Roll20 character sheets

[Tahlvin]

[El Jefe]

Hmm...not sure what you're covering exactly with the custom attributes. I don't think I've delved into that yet, as I've mostly been adding things to each specific instance of a formula as needed. It looks like I've got some more investigation to do.

[Tahlvin]

[El Jefe]

So I've been playing around with the Pathfinder Companion API script, and I've basically discovered that this may be the greatest thing for games. In particular, it helps GMs at a massive level. But even for players, you can see huge benefits from this. And now that it ties in directly with the character sheets, yeah, this tool is pretty much indispensable. Honestly, for any GM out there, enabling this thing and learning a bit about it will save you HOURS of time. Let's break down why.

Imagine adding a token to the map, and having the HP/AC/touch values already filled in. A player updates their HP on their character sheet or enables a condition on that sheet, and the token is automatically updated. In fact, character sheets are really only needed to be open to change HP. Because all of your attacks, abilities, spells, and saves can now be activated directly by selecting your token and choosing from a menu that pops up over top. When you have buffs that have a round countdown, they can now be added to the init counter, and will automatically count down for you. And for GMs, direct importing of SRD stats. Copy the stats, use the command, give it a short bit of time, and boom, you have a fully completed character sheet for you.

This thing is an absolute monster of an addition, and utterly changes what you can do with your roll20 games.

[El Jefe]

There's even an option to instance things like spells remaining, ammo count, etc. Though I haven't completely figured out that part yet. Toss in the built-in options for triggering group rolls (like every character rolling Perception and sending it as a whisper to the GM), which is something I'm just putting into place. I haven't checked how triggering group initiative works yet, but that's next on my list. Because if I can just have init rolled and filled in on the tracker with a simple click of a macro...that's huge.

[Phoebe]

My brain is totally engrossed in something else right now so I can't quite follow all the details above, but as I understand it, this allows you to have a quick, automatic reference to various character stats, as modified by current conditions in the group?

One of the things I find trickiest as a player, especially when I've got my laptop laying on the same bed as my briefcase and all its urgent contents, a 6 year old up past bedtime, and a pair of dog paws attached to a frisky creature, is keeping track of how various modifications are changing my rolls. If there's an easy way to automatically add things like "these 5 people have +3/+3 from song, but you're also at "small" size so your movement and damage is reduced thuswise, and you drank that potion so..." that would be awesome. I also jot down which spells I took and try to keep track of their use, but we often play one "day" over multiple sessions and then I have no idea a month later whether I really did use 2 or 3 of my spells. For me that is not such a biggie as I can simply avoid use, but for other characters would be major.

[El Jefe]

Not...exactly?

Legitimately, most of this is more useful on the GM side. But I'm honestly not exactly sure how to clear up some of your confusion there, as I'm not exactly clear what your confusion is.

One thing I will note (and I've got no idea if Darcs follows here), that I've just discovered on the GM side that's pretty much the coolest thing ever. Grouproll macros built in via the Companion script. With about 20 minutes to configure the API script (entirely by clicking a few buttons in chat) and copying over five macros, I've now been able to set up my games so that I can trigger rolls from character sheets without them needing to be open. I can control whether the players see the rolls or not. Darcs, if you do follow here, and you want to to advantage of this at all, I'll gladly answer any questions or try to put some writeups together. I cannot begin to explain how stupendously useful this thing is.

Example: Grouprolls (whether whispered to the GM or public) allow me to trigger saving throws, skill checks, and initiative checks simply by selecting the tokens on the map and then triggering the macro. A drop-down menu appears where I then select what I want rolled (say, a Perception check). This means that I can have PCs roll Perception (or Stealth or whatever) without the players themselves even knowing the roll. And while the GM could certainly do this manually before, I can now do it for every character desired with typing in a single word in chat and two mouseclicks. Initiative is even cooler, as it will give me the option on whether I want to clear the turn tracker as well as auto-adding all those initiative scores to the tracker. I never need to have players roll initiative. I can trigger it directly from my end.

Mixing this with the ability to import stats directly from the SRD and having the script literally build a completed character sheet for me in about two minutes...this is amazing.

[Tahlvin]

[El Jefe]

I just want to call out Tahlvin and offer up some thanks. Your work with the favored enemy/bane macros led directly to solutions for problems that have been plaguing me for a while (in particular, how to get an investigator's studied target and inspiration bonuses to be automated). I owe you one, sir.

[Tahlvin]

[El Jefe]

And as a daisy chain off of that, it opened up everything else for things like bane, flanking, point blank shot, power attack, and deadly aim to decided on the attack (rather than as a buff), which is much cleaner. I even managed to bang rocks together long enough to figure out how to get it to default to No, rather than Yes, which is pretty much essential for these.

[El Jefe]

Here's one for you Talhvin. Any way you can see to do some sort of a callback? If somebody selects "Yes" on a flanking dropdown to add +2 to an attack, can I callback to that same yes to add their sneak attack damage?

[Tahlvin]

Yes, you can do that. But there's a catch.

For example, my favored enemy bonus applies to both an attack and damage. So I use the following in the macro for the attack bonus:

[[ ?{Favored Enemy?|None,0|Giant,@{customa1-mod}|Goblin,@{customa2-mod}|Monstrous Humanoid,@{customa3-mod}} ]]

Then I use the following in the damage macro:

[[ ?{Favored Enemy?} ]]

The second time you reference that query, it uses the value that was calculated from the first time the query was called during that "roll".

So where it gets tricky is when you want to use one query, but you want to apply a different value for the attack vs. damage. To do that, you need to separate the query value from the values you want, then do a little bit of math. So for example, if the target is within 30 feet, I want to add +1 to my attack for Point Blank Shot, but I also want to add +4 to my damage roll for Intuitive Shot. To do that, I set the following in the macros:

Attack: [[ ?{Target within 30 ft?|No,0|Yes,1} ]]

Damage: [[ ?{Target within 30 ft?}*4 ]]

So the first time the query is called from the Attack macro, if I answer Yes, it sets the value of that query to 1, which it then uses directly in the attack macro. But in the damage macro, it takes that value of 1 and multiplies it by 4.

If you want to add something like variable sneak attack damage if you're flanking, then you should be able to do something like the following, which is what I use for adding the Bane attack and damage bonuses:

Attack: [[ ?{Bane?|No,0|Yes,2} ]]

Damage: [[ ?{Bane?} + ?{Bane?}d6 ]]

So if you answer Yes, it will add +2 to the attack roll, and 2 + 2d6 to the damage roll.

That's certainly helpful to minimize the number of prompts you need to display to the users. If the query is really a binary Yes/No or On/Off situation, you may just want the query to return 1 or 0, then do math in the appropriate places to get the correct bonuses to apply. Unfortunately, I couldn't get that to work quite correctly for the Rapid Shot modification to the iterative attack macros, since I needed the query in that instance to return other code if the query response was Yes, so having it return 1 or 0 wouldn't work.