Dice pool as timer

Hi there, kinda new to this whole roll20 thing so very much a noob when it comes to using macros, etc. But I was wondering if there is a type of macro that uses a dice pool as a sort of timer in dungeon. I found this concept from the Angry DM, I'm not sure if links are really allowed here so i won't link to his site. I found this tool to work really well in my live table games and the way it works is basicly like this:
While the party is exploring, every so often the DM adds a die to the pool, say aproxamitly every 40 squares if they are moving slowly checking for traps, secret doors, etc, to simulate say aproxamitely 10 minutes time passing. Or time searching a large room for any hidden treasure might get another die added or maybe even 2 if they take a really long time in it searching. A die could be added to add a sense of urgency if the players are kinda bogged down arguing about what to do next, etc.   When the pool reaches 6 dice the DM rolls all 6 and if any one of them comes up a 1 some random event happens, like a wandering monster blunders into the party or something like that.
The die pool can be adjusted with different dice, say if it is a fairly easy campaign or dungeon or whatever, you the DM would use d8s, if it is harder, d6s, and d4s if really a tough dungeon that will really challenge the players. Using the smaller dice simulates the harder dungeon, as there is more of a chance of one of the 6 d4s coming up a 1 when they are rolled.
The die being added to the pool doesn't always have to be the same size either, for instance the party is exploring thru a dragons lair and the dragon is out and about carrousing doing what dragons do, while he is away the DM might be adding d6s to the pool, but suddenly the dragon returns for a snooze,, he doesn't know the players are there yet so the dm stars adding d4s to the pool to simulate the sudden increase in danger.
And one final thing, this really kinda needs to be a visual tool on screen so that all players could see that another die has just been added to the pool and there lucky streak, may or may, not be about to come to an end.   Any help or ideas that would help me out? Please keep in mind that i have really no idea how to design or create a macro :)  Thanks :)

There's a couple of ways this could be done. For a simple-ish solution, you can place tokens in a corner of the map; each token denoting the die type. Once six tokens are placed, you'd use a macro like this:
/roll {[[1d?{D1|4}]],[[1d?{D2|4}]],[[1d?{D3|4}]],[[1d?{D4|4}]],[[1d?{D5|4}]],[[1d?{D6|4}]]}<1

When the macro runs, change the 4 to the number of sides for the die you are rolling; per die. This then rolls all the dice and if at least rolls a 1, it returns a success (meaning an event).

hey thanks :)   it's a pretty good option,,, a little bit clunky but it would work until something better comes along,, thanks again :)

For the visual part, you can actually drag a die from the chat to the tabletop.  From there it becomes a multi-sided token.  You could pull a 6-sided die to the tabletop, and then just change the face as you need to, to show how many dice are being accumulated, as shown below:


You need to have advanced dice enabled in your settings for this to work.  Make sure when you drag the die, you're dragging the number in parenthesis:


The number below (next to the quantum roll sign) does not create a token if dragged to the tabletop. 
You change faces on the token like any other multi-sided token - right click on the token, then click on "Multi-Sided", then "Choose Side."  Then, simply choose the side you want.


Hope this helps!

great thnx :)  both good sugestions,, i look forward to using it with my players this weekend :)

Thanks for the add Gozer! Wasn't aware of that functionality. Certainly cleans it up a bit.

Mysteria, never said anything about it being clean lol :)  If you go the route of APIs, one of the gurus ::cough cough:: like TheAaron ::cough:: may be able to come up with a much nicer solution. API is a Pro feature however.

lol,, is not all that bad really once you get it loaded on a macro button so thanks again :)  yeah it would be nice to be able to perhaps drag token onto the page and it adds the formula to the macro and when it gets to 6 dice you just hit the roll button,, but yeah, until then this will work great,, thnx again :)  as for the dice, i just made a few with tokentool from some brightly colored die pics i found, had them already made before Gozer posted so i'll just use them as they are bright and eye-catching,, thnx again guys for the sugestions :)

If you use the pulled-to-table dice (multi-sided icon) as Gozer suggests, you can even highlight your pool on the page, right click, and choose Random Side and it will roll the selected dice for you.  :)

oh nice, thnx for the idea Diana :)

Diana P said:

If you use the pulled-to-table dice (multi-sided icon) as Gozer suggests, you can even highlight your pool on the page, right click, and choose Random Side and it will roll the selected dice for you.  :)

Ooooo even moar gooder!

Yeah, that's a great idea.  Didn't know you could roll multiple.  That makes me want to start using that mechanic.

lol,, like i said, it really works great in my live table games with our local group, so hoping it works as well with my online group :)

P.S. if any you pros come up with an actual macro mechanic that could be applied to perhaps tokens as you pull them out to the table, don't forget little ol me :p

That was an excellent suggestion to use the pull to table dice...I've been trying to figure out how to use this technique and the best I came up with was using the turn tracker...Thanks all, awesome!

There's probably an API-generated way of doing it, but honestly, I don't know that anything would be quicker than just selecting the pool, right-clicking, and then rolling the tokens randomly.

Ok, after some experimenting with both ways I came up with a tweek of my own that works really good for me,,, the ingame dice system works really great with being able to highlight the dice on the tabletop and telling it to roll random,,, the drawback for me was,  that the game dice are a bit bland and I really liked the bright 3D look of the dice tokens i came up with,
so working on Bryan's original suggestion i came up with these:
/roll {[[1d4]],[[1d4]],[[1d4]],[[1d4]],[[1d4]],[[1d4]]}<1
/roll {[[1d6]],[[1d6]],[[1d6]],[[1d6]],[[1d6]],[[1d6]]}<1
/roll {[[1d8]],[[1d8]],[[1d8]],[[1d8]],[[1d8]],[[1d8]]}<1
These need to be added as 3 different macros, but they eliminate the annoying pop up query asking for type of dice and work great when using all one type of die which would be the most common method of use,,,, when using multi types of dice like in the dragon scenario, using Bryan's code would then still work great if needing to change the value of 1 of the dice.
Also, for me personally, I like checking the assign as token action on these, rather than assigning it to the bar. This way the buttons only pop up if you are clicked on a token and then you can select the appropriate button,, keep in mind that i don't really use other token action set ups right now so assigning them to the macro bar may be a better option for some.

Ok,, i've gotten a few private messages asking for some clarification on how this basicly works so I will add it here.
Basicly, it's way to represent time spent in a dungeon or cave or wilderness, etc.
So for instance, you have players  running around a fairly moderate level dungeon, you would use d6 dice for the pool. If it were a harder dungeon that is meant to really test the players, use d4s, if it's a cake walk or really easy, use d8s. As mentioned earlier, if the difficulty of the dungeon, etc suddenly changes you can start adding the appropriate dice to represent that.
So now, you want to add dice to the pool whenever players take a fair amount of time doing something, like; searching a room for treasure, fighting a group of monsters, exploring a length of passageway while searching for traps, arguing among themselves on what to do next, etc These things basicly roughly represent 10 mins of time.  When the pool reaches 6 dice, representing roughly 1 hour spent in the dungeon, roll the entire pool of dice. IF any one of them comes up as a 1, some random encounter happens, whether it's wandering critters looking for tasty treat, or other happening that would add spice, like maybe a section of the dungeon shifts turning it into a new layout, or whatever you want to use to add a bit of flavor and chance to an otherwise static dungeon.  Once the pool is rolled, all the dice are removed and you start over.
With this you can also say the pool automaticly fills during a short rest and you roll to see if something happens after the party is rested,  and if you really want to, roll the pool X amount of times during a long rest if the party is camped in an exposed area.
Hope this helps and answers some questions, and of course as you the DM, you can modify conditions as when to add dice, roll them, etc.
Happy Gaming :D

Thats a really fun and useful mechanic... I may even start using it for the many times my players form a huddle to discuss an NPC while the poor captain of the guard can only stand by and watch his fate being determined, add a die every minute and when it reaches 6 and a 1 is rolled he walks away exasperated rather than stand by rolling his eyes ;)

My players love a commitee!

I know a Video that would help you decide as well! I skipped down to comment after reading the OP lol don't worry, I'll backtrack, you'll love this though, it's gonna be great!. YouTube Video I'm kinda pressed for time at the moment, so pardon the rush and pressured typing.

lol,, sometimes mine do too Ziechael,,, one of the reasons why i like this tool,,, it's a visual reminder to them that time is passing and sometimes bad things MIGHT happen if you procrastinate,,, otherwise without a good tool to use,, passage of time in a game can kinda be glossed over by both DMs and players
one thing would make this a better tool in Roll20 tho,, as it stands, if you are using a larger map you have to manually drag the pool around to keep it in visual range of the players,,, it would be nice if they could be dropped into a floating window like the turn tracker that could be turned on or off if you are using it or not,, something for the devs to think about eh?

Before I go any further, I would like to point out that (if I'm not mistaken) the Template which I use in my Explanation is available on all Character Sheet Varieties (confirmation would be nice), I also included the entire Macro in each Code Block, so you can see how it progressed and morphed.

actually, I think I have exactly what you need now that I've read through the entire Thread, you actually just mentioned the solution! The Turn Tracker!
I also know a good Macro for your "oh so many Macros" problem as well, without it asking you repeatedly about the Sides of a Die:

!?{Sides|4|6|8|10|12|20|100}
/roll {[[1d?{Sides}]],[[1d?{Sides}]],[[1d?{Sides}]],[[1d?{Sides}]],[[1d?{Sides}]],[[1d?{Sides}]]}<1

Now, it asks once, with a Drop-down Menu (minimal mess-ups!) and then it rolls that many sides, but you mentioned modifiers occurring, have no fear, I shall run it through another Query (still one third of the other suggestion), this one for the Modifier, but then we need to force it to recognize the Sum of ?{Sides}+?{Modifier} so our [[1d?{Sides}]] becomes [[1d[[?{Sides}+?{Modifier}]]]] (a little trick I learned when trying to roll a Con Mod variable with an (abs())[Always return Positive Number] setting, which I later scrapped)

!?{Sides|4|6|8|10|12|20|100} ?{Modifiers|0}
/roll {[[1d[[?{Sides}+?{Modifiers}]]]],[[1d[[?{Sides}+?{Modifiers}]]]],[[1d[[?{Sides}+?{Modifiers}]]]],[[1d[[?{Sides}+?{Modifiers}]]]],[[1d[[?{Sides}+?{Modifiers}]]]],[[1d[[?{Sides}+?{Modifiers}]]]]}<1

But you might want a visual Fail/Pass Aid, fortunately, the Critical Success/Fail function works well for this:

!?{Sides|4|6|8|10|12|20|100} ?{Modifiers|0}
/roll {[[1d[[?{Sides}+?{Modifiers}]]cf<1cs>2]],[[1d[[?{Sides}+?{Modifiers}]]cf<1cs>2]],[[1d[[?{Sides}+?{Modifiers}]]cf<1cs>2]],[[1d[[?{Sides}+?{Modifiers}]]cf<1cs>2]],[[1d[[?{Sides}+?{Modifiers}]]cf<1cs>2]],[[1d[[?{Sides}+?{Modifiers}]]cf<1cs>2]]}<1

Now, whilst that's nice and all, what if you want it a bit more condensed? Perhaps a nice little Header? I have gone ahead and included it into a Template for you as well:

!?{Sides|4|6|8|10|12|20|100} ?{Modifiers|0}
/ooc &{template:default} {{name=Some Time has Passed}} {{Results=[[{[[1d[[?{Sides}+?{Modifiers}]]cf<1cs>2]],[[1d[[?{Sides}+?{Modifiers}]]cf<1cs>2]],[[1d[[?{Sides}+?{Modifiers}]]cf<1cs>2]],[[1d[[?{Sides}+?{Modifiers}]]cf<1cs>2]],[[1d[[?{Sides}+?{Modifiers}]]cf<1cs>2]],[[1d[[?{Sides}+?{Modifiers}]]cf<1cs>2]]}<1]] Events Occur}}

Now, perhaps you wanted to see each individual Roll, that too can be Arranged! (although I'm not skilled enough with the Comparator to also include the Fail Results Tally, perhaps one of the others can assist with that knowledge?)

!?{Sides|4|6|8|10|12|20|100} ?{Modifiers|0}
/ooc &{template:default} {{name=Some Time has Passed}} {{Roll 1=[[1d[[?{Sides}+?{Modifiers}]]cf<1cs>2]]}} {{Roll 2=[[1d[[?{Sides}+?{Modifiers}]]cf<1cs>2]]}} {{Roll 3=[[1d[[?{Sides}+?{Modifiers}]]cf<1cs>2]]}} {{Roll 4=[[1d[[?{Sides}+?{Modifiers}]]cf<1cs>2]]}} {{Roll 5=[[1d[[?{Sides}+?{Modifiers}]]cf<1cs>2]]}} {{Roll 6=[[1d[[?{Sides}+?{Modifiers}]]cf<1cs>2]]}}

Whilst this is lacking in it's results Rolls, this does allow us to visually show which rolls failed, and just how badly they failed using the Exploding Dice. You said that if you Roll a 1, you needed to Roll another Die? Whilst we know it was a 1, the question arises, "How Bad was it?" so we wanna roll it again to see if it was another failure, that's what Exploding Dice are, so here's the Result:

!?{Sides|4|6|8|10|12|20|100} ?{Modifiers|0}
/ooc &{template:default} {{name=Some Time has Passed}} {{Roll 1=[[1d[[?{Sides}+?{Modifiers}]]cf<1cs>2!1]]}} {{Roll 2=[[1d[[?{Sides}+?{Modifiers}]]cf<1cs>2!1]]}} {{Roll 3=[[1d[[?{Sides}+?{Modifiers}]]cf<1cs>2!1]]}} {{Roll 4=[[1d[[?{Sides}+?{Modifiers}]]cf<1cs>2!1]]}} {{Roll 5=[[1d[[?{Sides}+?{Modifiers}]]cf<1cs>2!1]]}} {{Roll 6=[[1d[[?{Sides}+?{Modifiers}]]cf<1cs>2!1]]}}

You might have noticed that your Red Borders have now become Blue Borders on a Fail though, if you want the Red borders to stay, you gotta strip away the Green Borders, this is easily done by setting it to a value higher than anything you'd feasibly ever use for this roll, such as only Critical Success when rolling exactly [[?{Sides}*100]] (I seriously doubt you'd ever find a Dungeon so easy without a Wish Spell)

!?{Sides|4|6|8|10|12|20|100} ?{Modifiers|0}
/ooc &{template:default} {{name=Some Time has Passed}} {{Roll 1=[[1d[[?{Sides}+?{Modifiers}]]cf<1cs=[[?{Sides}*100]]!1]]}} {{Roll 2=[[1d[[?{Sides}+?{Modifiers}]]cf<1cs=[[?{Sides}*100]]!1]]}} {{Roll 3=[[1d[[?{Sides}+?{Modifiers}]]cf<1cs=[[?{Sides}*100]]!1]]}} {{Roll 4=[[1d[[?{Sides}+?{Modifiers}]]cf<1cs=[[?{Sides}*100]]!1]]}} {{Roll 5=[[1d[[?{Sides}+?{Modifiers}]]cf<1cs=[[?{Sides}*100]]!1]]}} {{Roll 6=[[1d[[?{Sides}+?{Modifiers}]]cf<1cs=[[?{Sides}*100]]!1]]}}

Now if a Roll hits a 1, it will have a Red Outline, and it will then read in the Tooltip per roll just how many times it hit a 1.

Now, THAT was exhaustive and thorough, btw, you can change the parts between the {{ & = to alter what each section is named, except for "{{name=" that one is Case Sensitive as well. I mentioned at the start something about the Turn Tracker as well though, allow me to test a few ideas really quick, I recalled hearing something about Druids that I desire to Test first (Yep! THAT trick!)

I mentioned the Turn Tracker in my previous Comment, now, I shall explain what I meant. In my previous comment, I went over the Macro, you will want to assign that to a Character Sheet and set the "as Token Action" flag to on (checked), and here's why:

You said you had your own Dice Sides? GREAT! That's actually PERFECT! Because I want you to make a Table for this next part (its in the Collection Tab, Second from the Right, next to Setting)

• Set each picture to it's own slot, weight of 1 ((Weight) out of (Total Weight) chance to be the result)
• then, I want you to Save the Changes
• then hit the "Token" option next to "Roll", it will create a Token on your current Map somewhere based on your Table's Result options, and it's going to act EXACTLY like those Dice Gozer mentioned, except it's not limited to 4/6/8/10/12/20 sides, it can be 2, it can be 100, it can be 627, so long as each result has a Picture
• next, Right Click the Token you just created, just like Gozer instructed, it's going to be initially created as a Drawing, which doesn't Snap to the Grid, so make sure it's not a Drawing (under Advanced)
• then make sure it's Snapping to the Grid like it should
• then pick what "Side" you want the Token to start on, each option on the Table is a different Side
• then I want you to open the Token's Options
• link it to the Character Sheet you placed the aforementioned Macro in
• then, go into the Sheet that has the Macro
• Hit Edit
• With the Token Selected, and the Character Sheet Open in it's Edit Mode, you should see an Option to "Use Selected Token", Click that
• Whenever you want to place the Die, place it on the Map using that Character Sheet, and it will by default use that Token, complete with the custom pictures, Druids use this trick for their Shape-Shifting abilities
• If you do this with multiple Tables, you can have one for each version of your desired Dice  (1d4, 1d6, 1d8, etc), this would also allow you to replace the ?{Sides} query per Table entirely, although each die would need it's own Sheet for that (or simply add each variant to one Sheet and link them all to that, but then you might mis-click)

You said each Die is 10 min? in Official 5e a Turn of Combat is 6 seconds, so that would be 100 Turns (approximately every [[@{speed}*100]] Feet, give or take (Dash, Rough Terrain, Swimming, Climbing, etc) Variables) in Combat, or 1 per Ritual (for the "1 Action" Rituals)

You can add the Token to the Tracker using something along the lines of

Variable:
/ooc &{template:default} {{name=Some Time has Passed}} {{Die Added=[[1d8r<3r=5r=7cs=8cf=4 &{tracker}]] Sided}}

Static:
!?{Sides|4|6|8}
/ooc &{template:default} {{name=Some Time has Passed}} {{Die Added=[[?{Sides} &{tracker}]] Sided}}

I forgot how to adjust the Initiative via Macro though. I read the command once somewhere in a Thread I might have forgotten to Follow about a week ago, in evglish, I might never track down that thread again lol

Something i forgot to mention in my latest post,,, when you roll he pool and no 1s come up, the pool remains and you roll it again when the next you would have normally added another die,, this simulates the players pushing their luck so to speak, but can still have a bit of a lucky streak, you never want to add more than 6 die to the pool,, however, once a 1 is rolled, the pool starts over giving the players a bit of a breather until the next time

Note about the Macros:

• < = (=<)
• > = (>=)
• = = (=)
• &{tracker} requires a Selected Token
• @{selected| prefix also requires a Selected Token, as well as a Character Sheet to be linked to it if used for anything beyond the limited Token attributes (the 3 bars, Name, Auras, & if Dynamic Lighting is available, that range as well)
• Sometimes you will encounter a Parser Error in your Macros, this requires you to replace the closing Brackets at key spots with the HTML variant of the Symbol, one such example can be found >Here< (that's for the Creature Giant Spider's Web)

Mysteria S. said:

Something i forgot to mention in my latest post,,, when you roll he pool and no 1s come up, the pool remains and you roll it again when the next you would have normally added another die,, this simulates the players pushing their luck so to speak, but can still have a bit of a lucky streak, you never want to add more than 6 die to the pool,, however, once a 1 is rolled, the pool starts over giving the players a bit of a breather until the next time

ooh, yea, you should go ahead and edit that into that post, as well as your first, because you mostly covered it all there as well. It's a rather nice technique.