New user .. not so new to VTT!

Hey guys! This is my first post here and I'll delve straight away into a question! I am DMing a campaign for DnD 5e with a group of friend and due to distance between us (different cities etc.) we moved our game to another famous VTT roughly a year ago. While in principle it seems to work I must say that I am not 100% satisfied with its performance (a bit clunky at times) so I was toying with the idea to move to Roll20 with a Pro Subscription. Therefore, here I am scouting a bit the enviroment! While in principle I like such a lightweight system as Roll20, in practice I  miss the automation provided by other solutions: automatic saves, automatic success/fail of attacks against AC et alia. Is there a way to implement these functions in Roll20? I am quite good in reading and writing Macros and I found plenty of them but for a newbie it is a bit hard to find a the fundamental ones! I do not mind spending some time in setting up the enviroment for players to ensure a smooth a not troublesome experience of the game. Any suggestions/posts with toolsets for 5e? EDIT: Also, I noticed that many Backgrounds and other character creation options are missing from the Compendium. How do you deal with that? (Given that the PHB is not available yet). Thanks a million!

You can do these things in roll20, through the use of API scripts which are different from macros, and much more powerful. , Many are already made, and once you have them, they are easily portable between campaigns. The Compendium is limited to the material WOTC has made open, so there's a lot of stuff notn included. You just have to add stuff manually in those cases. I'd suggest grabbing a month test subscription to Pro, and going wild grabbing all the scripts you can and testing them out.

I'll probably do that!  Any recommendations for some 5e essentials? For instance I noticed that 5e shaped companion is quite popular (but did not receive an update since a while ago). Any other must have? Thanks!

I dont GM any D&D games, so I can't help you there. But here's a page where people talk about what scripts they find must-haves. Warning: there's a lot you can use!&nbsp;<a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/5613644/must-have-api-script-in-your-opinion" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/5613644/must-have-api-script-in-your-opinion</a>

I'll have a look! Thanks!

For 5E there is a lot that is already automated in Roll20 -- before you even get to Pro and advanced techniques with API scripts. A lot is instantly available by default when you use the official 5E OGL character sheet (or alternatively, the Shaped sheet), and especially if you purchase the Monster Manual here too. The character sheets have a lot of those fundamentals already programmed-in as sheet buttons (Macro buttons already set up), for things like Car_a_carn asked: "automatic saves, automatic success/fail of attacks against AC" and so on. Wiki docs, <a href="https://wiki.roll20.net/5th_Edition_OGL_by_Roll20" rel="nofollow">https://wiki.roll20.net/5th_Edition_OGL_by_Roll20</a> <a href="https://wiki.roll20.net/Monster_Manual" rel="nofollow">https://wiki.roll20.net/Monster_Manual</a>

Thanks Gold! However, I could not find anything on that:&nbsp;"automatic saves, automatic success/fail of attacks against AC"

The_Car_a_carn said: Thanks Gold! However, I could not find anything on that:&nbsp;"automatic saves, automatic success/fail of attacks against AC" I've been thinking about your question, Car_a_carn. I can show you to lots of Roll20 Features, but I don't really know about how it was automated for you on the other VTT, so I'm not sure if we are talking the same lingo. Things like Saving Throws and hit/miss are automated in a sense, the Player just clicks a button on their character sheet and it rolls the save, telling success or not in the chat. It doesn't just roll a d20 and you have to compare numbers or look up saving throw charts to see if it succeeds. It actually rolls the dice and compares it to the target number. It's automated in that sense, and I'm not sure if that matches the type of automation that you are comparing it to. Best method for seeing and testing what I'm talking about is just to start up some Games on here. It's free to start games, which can have no players, just you for testing. Maybe you want to start 1 game with the Shaped sheet, and 1 game with the 5E OGL sheet. Make at least 1 character in the Journal tab for each. Then open the character sheets and try some of the sheet buttons. If you like, later we move to slightly more advanced techniques with moving the sheet buttons into Token Actions or Macro Quick Bar (same functionality just different places to arrange and click the macro buttons for quick access).