Roll20 macro and character/monster building tutorials.
Posted: Tue Nov 03, 2015 6:21 pm
Roll20 is a pretty awesome resource, especially for this system. The robust and still growing macro system they have can let you automate a lot of the time consuming math of the system down into a few clicks and queries. I'll be sharing as much as i know and have developed for it in this thread, in no particular order. All updates will be edited into the top few replies (i'll be trying to make them somewhat categorical.)
Anyone who wants to add in more or better ways to do things is welcome to post them, i'll test what you send me and add it to the tutorial posts (with credits).
The macro's section of the roll 20 wiki is a really good starting point for understanding how all of it works: https://wiki.roll20.net/Macros
General Macros
Starting with one of the first big hurdles i had, the mathematics of how barter skill worked into buying and selling confused me a lot initially, since the barter skill essentially i used to determine the vendor markup from the base value of an item. With some help from a more math savvy friend i wrote out a pair of macros for buying and selling.
The buying macro:
The Selling macro:
The /desc is a gm command for descriptive messages, i start all my macros with either /desc or /me, because these flavor text boxes help separate things out and reduces confusion.
The double square brackets are for inline text, generating a yellow box with a number in it instead of a big picture of dice. It also helps highlight the numbers.
The macro itself rounds up and is made up mostly of queries, asking for the base value of the item, the buying characters barter skill and ending with a percentile multiplier for disposition, sales and such. at 100 barter skill with no other modifiers, an item is at a minimal markup (11% i think), so a player with 115 barter for their cutie mark skill can buy things at a fairly low 4% markup, and master trader lets them buy things UNDER value.
I kind of had to assume that the barter skill was meant to affect the percentage of markup, because the formula exactly as written in the core rules ended up always making a difference of 100 caps, no matter the item.
The selling macro works the same way, but affects at what percentage of the items value the player can sell the item for. 90% of value for 100 barter skill, 97% for 115, and 45% if you somehow have 0 barter.
Using queries you can also make a macro for pretty much any standard, single shot weapon, (rate of fire gets slightly more complicated).
Its a bit slow and cumbersome, so for your PC's you're better off using one of the macros i'll be posting below for your own equipment, and gms will want to bake enemies attacks into their character sheets as well, however its useful to have a general attack macro around for when someone wants to do something unexpected, like pick up a pipe off the ground when no other weapons are available, and they don't have a macro for that type of weapon already at hand.
General Attack Macro:
This macro rolls a base d100 next to a line with a query for the characters relevant attack skill, plus or minus the modifier. (always use a positive sign for your queries like this, its easier to understand to put a - sing when you have a negative modifier, and roll20 doesn't like doubled up math symbols.
The damage line then queries for the weapons based damage, the number of d10's, and the condition multiplier.
Initiative: This one is pretty important. There's a few different ways to do it, either on the player side or a globally available one made by the gm, but no matter what they're basically going to be the same thing.
Starting with what i consider to be the BEST way to do it, it just means that everyone needs to use the same format for their specials (ie, all full words or all three letter abbreviations, or one letter abbreviations).
This automatically gets the agility and perception from the selected token, rolls a d10 and adds agility, then turns perception into a decimal. This resolves most ties automatically once the turn tracker is sorted (unless two people roll the same number for init AND have the same perception.)
In theory you could add +(@{selected|lck}*0.001) before the tracker extension, and it would include luck in this calculation as well and you should almost never have to sort out ties on your own...seems like using a sledgehammer to hang a picture.
If for some reason you can't have uniform special stats on every character, you can replace the @{selected|stat} lines with a ?{stat|5}. using queries like this often results in your players rolling their initiative without their token selected, and having to do it again.
My next post will detail how to setup your PC's character sheet for minimal time-wasting in game.
Anyone who wants to add in more or better ways to do things is welcome to post them, i'll test what you send me and add it to the tutorial posts (with credits).
The macro's section of the roll 20 wiki is a really good starting point for understanding how all of it works: https://wiki.roll20.net/Macros
General Macros
Starting with one of the first big hurdles i had, the mathematics of how barter skill worked into buying and selling confused me a lot initially, since the barter skill essentially i used to determine the vendor markup from the base value of an item. With some help from a more math savvy friend i wrote out a pair of macros for buying and selling.
The buying macro:
Spoiler: show
Spoiler: show
The double square brackets are for inline text, generating a yellow box with a number in it instead of a big picture of dice. It also helps highlight the numbers.
The macro itself rounds up and is made up mostly of queries, asking for the base value of the item, the buying characters barter skill and ending with a percentile multiplier for disposition, sales and such. at 100 barter skill with no other modifiers, an item is at a minimal markup (11% i think), so a player with 115 barter for their cutie mark skill can buy things at a fairly low 4% markup, and master trader lets them buy things UNDER value.
I kind of had to assume that the barter skill was meant to affect the percentage of markup, because the formula exactly as written in the core rules ended up always making a difference of 100 caps, no matter the item.
The selling macro works the same way, but affects at what percentage of the items value the player can sell the item for. 90% of value for 100 barter skill, 97% for 115, and 45% if you somehow have 0 barter.
Using queries you can also make a macro for pretty much any standard, single shot weapon, (rate of fire gets slightly more complicated).
Its a bit slow and cumbersome, so for your PC's you're better off using one of the macros i'll be posting below for your own equipment, and gms will want to bake enemies attacks into their character sheets as well, however its useful to have a general attack macro around for when someone wants to do something unexpected, like pick up a pipe off the ground when no other weapons are available, and they don't have a macro for that type of weapon already at hand.
General Attack Macro:
Spoiler: show
The damage line then queries for the weapons based damage, the number of d10's, and the condition multiplier.
Initiative: This one is pretty important. There's a few different ways to do it, either on the player side or a globally available one made by the gm, but no matter what they're basically going to be the same thing.
Starting with what i consider to be the BEST way to do it, it just means that everyone needs to use the same format for their specials (ie, all full words or all three letter abbreviations, or one letter abbreviations).
Spoiler: show
In theory you could add +(@{selected|lck}*0.001) before the tracker extension, and it would include luck in this calculation as well and you should almost never have to sort out ties on your own...seems like using a sledgehammer to hang a picture.
If for some reason you can't have uniform special stats on every character, you can replace the @{selected|stat} lines with a ?{stat|5}. using queries like this often results in your players rolling their initiative without their token selected, and having to do it again.
My next post will detail how to setup your PC's character sheet for minimal time-wasting in game.