Hi, friends!
I played my first game of D&D 4e on roll20 a few days ago. I wrote some cool macros for my abilities that show the ability description in a 4th edition-style power card, using the &{template:dnd4epower} tag. As someone who's a dabbling programmer, I've had an absolute blast figuring out all of the macro syntax, linking my macros to my character sheet, and how to completely automate anything and everything I possibly could.
But my party and I were getting frustrated with trying to keep track of status effects. I mean, yeah, you could have the GM throw up an icon on the affected token, and you could have the GM put a custom item in the initiative tracker to keep track of when the effect expires, but that just seems like too much for a GM to have to juggle when he's busy worrying about the NPC's, and it seems like there should easily be a way to automate the process with the click of a button.
I've experimented with trackerjacker and initiative_tracker APIs, but my issue with trackerjacker is that it expects you to manually pick an icon every single time you use an ability, which hurts my brain. Why can't I include my icon selection in my macro, so I don't have to pick the icon manually every single time? Initiative_tracker automates the icon-selection process, but I don't think it allows players to apply effects to tokens they don't control. Correct me if I'm wrong about any of this.
So I was just trying to figure out if there was any way to automate my Warlord's ability, let's say "Warlord's Favor." Warlord's Favor applies an attack bonus buff equal to 1 + Int Modifier to the ally of my choice, against an enemy of my choice until the end of my next turn. In order for a macro I'd create for this ability to work the way I'd like, it would need to pull my character's INT modifier, select an ally that receives the buff, select an enemy to whom the ally receives the buff for, and put an icon on the ally representing the buff that expires at the end of my next turn.
If I have to, I think I could use initiative_tracker to give myself an effect that merely states "An ally of your choice gains [[1+@{INT}]] to attack rolls against an enemy of your choice," but that's a bit of a stretch of a compromise, especially considering I pay $10/mo for this software.
Is there anything I can do to automate this ability elegantly, as a player?
