoded in.

Out of curiosity, what are you using to calculate the rage buffs? Are you just keeping track of it by memory/player or gm control? I am using the first kind of sheet updated (0.63) sheet for a goblin feral gnasher (racial barbarian archetype) and am trying to make a macro/ability to toggle my rage buff. I ask because I am curious if I could glean something from what you were doing for it or if I would have to make a separate topic.

I did some Googling on the subject of macros for rage buffs and the answer I found was that handling the buff was not possible through macros, rather you'd need API scripts for that. So, as I'm not a Pro subscriber, I'm simply adding the buffs to the Misc category on my character sheet and then using sheet values in macros. It's a bit of a hassle but seeing as you need to do so only once during a session on average, it's not driving me crazy yet.

Hopefully it's easier to manage in the 0.63 sheet than mine, if yours has a dedicated buff section.

I also could be wrong with what I said about it not being possible, in which case I'd happily be corrected on the subject.

Yeah, that was more or less the consensus I had come to as well, though most post regarding the APIs I had seen were 6 months or longer ago (ergo 2 versions or more ago)... However, it is MUCH easier as I merely need to click a check box and it calculates everything (AC, HP, Atk bonus, Dmg bonus, etc) using the new stats. The main down side of this is that I need to open up my character sheet every time I want to turn it on or off. I just find that odd considering that the sheet has a variable you can call for the check box and get the Boolean 0 or 1 from it, though I have yet to find a way to set it to one or the other.

I'm going to test around with the sheet in a pop out window (much easier to handle with it not blocking the map) and see if that takes care of it, but because of other things, I feel that the pop out windows don't properly update the token and the like properly, though this may have been due to the massive amount of tabs I had open at the time. Thank you for the response! For now, I will live with the buff tab and the character sheet stuff. Particularly because I now know that I could have it be more of a hassle! Thanks again!

Update: The pop out window does work and update properly, it just takes a few seconds to recalculate.